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is sufficient to show that religious plays, like religious novels, may be pressed into the service of education with powerful effect. It is stated by Mrs. Mowatt, in her autobiography, from which we have already quoted, that in the catalogue of English dramatic authors there are the names of two hundred clergymen. But we imagine that none of these have written any religious plays. There are six regular theatres in New-York, which are open nearly every night in the year, excepting Sundays, for dramatic representations, and the public that sit night after night with a fortitude and good nature to us incredible, to see the School for Scandal and the Lady of Lyons would be but too happy to vary their amusements by a religious drama, if it were only new and intelligible. The chief of our city theatres, which claims to be the Metropolitan, since the destruction of the Old Park, is the Broadway. It is a very large house, capable of seating some 4300 persons. It was built by Col. Alvah Mann, a great circus proprietor, who ruined himself by the speculation, and is now the property of Mr. Raymond, another millionaire of the ring. Broadway is a star house," and depends more upon the attraction of a single eminent performer than upon the general character of its performances, or its stock company; and it is at one time a ballet, another a tragedian, again an opera, then a spectacle, that forms its attractions. Forrest has here appeared one hundred nights in succession; here too Lola Montez made her debut in America, and any wandering monstrosity is seized upon by the manager to secure an audience. The regular drama, excepting with the attraction of a star, is found to be a regular bore to the public, and a regular loss to the house. The manager of the Broadway, E. A. Marshall, Esq., is neither an actor nor a dramatist, but simply a man of business; and, besides the Broadway Theatre, he is also proprietor of the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, and of the theatres in Baltimore and Washington. Neither the exterior nor interior of this house is at all creditable to the city; it has a shabby and temporary look externally, and the ornamentation of the auditorium is both mean and tawdry. No class of people seem to frequent it for recreation but only to gratify an excited curiosity.

The "Bowery," which is the oldest of all the theatres in New-York, is about the same dimensions as the Broadway, but has a stage of much greater depth, and better adapted to spectacle. It is

frequented chiefly by the residents of the eastern side of the city, and its pit is generally filled with boisterous representatives of the first families in the city—that is, the first in the ascending scale. The performances at the Bowery are, of course, adapted to the tastes of its audiences, who have a keen relish for patriotic devotion, terrific combats, and thrilling effects, and are never so jubilant as when suffering virtue triumphs over the machinations of persecuting villainy. It was for such audiences as these, with a slight infusion of better natures. that Shakspeare wrote his dramas, and for whose amusement he was willing to personate the humblest of his creations. The present edifice is the fourth that has been erected on the same ground, since the first one was erected in the year 1826, the others having been destroyed by fire. The late proprietor of the Bowery Theatre amassed a fortune here, and left the establishment to his heirs, to whom it now belongs. It is understood to be a very profitable concern, as it has been from its first erection. It was in the Bowery Theatre where Madame Hutin, the first opera dancer seen on this side of the Atlantic made her debut, and where the first ballet was performed, one of the troupe being the then unknown Celeste. It was here, too, that Malibran made her first appearance on the stage after her unfortunate marriage, and filled the house with the beauty, fashion, and intellect of the city. Such audiences have never since graced its pit and galleries. It was on the stage of the Bowery that Forrest achieved his greatest triumphs, and laid the foundation of his fame. But it is long since stars of such magnitude have shed their sweet influences on Bowery audiences.

Niblo's is not, strictly, a theatre, but a show house, open to any body that may choose to hire it. It is one night a circus, another an Italian Opera House; then a dramatic temple, and then a lecture room. It is called a "garden," but it is one of the roomiest, best constructed, and most convenient of all the places of amusement in the city, and is unexceptionable in its character. Its interior decorations are very inferior to the other threatres, but it has the great advantage of being clean and well ventilated. The entrance to it, through the Metropolitan Hotel, is extremely elegant and capacious. Under the same roof, within the walls of the same hotel is Niblo's Saloon, a splendid room used for concerts and balls. The whole ground now covered by the Metropolitan Hotel was once Niblo's Garden, and the theatre was merely an appendage

to it to draw custom to the refreshment tables.

