but this, containing the whole week's news, can't be afforded under twopence.

"NOTE. For encouragement of all those that may have occasion to enter advertisements, this paper will be made publick in every market town, forty miles distant from this city, and several will be sent as far as Exeter.

"Besides the news, we perform all other matters belonging to our art and mystery, whether in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, algebra, mathematicks,

&c.

"Printed by Samuel Farley, at his office, adjoyning to Mr. Robert Silcock's, on the ditch in Sarum, anno 1715."

This voluminous title occupied two pages out of the two sheets of small folio of which this first number of the paper was composed. Part of the intelligence appears to be taken from the London papers, but one portion is declared to be "all from the written letter." An ingenious correspondent of one of the London magazines has made the following calculation of the income of a paper of this description:

"The entire income of the paper, to meet every expense, including its delivery to subscribers-no trifling matter, we may infer, in the then imperfect state of the post-office deliveries, and which must have rendered special messengers indispensable to its circulation-the entire income amounted to no more than twenty-five shillings each number, or three pounds fifteen shillings per week."

How insignificant a figure must the provincial press have made in those days, taking it at this estimate! How humble must have been its workers-how cramped its means of gaining or of giving information!

THE DRAMA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

THE satire of Hogarth upon the taste of the age in which we find the world of fashion crowding to masquerades and conjurors' exhibitions while the works of Shakspeare, Jonson, and the standard dramatists are being vended as waste paper, was, no doubt, to a great extent, provoked; but it must be admitted that the legitimate drama had its palmy days in the eighteenth century. Never had it had such an interpreter as Garrick. Betterton, Foote, Quin, Rich, Kemble-how do names of various eminence and degrees of talent, but all of note, crowd upon us when we speak of the stage of which our grandfathers speak so highly, and with so much disparagement of that of our own day! Truly they must be admitted to have some degree of truth on their side, if they have a good deal of prejudice.

But we are enabled to find one fault from which our stage now-a-days is pretty well free. The managers, perhaps thinking the talent of their actors must excuse every negligence on their part, bestowed very little care in several details upon the manner in which their pieces were put upon the stage. This was more particularly observable in the inconsistency of costume which was displayed: national distinctions were disregarded, and all kinds of discrepancies, incongruities, and anomalies perpetrated, the heroes of previous centuries appearing in the discarded court-dresses of the nobility of the eighteenth. Cato, for instance, was represented "in a long wig, flowered gown, and lackered chair"-Mac

beth was dressed in the style of the reigning monarch-and Hamlet was just such a prince as might be seen in St. James's. Jane Shore and Alicia came forth in laced stays and hooped petticoats; and, in Zara, Miss Young practised the same anachronism, and the representative of Nerestan, the Crusader, was dressed in the white uniform of the French Guards; while, at another time, Cleopatra appeared in "hooped petticoats, stomacher, and powdered commode, with a richly-ornamented fan in her hand!" Although the stage appointments, generally speaking, were at this time conceived in good taste and on an extravagant scale, little attention appears to have been paid to this point, so essential in aiding the illusion, and carrying the audience back to the time intended to be represented.

Another evil of mischievous tendency, and which must have been an impediment to the working out of the plot, and an obstruction and intrusion in its progress, was the system of allowing "people of quality" to occupy stage-seats, or chairs ranged upon the stage; and in this light it appears at length to have been viewed, for, in 1729, the public resisted it so vigorously that it was thenceforward discontinued. But it was succeeded by another practice almost as destructive to the effect which the actors sought to produce the stationing of sentinels at each end of the stage at the theatres royal; a custom which was continued as late as 1763.

The announcements of the performances at the several theatres were only given to the public through one chosen organ of the press, as the following notices at two different periods will show :

"The manager of Drury Lane thinks it proper to give notice that advertisements of their plays by their authority are published only in this paper and the Daily Courant, and that the publishers of all other papers who presume to insert advertisements of the same plays can do it only by some surreptitious intelligence or hearsay, which frequently leads them to commit gross errors, as mentioning one play for another, falsely representing the parts, &c., to the misinformation of the town, and the great detriment of the said theatre."-Daily Post, 1721.

"To prevent any mistake in future, in advertising the plays and entertainments of Drury Lane Theatre, the managers think it proper to declare that the playbills are inserted by their direction in this paper only." -Public Advertiser, January 1st, 1765.

A similar notice from the Covent Garden managers appears in the same paper.

