n

eddication for the thing; he never was with me as Edmund Kean and them reg'lars was."

Gouffee, called the “ Man Monkey," was originally seen by Vale, the low comedian, at a public-house, where he walked about the room heels upwards, and with his hands on pint pots, &c. &c. Vale recommended him to the Surrey manager, and at that theatre (previously in a poor state) he became highly attractive. Soon afterwards Vale amused himself by a visit to Bartholomew fair, and, amidst other sights, visited “ould Richardson.'' “Ha! Muster Wale,” said the veteran; “ I'm blessed if you and the other bould speakers hof the Surrey houghten't to go on your blessed knees, and gives a penn'orth of gingerbread nuts to hevery individial monkey in this here fair ; for I'm blessed if a monkey an't put nuts in your mouths for the last two months."

When at St. Alban's, where he went annually, an actor named A offered his services. “ Ha! Muster," said old Jack, “I remember you well, and no mistake; you was one of them bould speakers at the Cowburg ; but I can't give you more than 308. a-week.” The sum was a fortune, and Richardson's offer was of course accepted. The manager and actor adjourned to take a half pinter-i.e. half a pint of porter, the only fluid, and the only quantity, at a time, he ever indulged in.) Mr. A. proceeded to the booth; he walked the parade in front for some time silently, and at last, remembering that he had “ drawn " sundry shillings in advance from the old man, and had, moreover, imbibed several half-pinters, saw the propriety of making some exertion ; accordingly, advancing to the front, he enunciated the usual invocation

“ Walk up, walk up, the players, the players,

The only booth in the fair." In a few minutes up came old Richardson, nearly breathless, exclaiming —“ Where is that bould speaker ? I must give him five shillings more a-veek, for I'm blessed if I didn't hear him down at the brig.” (The“ brig'' alluded to, is a bridge at least a quarter of a mile from the place where the booth stood.)

Richardson was anxious for notice in the journals: a certain penny.aliner " for a consideration” inserted some laudatory paragraphs respecting the “performances” at Greenwich fair: for these he drew certain coin of the realm, from crowns to sovereigns from the old showman's pocket; unfortunately the demands were more frequent than the paragraphs, and at last "ould Richardson'' positively refused to advance any more. The "literary gentleman ” upon this, brought Richardson a paragraph, stating that his " theatre " was a place of “ reputable" and “ agreeable" amusement, and told him, if half a sovereign was not forthcoming, he should interpolate the syllable " dis” before the words reputable and agreeable. The money was paid, and ever afterwards, when literature was on the tapis, Richardson inveighed against “ that there hatrocious wagabon what hedits the 'Times ;''' for, strange to say, he never heard of any article or paragraph without imagining it to emanate not only from the leading journal, but from its editor himself.

A writer in Leigh Hunt's “ Tatler," now out of print, has said something of the strange and kind-hearted old showman just to our purpose : after enumerating the delights (?) of Bartlemy Fair, he proceeds

“ The gongs and roundabouts, and ups-and-downs,
And the wild gleeful laugh of GYNGELL's clowns,

Have flown ;-
OLD RICHARDSON remains alone;

The last man of the race,
Wearing his old familiar face,

And galligaskins :
For one would almost swear

They are the very pair
That eighteen years since braved the summer's baskinys;

Vest, coat, continuations seem'd the same,
The voice, the gait, the spot, and eke the well-known name.

Health to thee, relic of a by-gone day,
Last of a class who're fading fast away,

Rough penny showman.
For thou hast paced thy daily path in quiet,
No creditor bewails thy heedless riot,

Who calls thee debtor ? - No man."

In the same article is a hint on the evanescent nature of wonders in general: to the list enumerated below poor old Richardson is now added :

“ Have learned pigs the “ way of all pork” gone?

Are thieves of that day now at Sydney justling ?
Yea, Chunee, too, the elephant, hath flown
And left the world “ for greater beasts "to bustle in.

Prince of Morocco-I admir'd of yore

Are you in truth no more ?
Jesters have sought the grave, wild men turn'd tame,

Mimes mute, and infant prodigies grown old;
Chabert, though dieted on fire and tlame,

Despite his sulphur supperings, is cold;
Miss Biffen, without feet, her race has run;

The spotted boy visits this spot no longer;
The dwarf's short thread of life is overspun;

And the strong man has wrestled with a stronger."