There are two theatres in New-York, and but two which are devoted exclusively to the performance of the regular drama; these are Burton's in Chambers-street, and Wallack's in Broadway. Burton's Theatre was, originally, a bath-house, and was afterwards turned into an Italian Opera House, in the management of which a good deal of money was lost, and Palmo, the proprietor ruined. Burton then took possession of it, and made a fortune. It was the first instance in which a theatre in this city had fallen into the hands of a manager of scholarly attainments and artistic instincts, and the result of his management shows what may be effected by talent turned in the right direction. Mr. Burton has not only enriched himself, but his done the public a service by affording them a place of harmless and elevating amusement. One of the first pieces that he put upon his stage was Milton's Comus, which gave the public assurance that the new manager was a person of education and refinement; and the uniform good judgment shown by him in the pieces he has selected, and the superior manner in which they have been costumed, have made his theatre a superior place of intellectual entertainment for people of educated tastes. Mr. Burton is one of the best low comedians on the stage, and is, himself, one of the strongest attractions of his theatre. But, like a true artist, he never hesitates to take a subordinate part, when it is necessary to give completeness and effect to a performance. He has a devoted attachment to his art, and goes through with his nightly performances, sometimes appearing in three different pieces, with a degree of vigor, and careful attention to all the minute accessories of his part, which we could only look for in an enthusiastic acolyte in the temple of art. Mr. Burton is an Englishman; but, unlike most of his countrymen, he left his native country behind him, when he crossed the Atlantic, and became thoroughly American in his feelings. He was bred to the profession of a printer, and, after his arrival in this country engaged in several literary enterprises. He established the Gentleman's Magazine, now called "Graham's."

Wallack's Lyceum, in Broadway, is an exceedingly elegant little house, the style of the interior decoration is in excellent taste, and the effect of a full house is light, cheerful, exhilarating, and brilliant. James Wallack, the manager and proprietor, is the head of a large family remark

able for the possession of theatrical talent. He was a celebrated actor in London more than thirty years ago, and is still one of the best players in his line, the genteel heroes of melo-drama,-on the stage. But he rarely makes his appearance before the foot lights. Wallack's Lyceum is Burton's without Burton. Great attention is always paid to the production of pieces at this brilliant little house, and the costumes and scenery form an important part of the attraction. English comedy and domestic dramas form the chief attractions at Wallack's, and the house is generally full. The utmost order and decorum are maintained, both at this house and Burton's, and every thing offensive to the most delicate taste carefully excluded from the stage.

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The National Theatre in Chatham-street has long been the resort of newsboys and apprentices, and the style of performances has been very similar to those of the Bowery;" but, in a happy moment, the manager, a good natured native whom they call Captain Purdy, put Uncle Tom's Cabin upon his stage and at once raised his fortune and changed the character of his house. As it has played this piece twice a day for nearly six months, and is now the family resort of serious family parties, it would be rather hazardous to predict what its future course may be; the old Chatham Theatre was converted into a chapel, and Captain Purdy's is half way towards the same destiny.

Attached to Barnum's Museum there is a large, well arranged, and showily deçorated theatre for dramatic representations, where domestic dramas of a moral character are performed, and a version of Uncle Tom adapted to Southern tastes has been a long time running. The "St. Charles," is a small theatre in the Bowery which was built for an actor named Chanfrau, who was the creator of the universally recognized character of Mose, the type of the New-York gamin.

The Italian Opera House in Astor Place has been adapted to the uses of the Mercantile Library Association; and the new opera house in Irving-place, which bids fair to be one of the most magnificent structures devoted to music in the world, is not yet sufficiently built to be described; but we shall describe it hereafter.

Since we commenced writing this article the most beautiful and spacious place of popular, recreation in New-York has been swept out of existence by one of those sudden and disastrous conflagrations which have earned for New-York the appellation of the City of Fires. Metropolitan Hall,

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MEMOIRS OF DR. VERON.