If the curse of political feeling, in its strongest and most fanatical shape, could not be excluded from the coffee-house, the rout, the domestic fireside, or even from the lady's toilet, we cannot expect to find it expelled from the theatre; but our readers will hardly be prepared to hear in what way, and to what extent, partisanship exhibited itself within the playhouse walls. No arrangement of the contending factions in the House of Commons was ever preserved more strictly than the audience of the theatre observed in dividing themselves into the two great parties, the Tory ladies sitting on one side of the house, while the Whig ladies were drawn up on the other side; and we may imagine with what expression each party would cast a side-glance at the other on the delivery of some passage or sentiment which would appear to affect its opinions.

The most innocent sentences were tortured into political meaning, and applauded or condemned as they accorded with, or were distasteful to, the respective parties' views. Perhaps no piece was interpreted so satisfactorily to both sides as Addison's "Cato," for, while the Whigs admired it on account of the Whiggish principles of its author, the Tories, on one occasion, actually presented a purse of fifty guineas to Barton Booth, who played the part of Cato, as "a slight acknowledgment of his honest opposition to a perpetual dictator, and in dying so bravely in the cause of liberty." No doubt this was in part a tribute to the talent of the actor; but the fanciful terms in which it was presented were designed as a "fling" at the opposite party.

The extent to which political sentiments and party clap-traps were introduced upon the stage, furnished Sir Robert Walpole with an excuse for that absurd act for the regulation of theatres, in 1737, which, by requiring the manuscript of a play to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain previously to its representation, virtually established, as we have seen it in our own days, an arbitrary censorship over the drama.

Barring these abuses and venial errors, these were sunny days for the English drama. The distaste for native authors and native actors, and the passion for foreign mountebanks, so angrily ridiculed by Hogarth, were only intermittent, and the royal theatres, "the playhouse in Lincolns Inn-fields," and, latterly, Colman's and Foote's "little summer theatre in the Haymarket," flourished in spite of them. But then, if we had Garricks, Bettertons, Macklins, Riches, Quins, Footes, Booths, and a host of clever delineators to act the English drama, what splendid geniuses wrote it! There were Addison, Steele, Smollett, Fielding, Gay, Goldsmith, Johnson, Hawkesworth, Thompson, Young, Mrs. Centlivre, Mrs. Inchbald, the Cibbers, the Colmans, the Sheridans, Aaron Hill, Lillo, O'Keefe, Macklin, Hannah More, Charles Shadwell, Motteux, Cumberland, Rowe, D'Urfey, Vanbrugh, Whitehead, Theobald, the later productions of Congreve, Cowley, Charles Dibdin, William Shirley, George Alexander Steevens, Home, Holcroft, the Careys, Chatterton, Mrs. Clive, Dodsley, Cobb, Murphy, Allan Ramsay, Kelly -all men of more or less note, writing for the theatres-most of them good in their respective walks-and many of whose dramas are even now brought forward occasionally, but too sparingly, as a choice treat whereon to feast our minds after a surfeit of the modern French trumpery which is hashed up for the stage; Pope, Johnson, Garrick, and Horace Walpole at the same time concocting the prologues and epilogues, down even to Captain Topham; and, notwithstanding the opinion of a critic in the Weekly Magazine of 1770, that, instead of the prologue being an outline, and the epilogue a moral application of the drama, they had become "pointed satires of men and manners," these productions, now rapidly becoming obsolete, display a considerable amount of sparkling wit and sometimes eloquent pathos, and are invaluable to historians of our own modest pretensions, who search no musty record, nor dive into black-letter lore, but skim the lighter literature in which only is to be found the folly, fashion, or rage of which we may want a specimen for

our museum.

"DON'T bother here about your privileges and advantages!" exclaimed Rose Darling, wrathfully, as Madame de Nino's pupils were gathered round the schoolroom-stove on Christmas morning, "France and its customs are a hundred years behind England in civilisation, as the French girls are behind us.'

"Well done, Rose !"

"Here's

"Adeline excepted, of course," continued Miss Darling. Christmas-day, and if we had gone to school in England, we should be at home to eat our joyous dinner, in the midst of the mistletoe and the other Christmas fun! Whilst in this pernicious country we have no holidays, except a month in autumn, and take that, or not, as parents like! It is a most unnatural state of things, and the British Government ought to interfere."

