scenes of the most extraordinary nature, which have taken place at the house in question.

Unlike Cagliostro, however, M. G does not profess the power of calling from the grave any but those who have had, while in life, some sort of affinity, either of blood or friendship, with the person desirous of holding communication with the spirit. An English gentleman of my acquaintance, left London purposely to be present at one of these séances, undeterred either by the trouble or expense of the consultation, which are both considerable, the effect being produced, according to the declaration of M. G, entirely by electricity. The sufferings produced upon the spectator, are said to be horrible in the extreme, physical and moral torture being of some weeks' duration, and in the case of my English friend, although the experiment took place in November last, have not yet subsided. Those who are not deterred by religious scruples from seeking the laboratory of M. G-, would most certainly hesitate could they behold the agony of mind and body to which the satisfaction of an unhealthy curiosity has for the last few months condemned him.

It is of subjects such as these that our communings in the most aristocratic quarter of Paris have all been treating ever since the establishment of the Republic. As in '89, so have the number of soothsayers and fortune-tellers augmented in a most extraordinary degree, and their doors are besieged from morning to night, and frequently the whole night long. And yet in spite of the want of animation, the noise and gaiety which we have been accustomed to find in Paris society, there is some secret and undefinable charm about these sad and silent assemblies, which causes the salons where they are held to be crowded by the best and most intellectual company of the capital; and I have lately attended many of them, where the conversation, all of the same lugubrious tint—all of death to some and disaster to the living, has been carried on till three o'clock in the morning with the greatest interest, and even at that hour our party was broken up with great regret.

While such is the in-door aspect of republican Paris, far different is that of the streets and boulevards. Here all is eagerness and gaietythat inexhaustible love of fun and frolic, which has ever distinguished the gamin de Paris, seems to have increased tenfold since the Revolution, and the wit and spirit of some of the dialogues held between those worthies, will often arrest crowds in their progress, to the detriment of the honest jugglers and showmen, who toil in countless numbers along the pathway. Since the insurrection of June, and the putting down of the flying newsvenders, these gentry have once more resumed their rights, and driven from the highway, at least for a while, politics into the shade. Exhibitions of every kind line the whole length of the Boulevard du Temple, as in days of old, before Louis Philippe, in his rage for the improvement of Paris, had caused all the spectacles to disappear. All the old celebrities, whom we had given up as lost, have re-appeared-the man with the serpent and the man with the broken bones, who dances on crutches till the spectator's heart is sick with beholding him. Men with dark, worn visages, and women with long black hair and sharp and hungry looks, are beheld at every turn endeavouring to catch attention by the display of tricks and contortions more difficult to look upon than to execute. All down the Champs Elysées, by the Cours la Reine, the old

exhibitions, some of them coeval with the ancient French monarchy, are arrayed in ghastly file. Who does not remember the "Passion of our Saviour," performed by children, which re-appears after every commotion, and reaps a golden harvest until the re-establishment of the police destroys its career by confiscating its "properties" in the name of public morals and decency? This is again flourishing and noisy as ever. The African ponies of the Count de Paris,-the will of Louis Philippe, purporting to be written in his own hand, and divers other delectable sights, are to be seen beneath the very walls of the garden of the Tuileries, where they afford subject of much wholesome meditation to the philosopher, as he walks along the terrace and gazes on the windows whence hang the graceful tendrils of the passion-flower, planted on the balcony to shade the portrait of the Duke of Orleans from the heat of the western sun, or views the balcony whence the young heir was wont to descend into the little garden kept for his own use, and where the flowers which he planted are blooming fresh and fair, as though he still were there to gather them. The promenades are crowded, and the physiognomy of the promenaders but little changed at present. The same gallant impertinence is visible on the countenances of the men, the same frivolous coquetry in the gesture and conversation of the women, render the scene an unaltered one from that which the same spot afforded in "the good old times." Lord Pembroke and most of the English residents have returned, unable to bear existence elsewhere; and altogether the insurrection of June has done this good, it has brought back the alarmists, and inspired greater confidence in those who were courageous enough to remain.

The official salons are beginning to throw open their doors one by It will be a pleasant study to contemplate the change in their habitués, and report it to your readers next month.

one.

THE OPERA.

You may talk as you will, oh musical legitimist-you may sigh over modern Italian frivolities, you may regret good old times, and good old compositions-even that music which used to be heard from Memnon's head when the Egyptian sun shone thereupon-you may be in ecstacies or you may be in despair, but never shall you persuade the occupants of those boxes and that pit to believe that "Le Nozze de Figaro" is a charming recreation for an operatic evening.