Memoires d'un Bourgeois de Paris par le Docteur
L. VERON, comprenant: La fin de l'Empire, la
Restauration, la Monarchie de Juillet, et la
Republique jusqu'au rétablissement de Em-
pire. Tome Premier. Paris. 1853. pp. 380.

IT

T is scarcely necessary to say that we have read with great interest Dr. Veron's memoirs. They are a gossipping narrative of the last thirty years of French life. The first volume only has appeared, which is rather a preface to the other volumes than a chronological relation of its parts to this period of time; it nevertheless contains a great many curious pictures of French society during this period, which we, who are separated from Paris by a winter's Atlantic, could scarcely find any where else. A great many Frenchinen hold that French history begins only with the advent of Napoleon, and they reckon the antecedent years as merely the history of the Louises and the Henrys and the Charleses who have sat upon the throne. Gross as is this mistake (which, by the way, has just been clearly exposed by M. Augustin Thierry*), it is very certain that French society has undergone several radical changes since the Eighteenth Brumaire, and that the national character differs neatly as much from that of the Frenchman of the reign of Louis XIV. as he differed from the Gaul described by Cæsar. The general specimen of a Frenchman given by our school books of geography, and which represent him with a cocked hat and a ruffled bosom, and dancing under a tree, is quite as inapplicable to a Frenchman of the present day as it would be to a Sioux Indian. The gayety, and contentment, and careless generosity, which once were the prominent traits of the French character, have completely disappeared; he has become ambitious, and discontented, and avaricious. Successive radical revolutions, which, by the most formal laws, expressed in the most absolute terms, and in more than one instance passed by the selfsame body of men, have dethroned every ruler of the country, and have in turn exalted to the skies and debased to the sewer every form of government and every family of governors known to the country: more than once the traitor's gaol has been' the footstool to the throne; the fatal influence of the article of the Code Napoleon, which provides an equal distribution of

estates among the deceased's male and female children, share and share alike, has dilapidated every fortune, and beggared the lower classes of the rural population; the complete loss of power and of position of the aristocracy of the nation; the number of successful adventurers the revolutions have tossed to power, and the consequent demoralization of all classes of society; the insatiable thirst for wealth (now the only social distinction in a country where quite as many ex-cabinet ministers are rotting in gaols, or living by their wits in an exile's abode, as may be found in fashionable drawing-rooms), and the inexorable demands of money made by all, even the least social positions, have corrupted the French nation to an inconceivable degrec-we had almost said, have made them as astute and as unprincipled as the modern Greek. Our reader will see we are very far removed from the cocked hat and ruffled shirt Frenchman who capered gayly under a tree.

A truce, however, to these general reflections. Let us trace this society from the end of the Empire to the present time, by the examples Dr. Veron places before us; let us carefully mark the different phases he presents, and we may, at the end of the work, be better enabled to form an idea of that strange phenomenon -French society.

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Before dipping deep in his book of memoirs, let us stay a moment to examine the character of the writer: indeed his first chapter provokes the inquiry; it is entitled, Qui je suis, "Who I am. Dr. Louis Veron was born the 5th April, 1798. He chose medicine as a profession, and prosecuted it with energy and He tells us that when he saw all the volumes which compose a student's first library he felt that it was necessary he should give himself up completely to study, and lead a quiet, sober, and uninterrupted life; getting up early in the morning, shunning exciting dinners, and hastening to his garret immediately afterwards, and taking good care to find no society there but his books. He confesses he found the study of anatomy and of pathology rather dull; he hit upon a plan to enliven them: to read some of the great writers of the seventeenth and of the eighteenth centuries, and never to have a cent of money in his pocket;

* Essai sur l'Histoire de la Formation et des Progrès du Tiers-Etat, Par Augustin Thierry. VOL. III.-11

