tions necessary to adapt the same to the different circumstances of Portugal, but these alterations and modifications are not to be less liberal." The latest accounts from Sicily still represent that island as in a state of great commotion. The French Chamber of Deputies met on the 21st ult. and the assembling of the Peers took place on the 26th, to hear the report of the law-officers regarding the alleged conspiracy of the 19th of August last. A most important revolution has happened in St. Domingo; Christophe, the tyrant of Hayti, is no more, having destroyed himself in consequence of a revolt among his soldiers, arising out of an act of despotism on his own part. On the 8th of October he assembled his body guard, and offered them money and the pillage of the Cape; but they refused to take arms. Finding himself deserted, he retired to his room and shot himself. He was buried under one of the bastions without a coffin, and his palace plundered; while 4000 prisoners, victims of his tyranny, were set at liberty. Dispatches were lately received in Spain, which announce the defeat of General Bolivar by the Spanish General Morillo. It appeared also that Bolivar had demanded a suspension of hostilities. Many things tended to this reverse on the part of the Independents; among others, Morillo, the moment he knew of the declaration of a free Constitution by Ferdinand, in Spain, promulgated the intelligence throughout the Carraccas, Columbia, and New Grenada. Many hearing this intelligence, who were attached to the Independent cause, deserted the army; others drew up a petition to Bolivar, stating their disinclination to oppose their European brethren; and thus the latter was in some measure compelled to seek a truce, which his defeat alone did not compel him to do. A revolt occurred lately at Copenhagen, and a number of persons were arrested; since which tranquillity had been re-established, and no apprehension is entertained of further disturbances. At Petersburgh, by the last accounts, dated the 24th of November, it appeared that the Emperor Alexander had satisfied himself with disbanding a regiment of his guards, which had been refractory; the mildness of the sentence arose, most probably, from great part of the corps having consisted of persons of family, whose influence it was necessary to respect. The American Congress met on the 14th of November, when the President of the United States delivered his annual Address. It contains nothing important respecting Great Britain, except announcing the continuance of amicable relations. The following are extracts: "The receipts into the Treasury, from every source, to the 30th of September last, have amounted to 16,794,107 dollars and 60 cents; whilst the public expenditures, to the same period, amounted to 16,871,534 dollars, and 72 cents; leaving in the Treasury on that day, a sum estimated at 1,950,000 dollars." "The sum of three millions of dollars, authorised to be raised by loan by an Act of the last session of Congress, has been obtained upon terms advantageous to the Government, indicating not only an increased confidence in the faith of the nation, but the existence of a large amount of capital seeking that mode of investment, at a rate of interest not exceeding five per cent. per annum. "It is proper to add, that there is now due to the Treasury, for the sale of public lands, twenty-two millions nine hundred and ninetysix thousand five hundred and forty-five dollars. In bringing this subject to view,. I consider it my duty to submit to Congress, whether it may not be advisable to extend to the purchasers of these lands, in consideration of the unfavourable change which has occurred since the sales, a reasonable indulgence. It is known that the purchases were made when the price of every article had risen to its greatest height, and that the instalments are becoming due at a period of great depression. It is presumed that some plan may be devised, by the wisdom of Congress, compatible with the public interest, which would afford great relief to these purchasers." "Considerable progress has been made in the construction of ships of war, some of which have been launched in the course of the present year. Our peace with the Powers on the coast of Barbary has been preserved; but we owe it altogether to the presence of our squadron in the Mediterranean. It has been found equally necessary to employ some of our vessels for the protection of our commerce in the Indian Sea, the Pacific, and along the Atlantic coast. The interests which have depending in those quarters, which have been much improved of late, are of great extent, and of high importance to the nation, as well as to the parties concerned, and would undoubtedly suffer if such protection was not extended to them. we "In execution of the law of the last Session, for the suppression of the slave trade, some of our public ships have also been employed on the coast of Africa, where several captures have already been made of vessels engaged in that disgraceful traffic." THE DRAMA. DRURY-LANE THEATRE. THE management of this theatre has been conducted, during the last three months, with peculiar judgment and energy, we wish we could add that it has been rewarded with adequate success. In tragedy, if all the new performers have not among them half the genius of their great predecessor, they are able to achieve what of course