You will call attention to the wondrous variety of melody, you will show how the imagination of the immortal Mozart, never moving in that beaten track on which the successors of Rossini have danced along so flippantly, burst forth in wondrous forms, and told strange tales of passion such as had never been heard before-now breathing forth the ardour of an uncertain juvenile love, now wailing over the extinction of a past affection-you will call attention to the science of the accompaniments, science wielded so easily that the very facility conceals the erudition-but you will talk as to deaf adders. Those pleasant common-places of the modern Italian composers are the very things that people do like; other Aug.-VOL. LXXXIII. No. CCCXXXII. 2 Q

melodies do not seem to them like true operatic song. They like the full, crashing, banging accompaniments, and consider that they produce a most stimulating sound.

They are a little blasé, the inhabitants of this metropolis. If you don't excite them you do nothing. Passion must be peppered or it will taste chilly; hearts must be taken by storm not by treaty. A strange peoplea strange people! The excess of indolence anomalously combined with the extremely piquant; something that does not strain the intellect, but allows an honest man to go on talking his own way, to say his own mots, and show forth his white kids, and his teeth, if tolerable, and then all of a sudden startles his little circle of admirers and him into the bargain with a most striking effect, after which he and his party may relapse into delicious insouciance-this is, the beau ideal of operatic composition. You know, reader, the peculiar sensation, when on your downy couch at night, having forgotten the cares of the day, and felt the real world fade out while the world of dreams has not yet begun to create itself, so that your soul is enwrapped in a luxuriant nothingness, you feel a sudden sink as though the aforesaid downy couch were opened in the middle and let you fall down some hundred yards towards the centre of gravitation. Just that indolence and just that plunge will serve to illustrate the all that is expected of modern operatic works.

But this same capricious body of auditors, does immensely like the "Deh Vieni," which Jenny Lind sings in the character of Susanna. They listen to that charming effusion with pleased, delighted gaspstheir fastidious souls are suspended on a thread of melody-and the one air consoles them for the fatigue they have undergone.

The Kellys and the O'Kellys or, Landlords and Tenants, a tale of Irish life, by A. Trollope, Esq., and published by Mr. Colburn, is a well-told and an intensely Irish story. Truth to say, however, we cannot sympathise at the present moment with the whimsicalities of that strange, wild, imaginative people, herein so characteristically described, when these whims are exhausting themselves in disloyalty and rebellion, and threatening rapine and bloodshed. Mr. Trollope certainly does not spare the Irishmen of any rank or creed. Lord Ballindine is the Irish nobleman in his most eccentric phase; Lord and Lady Cashel constitute a pair of no uncommon cast; Lord Kilcullen is a mere scape-grace; Widow Kelly is at once a shrew and a trump; Dot Blake is a mere gambler, and Miss Wyndham completes the list as a victimised heroine. The humour of the Emerald Isle has too often that which is sensual and repugnant even in its very joyousness, and among a class with whom poverty, pathos, and passion, are ever alternating with fun, frolic, and folly,what that is temperate, chaste, and ennobling, can be expected?

The bold pen, so graphic in its touches, so unsparing in its anatomy, so partial to the dark and repulsive phases of human nature, that at once lent a charm and yet imparted horror to Wuthering Heights, is at once recognised in the new story of the Tenant of Wildfell Hall,

published by Mr. Newby. It is a story told with that nervous freedom of expression, and that love of all the minuter details of human anguish, which is sure to win the interest of the reader, and which, in as far as the latter peculiarity is concerned, justly suggests comparisons with the interest wrought up step by step in the fate of Jane Eyre; but we cannot ourselves perceive that there is any analogy in cast of thought, incident, or language, between that carefully written story, and the more passionate and energetic writings of the author of Wuthering Heights, and of the Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Alas! the Italy of 1845-6 exists no longer. In the once tranquil city of Rome, patriotic hymns are heard, the banners of liberty are seen waving; in the beauteous bay of Naples, in the solitary valleys and ravines of Sicily, where formerly the gentle mandolines alone broke the stillness around-from one end of the country to the other-the roaring of cannon has become a familiar sound. The beautiful pictures of Italy (The Italians at Home; by Fanny Lewald; translated from the German by the Countess d'Avigdor, 2 vols. T. C. Newby) by the author of Diogena, pictures of the people, of their life, of their festivals and employments, of their joys and sorrows, appear now as if painted on the back-ground of the great past. In the these beautiful penof one short space cillings seem to belong to ancient times, but they will ever be delightful reminiscences, and to those who are acquainted with that poetical tranquillity which preceded the feverish outburst of insurrection and revolt, they will form a pleasing and a grateful contrast with the present.