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"poverty has made a great many great men." His parents gave him twenty francs the first of every month, and the day he received them he lived like a lord; they were spent with the day: he dined with some of his friends at a restaurant, and went to some theatre, and finished his day at the Café du Roi, then the favorite resort of the wits and the men of letters. In 1821 he was appointed au concours first interne of the hospitals; he was made a doctor of medicine in 1823. He went every morning in winter from the Rue du Bac to the Hôpital de la Pitié by five o'clock, that he might reach there before the van which takes off from the hospitals all the unreclaimed bodies of the deceased patients, that he might select the best of them, and with his scalpel prepare them for the students studying anatomy. He remained, too, for some time in the Hospice des Enfans-Trouvés; every morning, thermometer in hand, he gave some fifteen of these foundlings, affected with a hardening of the cellular tissue, a vapor bath; during one year, he dissected at the least a hundred and fifty foundlings, and studied in a spoon the milk of more than two hundred nurses. Dr. Veron, however, abandoned his ambition of becoming a professor of the Medical school, in consequence of a defeat in a concours for the prizes of anatomy, natural history, natural philosophy, and chemistry; his rivals were MM. Andral and Bouillaud, and they carried off all the prizes; M. Orfila however afterwards told him that he had voted for him for the first prize in natural philosophy and chemistry, and his fortunate rival, M. Andral, complimented him on his lecture on electricity. The result of this concours persuaded Dr. Veron he had powerful enemies among the Faculty; he did not appear at another concours, and shortly after published a pamphlet upon the diseases of infants, containing notes on croup and on an abscess in the thymus. (At the birth of the Count de Paris, the Duke d'Orleans, being anxious about the health of his first child, asked Dr. Blache which was the last and the best treatise upon the croup: Monseigneur, replied the Doctor, the last and the best treatise upon the croup is by Dr. Veron, the manager of the opera.) He removed from the Quartier Latin to the Chaussée d'Antin, where he opened a doctor's office, but he avows in all humility that no client ever paid him a visit. One night, however, about three o'clock A. M., he was called up by his porter and two or three old women to go and see an old porter's wife hard by, whose

nose had been bleeding for more than six hours; he arrested the bleeding, and all the old women of the quarter sounded his praises with feminine volubility. His reputation rose from the porter's lodge to the first floor, and it was not long before he had three patients: one of them was a rich woman, who was no longer young, and rather corpulent; it was necessary to bleed her :

"Every body is talking," she said to me, "Monsieur, of your skill and of your learning, and I have quitted my physician to receive the care of a gentleman so celebrated as you already are. All of my acquaintances will follow my example, and in a very short time you will have the most brilliant practice in Paris." He had often heard his old professor and friend, M. Roux, the most skilful surgeon in the world say, that when he had to bleed a person he always was uneasy; and Dr. Veron began now to be nervous; however, he was obliged to make the attempt; he took hold of the patient's arm; she continued to overwhelm him with praises; he plunged in the lancet; he did not touch the vein; he plunged in the lancet again; no blood came. Oh! then the scene changed: "You are a miserable awkward fellow; the meanest surgeon bleeds better than you. How I pity the patients who confide themselves to your care. Bandage my arm up as quickly as you can, and take yourself off; you have doubtless maimed me." "The day of my grandeur," says the Doctor, "was the eve of my fall, and an unsuccessful bleeding had wrecked all my castles in the air; humiliation was mixed with my despair, and when I returned home, I said in a very decided tone to poor Justin, my porter, whom I afterwards made collector of the opera : CC Justin, I do not intend practising medicine any more, I will never bleed again, and if any body asks for a doctor, say there's none in the house."

After thus bidding adieu to the profession of medicine, Dr. Veron founded the Revue de Paris in 1829. There was then but one literary journal published in France, Le Mercure, which was published under the editorship and "by the expedients" of M. Gentil, whom M. Veron afterwards made the keeper of the " properties" at the opera; M. Gentil, however, could give the young writers, his contributors, nothing but praise and publicity; but he was a firm partisan of the "romantic school," as may be seen, when we are told that he is the author of that brief and celebrated judgment which made so

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