"Do the French keep Christmas as we do?" asked Grace Lucas, a new girl, and a very stupid one, who could not understand a word of French.

"Bah!" grumbled Rose, "what do they care for Christmas? The Jour de l'An is their fête."

"The what?" inquired Grace.

"Qu'elle est bête !" ejaculated Rose, in her careless manner.

"Have some consideration, Rose," interposed Adeline de Castella, in French.

"Why she has heard it fifty times," retorted Rose, in English. "Every one is not so apt as you."

"Apt at what?" asked Rose, fiercely, a glowing colour rushing to her cheeks, for since the advent of George Marlborough, Rose's conscience was prone to conjure up hidden sarcasm.

"I meant at learning French," laughed Adeline. "What else should I mean ?"

"Oh, thank you," chafed Rose. "I understand."

"Do we pass Christmas in this prison of a schoolroom?" questioned Grace.

"No, no," said Mary Carr. "Madame de Nino gives us a grand dinner in her state dining-room, roast beef, turkeys, plum-puddings, mince-pies; in short, everything we could have in England."

"And champagne in plenty," added Rose; "with music and dancing afterwards, forfeits, and any games we like. Only," she continued, turning to Grace Lucas, "we are not allowed to utter one word in English: there's a double punishment if they hear only half a one."

"A pretty Christmas it will be for me then!" groaned Grace. "Don't believe her, Grace," said Adeline. "It is the only day in the year that we are allowed to speak English. We are speaking it now, and you see the teachers are within hearing."

"How we must all envy you, Mademoiselle Adeline!" resumed Miss

Lucas. "You leave, for good, in a week, the last night of the old year. If we could but change places with you!"

"Speak for yourself, if you please," interposed Rose, haughtily; "who wants to change places with Mademoiselle de Castella? But, Adeline, I do envy you the balls and gaiety between now and Carême."

Adeline de Castella was about to leave school, and be introduced to the world. New Year's-day was her birthday; it is also one of the greatest fêtes the French keep; and Madame de Castella had issued cards for an assembly for the evening. They called it Adeline's inauguration ball.

Don't class the Castella family amongst the general run of Boulogne residents, if you please. Monsieur de Castella was descended from a noble Spanish family, and his usual place of residence was Paris. But three years previous to this time, Maria de Castella, Adeline's elder sister, died, and symptoms of delicacy began to show themselves in Adeline. The medical men ordered her the sea-side, and she was sent to Boulogne-surMer. The place agreed with her so well, so fully re-established her health and strength, that Monsieur de Castella took, on lease, one of the town's most handsome and commodious residences. Sometimes he visited Paris, with his wife, and, more than once, family affairs caused them to go to Spain and Italy. During these absences, Adeline was usually left at Madame de Nino's. This winter they intended should be their last at Boulogne, the following one they would resume their residence in Paris, and the intervening summer would be spent at the château of Madame de Castella's mother, who was an English lady.

School-girls often do things to outrage a governess's code of propriety, and amongst other little hidden secrets, Madame de Nino's pupils possessed a pack of fortune-telling cards. There was in the school, at this time, a young lady named Janet Duff, who had entered it the previous October. She was fresh from Scotland, full of all its superstitions, and made the girls' flesh creep at night, in the dortoir, with her marvellous whispers of ghost stories and second-sight. It was she who brought these cards, and she introduced them with a manner of awe and mystery which, whether it was assumed or real, called up a similar feeling amongst her companions. They had no right to be called cards, for they were but thin, transparent squares, made out of the leaf of the sensitive plant. On each square was a highly-finished, beautifully painted flower, purporting to be some emblem. Rose, happy love; cross-of-Jerusalem, sorrow; snowdrop, cold purity; bachelor's-button, vanity; hyacinth, death; and so on. The manner was to place three or four of these squares on the palms of the hands, the flowers downwards, so that one square could not be told from another. They would soon curl up and leap from the hand, but should any one rest on it, it was deemed a proof of affinity with the holder. For instance, if it were the cross-of-Jerusalem, the holder was instantly pronounced to be destined to sorrow. Of course it was but an unmeaning pastime, fit only for school-girls, but Mary Carr believes to this day that those cards had some mysterious affinity with the inward feelings-the destiny. She was asked to explain how. That was beyond her, she said, but let those who laughed explain why it was that one particular card clung always to Adeline de Castella-and was fulfilled in her destiny. The first evening the girls tried their fortunes