year,

Darton and Co., of Holborn Hill, have forwarded to us two specimens of their Holiday Library, which is truly beautifully got up. One, the Childhood of Mary Leeson, by Mary Howitt, is marked by that graceful intelligence and simple tenderness which have so long charmed young readers; the other, Take Care of Number One, purports to be by S. G. Goodrich, Esq., "the original Peter Parley," and we can only say that the genuine Peter argues against the abominable vice of selfishness in an original style and with genuine zeal. The Private Letters of Queen Victoria and Louis Philippe, published in Paris, since the voulversement of moral as well as of political institutions, have been translated by a Mr. Judge, and published in this country by Mr. Strange, of Paternoster Row. Although no excuse can be given for bringing documents before the public, which were never intended for publicity, no doubt the private letters of such eminent persons will be perused with great avidity. Under the title of A Familiar Explanation of the Higher Parts of Arithmetic, the Rev. Mr. Calder, Head Master of the Grammar School, Chesterfield, has published a very philosophical, and at the same time an easy introduction to the study of Fractions, Decimals, Practice, Proportion and its applications.

The recent failures of joint-stock banks in England and in India, and the probable effect which the sudden ruin of individuals under the law of unlimited responsibility will have in deterring all parties of station and property from henceforth connecting themselves with such undertakings, has led to an agitation of the question whether the safety afforded to the public by this law might not be maintained by more satisfactory means. The question has also a range beyond the mere business of banking; public attention having lately been awakened to the way in which capital is alleged to be unhealthily confined within narrow channels by the

66

general application of the law in question. The system of partnership en commandite," or of partnership with limited liabilities, forms the subject of a very useful volume now before us, published by Effingham Wilson, of the Royal Exchange. Judging from the experience of the United States and the continent of Europe, there is reason to believe that limited partnerships, under full provisions for publicity, would open a wide field for the employment of capital, and assist materially in reviving our home and colonial trade.

The cases of "Cocks v. Purday" and of "Cocks v. Lonsdale," published by Thomas Webster, Esq., barrister-at-law, presents the matured and deliberate judgment of the Court of Common Pleas on the right of foreigners and their representatives to copyright in this country. It is very satisfactory that such right should have been decided to exist by the common law in this country, and the result will be particularly agreeable to Dr. J. G. Flügel of Leipsic, whose communications in regard to the use that has been made-so detrimental to the author-of his English and German Dictionary, we regret it has not previously been in our power to animadvert upon. The well known and deservedly esteemed Mr. John Britton has published an elaborate work to settle the long disputed question of the Authorship of the Letters of Junius, which he traces to Lieutenant-Colonel Isaac Barré, M.P.; William Greatrakes having been his amanuensis, and Lord Shelburne, afterwards Marquis of Lansdowne, and Mr. Gunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton, having been his accomplices in the concoction of at least the later portion of these celebrated epistles. We cannot enter further into the question at the present moment. The work itself is to be had of the author, or of Mr. Smith, Old Compton-street.

The "Voice of many Waters," by Mrs. David Osborne (Effingham Wilson), comes to us in sweet and plaintive tones, telling us strange tales of many lands, well adapted to amuse and instruct the young, but not very successfully illustrated. Johnstone, of Paternoster Row, has sent forth, as if to herald the coming season, two more of his beautiful little pictorial handbooks, illustrated by Thomas and Edward Gilks. The first is called Sylvan's Pictorial Handbook to the Scenery of the Caledonian Canal, the Isle of Staffa, &c., and contains upwards of fifty illustrations of scenes that will be familiar to many for their exceeding beauty, and which are well worthy in these times of continental uproar, of the home tourist's attention. The second is a little guide through the realms of Old King Coil, or the Land of Burns, and is full of delicious bits, illustrating scenes that have been hallowed by the writings of the Scottish bard. Dr. Robertson has completed, in six parts, the enlarged and fourth edition of his able work on Diet and Regimen (John Churchill, Princes-street). It is undoubtedly the best work now extant upon the subject, as it applies the results arrived at by chemists to the question of diet and regimen ; and it is furthermore written in plain, unaffected language, comprehensible to all.

END OF VOL. LXXXIII.