was beyond his power, the consistent and harmonious representation of entire dramas. The actors about him were rarely better, and often worse, than automatons, necessary to the effect of his performance, but wholly VOL. III. NO. I. unworthy of notice for their own qualities. All trace of illusion was thus destroyed by the very excellence of his acting; for his close approaches to nature served only to shew the miserable distance of his companions. Now, on the contrary, the spectator who can reduce the pitch of his expectations to the standard of Mr. Wallack, may enjoy an equable representation of a good play, and be half cheated into a belief in the reality of the picture. The want of a single actor of surpassing talent would not be of importance if the true theatrical enthusiasm were still in its freshness. C Children do not think or care whom they see, so that the play goes on. The desire to see a great actor in a particular part is quite a distinct feeling from the longing after tragedy. The first is scarcely more than curiosity to ascertain the compass of an individual's voice, the gracefulness of his attitudes, his taste in poetry or in rouge; the last is an earnest yearning after the ideal in beauty and in grandeur-a fond hope to realize a dim vision of the minda passion to share, for a short hour, in the fortitude, the joy, the anguish of the noblest spirits of the earth. We are afraid that, in our time, the former has almost taken the place of the latter; and thus the combination of highly respectable talents at Drury-Lane receives less support than its variety and its arrangement deserve. In the play of Lucius Junius Brutus, Mr. Wallack and Mr. Cooper united their efforts with considerable success; for, if the first was inferior to Kean in the hero, the second rendered the character of Titus more prominent than we have seen it on any former occasion. Wallack has evidently formed himself on the model of Kemble; and has succeeded in copying much of his dignity of movement and majesty of action. Had we never seen that noblest Roman of all, we should have been exceedingly struck by Wallack's gestures and attitudes. He fails, however, to exhibit any of those intense recurrences to nature with which Kemble was wont to surprise the heart, in the midst of the most rigid of his personations of character. He has, indeed, little of fervid enthusiasm or touching pathos. In Brutus, therefore, which, according to the author's conception, should be full of quick transitions and gentle uprisings of paternal love, he scarcely found scope for the happiest exertion of his powers. Cooper, in Titus, almost divided with him the applause and sympathy of the house, notwithstanding the comparative insignificance of the part. His struggle when importuned by Tarquinia to assist her his parting from her when taken-his last cleavings to life-and his final assumption of his native heroism to endure an ignominious doom— were appropriately affecting and noble. The revival of Pizarro afforded a yet more favourable opportunity for the efforts of the new tragedians. This play, if too warmly admired by the people, is perhaps rather undervalued by the critics. It is surely the most striking and gorgeous of melodrames. It treats probability and nature with a noble defiance, which is the next best thing to an entire harmony with them. It is pitched in the highest key of the romantic. Its strange mingling of inveterate foes-its marvellous changes of scene and of fortune-all its brilliant succession of impossibilities, keep the mind in a pleasurable intoxication of wonder. It is the best play in the world for a child to see; which assuredly is no mean praise. Well do we remember when first we gazed on the "wild and wondrous" spectacle. The descent of the fire in the Peruvian temple seemed to us a miracle, which we did not understand, but dared not question. While we looked on the exhibition of heroic daring-of strange escape-of bewildering variety of fortune-we believed that we saw some enchanted spot, shut far out from the dull world of sober reality, where fate played her "virgin fancies wild" in a high and sportive mood. There is too about the character of Rolla a wild grace, and a kind of barbaric gentleness, which give it a place apart from all things else in the imagination and the affections. The representation of this part by Wallack was the most successful of his efforts. His delivery of the famous speech to the Peruvian army, indeed, was rather deficient in energy; but he rose progressively in the subsequent scenes, and triumphed in his death. His appearance was singularly picturesque and grand. We have scarcely ever seen attitudes, even in the acting of Kemble, more beautiful than those of Wallack, where he held the dagger over the trembling Pizarro-where he sunk before him on his knees and where he seized the child with the one hand, and with the other dashed the swords from the opposing guards. Cooper did as much in the poor whining part of Alonzo, as the character admitted. Pizarro was, at first, played by Booth, who seemed to hold it in fitting disdain; and has since been performed by Thompson, who, with the exception of his Hibernian accent, did it justice. Booth has, subsequently, made the little part of Orozembo very impres sive. Mrs. Glover was appropriately formidable in Elvira. Mrs. West, as Cora, gave a beautiful picture of that