the childish delight and astonishment in the part, that Mrs. Jordan would have thrown into it. Mrs. Orger would have done it almost as well. There was a dryness and restraint, as if there was a constant dread of running into caricature. The outline was correct, but the filling up was not bold or luxuriant. There is a tendency in the lighter French comedy to a certain jejuneness of manner, such as we see in lithographic prints. They do not give full swing to the march of the humour, just as in their short, tripping walk they seem to have their legs tied. Madame Marsan is in this respect superior. There was an old man and woman in the same piece, in whom the quaint drollery of a couple of veteran retainers in the service of a French family was capitally expressed. The humour of Shakspeare's play, as far as it was extracted, hit very well. The behaviour of the audience was throughout exemplary. There was no crowd at the door, though the house was as full as it could hold; and indeed most of the places are bespoke, whenever any of their standard pieces are performed. The attention never flags; and the buzz of eager expectation and call for silence, when the curtain draws up, is just the same as with us when an Opera is about to be performed, or a song to be sung. A French audience are like flies caught in treacle. Their wings are clogged, and it is all over with their friskings and vagaries. Their bodies and their minds set at once. They have, in fact, a national theatre and a national

literature, which we have not.

Even well-informed

people among us hardly know the difference between Otway and Shakspeare; and if a person has a fancy for any of our elder classics, he may have it to himself for what the public cares. The French, on the contrary, know and value their best authors. They have Molière and Racine by heart-they come to their plays as to an intellectual treat; and their beauties are reflected in a thousand minds around you, as you see your face at every turn in the Café des MillesColonnes. A great author or actor is really in France what one fancies them in England, before one knows any thing of the world as it is called. It is a pity we should set ourselves up as the only reading or reflecting people-ut lucus a non lucendo*. But we have here no oranges in the pit, no cry of porter and cider, no jack-tars to encore Mr. Braham three times in "The Death of Abercrombie," and no play-bills. This last is a great inconvenience to strangers, and is

* Mr. Wordsworth, in some fine lines, reproaches the French with having no single volume paramount, no master

spirit"

"But equally a want of books and men."

I wish he would shew any single author that exercises such a "paramount" influence over the minds of the English, as four or five "master-spirits" do on those of the French. The merit is not here the question, but the effect produced. He himself is not a very striking example of the sanguine enthusiasm with which his countrymen identify themselves with works of great and original genius!

what one would not expect from a play-going people; though it probably arises from that very circumstance, as they are too well acquainted with the actors and pieces to need a prompter. They are not accidental spectators, but constant visitors, and may be considered as behind the scenes.

I saw three very clever comic actors at the Theatre des Varietés on the Boulevards, all quite different from each other, but quite French. One was Le Peintre, who acted a master-printer; and he was a master-printer, so bare, so dingy, and so wan, that he might be supposed to have lived on printer's ink and on a crust of dry bread cut with an oniony knife. The resemblance to familiar life was so complete and so habitual, as to take away the sense of imitation or the pleasure of the deception. Another was Odry, (I believe,) who with his blue coat, gold-laced hat, and corpulent belly, resembled a jolly, swaggering, good-humoured parish-officer, or the boatswain of an English man-of-war. His éclats de rire, the giddy way in which he ran about the stage (like an overgrown school-boy), his extravagant noises, and his gabbling and face-making were, however, quite in the French style. A fat, pursy Englishman, acting the droll in this manner, would be thought drunk or mad; the Frenchman was only gay! Monsieur Potier played an old lover, and, till he was drest, looked like an old French cook-shop keeper. The old beau transpired through his finery afterwards. But, though the part

was admirably understood, the ridicule was carried too far. This person was too meagre, his whisper too inaudible, his attempts at gallantry too feeble and vapid, and the whole too much an exhibition of mere physical decay to make the satire pleasant. There should be at least some revival of the dead; the taper of love ought to throw out an expiring gleam. In the song in praise of Love he threw a certain romantic air into the words, warbling them in a faint demi-voix, and with the last sigh of a youthful enthusiasm fluttering on his lips. This was charming. I could not help taking notice, that during his breakfast, and while he is sipping his coffee, he never once ceases talking to his valet the whole time. The concluding scene, in which, after kneeling to his mistress, he is unable to rise again without the help of his nephew, who surprises him in this situation, and who is also his rival, is very amusing*. The songs at this theatre are very pleasing and light, but so short, that they are over almost as soon as begun, and before your ears have a mouthful of sound. This is very tantalizing to us; but the French seem impatient to have the dialogue go on again, in which they may suppose

* The same circumstance literally happened to Gibbon, though from a different cause. He fell on his knees before a Swiss lady (I think a Mademoiselle d'Ivernois,) and was so fat he could not rise. She left him in this posture, and sent in a servant to help him up.

themselves to have a share. I wanted to see Brunet, but did not.

Talma and Mademoiselle Georges (the great props of French tragedy) are not at present here. Talma is at Lyons, and Mademoiselle Georges has retired on a pique into the country, in the manner of some English actresses. I had seen them both formerly, and should have liked to see them again. Talma has little of the formal automaton style in his acting. He has indeed that common fault in his countrymen of speaking as if he had swallowed a handful of snuff; but in spite of this, there is great emphasis and energy in his enunciation, a just conception, and an impressive representation of character. He comes more in contact with nature than our Kemble-school, with more of dignity than the antagonist one. There is a dumb eloquence in his gestures. In Edipus, I remember his raising his hands above his head, as if some appalling weight were falling on him to crush him; and in the Philoctetes, the expression of excruciating pain was of that mixed mental and physical kind, which is so irresistibly affecting in reading the original Greek play, which Racine has paraphrased very finely. The sounds of his despair and the complaints of his desolate situation were so thrilling, that you might almost fancy you heard the wild waves moan an answer to them. Mademoiselle Georges (who gave recitations in London in 1817) was, at the time I saw her, a very remarkable per