most beautiful affection on earth—a mother's love. This lady is not far from being a delightful actress. She has power to melt us into the sweetest tears, by exhibiting the loveliest and most heroical qualities of woman. But she injures the effect of her acting by a monotonous swell of voice, which, when she would be most impressive, borders on the vulgar. Her grief "bears too much em phasis." She will strive in vain to storm the heart, but she may touch it irresistibly by quiet gentleness whenever she pleases. Julius Cæsar brought Mr. Wallack and Mr. Cooper again together before the public, and exhibited Mr. Booth in a character worthy of his powers. We did not, however, admire the first of these gentlemen more as the destroyer of Cæsar than as the expeller of the Tarquins. Brutus is a character which even the powers of Kemble failed, in our judgment, to make very interesting on the stage. History and Shakspeare represent him as a mild-hearted enthusiast, framed in nature's gentlest mould, and incited to perpetrate a fearful deed only by the holiest of human motives. He was the purest and most single-minded of assassins. This is scarcely a character for the stage, where the bloody knife necessarily predominates over the impalpable movements of the soul. Kemble was, we think, on the whole, too rigid and scornful, especially in the quarrel scene with Cassius, where indeed the Poet (with reverence be it spoken) seems to us to have almost aggravated the expressions of contempt too much for the sudden anger of an amiable mind. But yet in Kemble's performance there were breakings forth of human love which none could give like him; and there were fewer things more beautiful and touching than his gentle self-upbraiding at the sight of his weary page, and his violent suppression of conjugal sorrow as he hurried over the story of Portia's death. These Wallack could not give; and, in justice to him, we must add, did not attempt them. Indeed, though he has imitated Kemble largely, he has imitated him only in generals-in bearing, gesture, and attitudenot in the way of giving particular passages. Cooper appeared to less advantage in Marc Antony than we have ever else seen him. He made a few points in the course of the celebrated oration over Cæsar's body, but as a whole it was singularly frigid: as delivered by him, the mighty movements which followed it, seemed utterly perverse and wilful. He appeared intent only to set off particular images and allusions by the plain ground of level speaking from which they started; forgetting that in all true oratory the very reverse is the fact that the passion is all in all, and that metaphors only grow out of it, and receive their entire shapings from its plastic energy.Booth's Cassius was, in truth, the vivifying soul of the tragedy. His performance was full of present excellence, and of promise for the future. Although it was occasionally rather too violent, and sometimes bordered too nearly on coarseness, it was on the whole an admirable piece of acting. Every expression appeared the "flash and outbreak of a fiery mind; and in every movement and gesture might be discerned a choleric spirit fretting and wearing away the" pigmy body." The fine way in which he dashed into the quarrel with Brutus-his impatient agony when scoffed at-and the tearful and passionate return of the old love to his heart, fully convinced us that he has noble capaLilities in him, and that if he will study with diligence, he must secure a high and lasting rank in his profession. The two original pieces produced this month, have not been so successful as the revivals. They were both melodrames in three acts; and both met with qualified success from the same cause, the ambition of their authors, which violently stretched out into a play materials fit only for an afterpiece. The first, entitled Justice, or the Caliph and the Cobler, embraced the old incidents of the caliph's visits in disguise-the transformation of the cobler into the vizir—and the piety of a youth who attempted to sell himself as a slave to redeem his imprisoned father. It had neither the rapidity nor the splendour of an oriental romance; but was chiefly indebted for its degree of applause to a number of just and noble sentiments expressed in very felicitous language. There were also a few amusing jests, admirably given by Harley; and one or two songs executed with delightful simplicity by Madame Vestris; yet the piece as a whole had not sufficient spirit or interest to become attractive. The other drama, unluckily named Pochahontas, lingered on for a few nights yet more feebly. It was founded on a true and interesting story of the deliverance of an Englishman, destined for sacrifice by Indians, through the intervention of their chieftain's daughter; and contained the striking situations which such a plot naturally involved; but sunk overloaded by sentiments, introduced without the least respect to nature or character. The most enlightened theories of toleration were supported by the Indian Princess, and the loftiest culogies on romantic virtue dropped from the inspired lips of Captain Smith! The author, however, has no reason to despair-for there was a poetical flow in his language, and a dramatic skill in the arrangement of some of his scenes, which shew that he has elements of good in his mind, though they have not as yet been felicitously directed. |