A New Version of an Old Opera-One of the strangest scenes in the way of private acting I ever witnessed was at Altona. An Englishman who had settled there, and married a lady of Hamburg, suffered his children to get up a play to amuse their friends ; they each spoke English as fluently as German, and the performances were some German play (the title of which I forget), and “ The Poor Soldier," announced as an "English opera abounding in national airs.” Though there was a peculiarity in the pronunciation of all the performers, they spoke English unexceptionably; but the attempt to give the broken English of the French valet, and the brogue of Father Luke, beat anything Mathews ever gave us in the way of the ridiculous. Mr. it seems, had a book of “The Poor Soldier," but not the music; some of the airs he recollected imperfectly, and they had been taken down from his voice, and scored as he rendered them ; but in some instances he could not recollect the airs at all, and then he made trifling alterations in the metre, and had the songs set to some other air that he did know. I nearly swallowed my pocket handkerchief when I heard “ My Friend and Pitcher" set to “ Peg of Darby, oh!" I cannot recollect the first verse, but the third is as follows:

as

“ From morn till night I'd never grieve

To toil a hedger and a ditcher,
If, when I reach my home at eve,

I might enjoy my friend and pitcher." Thus it would not suit the substituted air; Mr. therefore gave this version :

“From morn till dewy eve,

I should toil and never grieve,
Though I was but a hedger or a ditcher, oh!

If, when I come home at night,

I find, as I alight, My charming little girl, my friend and pitcher, oh !" Finding he alights," is very felicitous, as hedgers and ditchers of course always ride home,

Dr. Dodd a Dramatist.-Woodfall, the publisher of “ Junius,” used often to relate an extraordinary anecdote respecting Dr. Dodd. After his trial that unfortunate man sent for Mr. Woodfall, who was a stranger to him ; he went, anticipating, as he was the editor of an influential print, that his services were to be put in requisition for a mitigation of punishment; not so, the Doctor only sought to consult Mr. W. respecting a comedy he had produced in his youth, entitled “Sir Roger de Coverley,” and which piece he had actually revised and completed whilst in Newgate. What became of the MS. I never learnt; but assuredly a comedy written by a clergyman whilst under sentence of death would be a curiosity.

The Ruling Passion.-R-, who in his earlier days had been the hero of a barn, was for some years playing an humble line of business at the Liverpool theatre; his dignity was hurt, but the salary was consolatory. On the night that Palmer expired on the stage, R- - was smoking a pipe in an adjoining tavern. One of the performers suddenly rushed in pale and agitated, exclaiming, “ John Palmer has dropped down dead in the third act!”

“ Aha !" said Mr. R- after a pause of surprise, “and who have they sent for to finish the part?”

A Manager in Chancery.–At the period when a certain metropolitan theatre was in Chancery, one of the managers was pretty constantly in court. On one occasion, an advocate rose upon a petition respecting a party whose name was the same as the manager's.

-," said the lawyer. That's me! that's me !" exclaimed the proprietor, bustling forward. “My lord," continued the counsel, without noticing the interruption,“ this is a poor lunatic." “ That's not me!” cried the manager; and hastily retired amidst much laughter.

The Queen's Theatre ; Italian Operu.—It is an anomaly no other country presents, that the theatre called after the reigning sovereign should be the only one in which the language of that sovereign's nation is never spoken. Yet the Opera-house is properly designated “Her Majesty's Theatre;" for what lawyers called “the fee” is in the Crown. There are seventy-four years unexpired of the last lease granted, and at the end of that period the property entirely reverts to and becomes part of the available revenue of the reigning monarch.

" In re

ANDREW MʻCANN, THE ABSENT MAN.

In the town of Ayr lired Andrew M'Cann,
A very worthy, but absent man :-
Andrew once called at a house in town,
And sent up his name—“ Mister Peter Brown;"
Held an egg in his hand while his watch was boiling,
And oft was seen toiling
His weary way to the bridge of Ayr,
With one foot booted and one foot bare.
A very odd man was Andrew M'Cann;
And always before he went to rest,
As soon as undress'd,
He roll'd his small-clothes up like a ball,
Then taking his coat, with the greatest care,
He hung it over the back of a chair;

Then laid his head

On the pillow in bed.
One night he came home more absent than ever,
And, as you may suppose, uncommoly clever ;
So taking his garments (what a conceit!)
He tuck'd them up under blanket and sheet,
Then threw himself over the chair, like a sack,
And broke his back.

C. C.

EPIGRAMS.

The Ringer's Response.
“ What a deuce of a din you are making ;

Consider the heads that are aching :
Good fellows, those bells will be breaking :-

D'ye ring 'em for fun, or a wager ?”
The answer, methought, was a shiner :-
“That Sir Robert's of age we the sign are;

For, as Bob has quite done with the minor, '
We're ringing a triple-bob-major !

Ad monitory Inscription for the Entrance to Lansdowne (or any other)

Passage.
Passenger ! think'st thou this passage to pass through?

Pass then, and think; but in passing don't linger.
If you pass without thinking, you pass like an ass through;
So, think while you 're passing, and pass for a thinker!

G.D.

THE CONVERSAZIONE,

ON THE LITERATURE OF THE MONTH.

The Colonel. Lang's “ New South Wales.” This is the age of colonization, and New South Wales is the chief of colonies. It already contains about eighty thousand English, and is yearly, I might almost say, hourly, increasing in population, opulence, and civilization. This is the work of England, yet the discovery was made by Spain, so far back as the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the year 1609, Francisco de Quiros, a noble Spaniard, was the first European who ever saw this great island-continent. The Spaniards are prodigiously pious in their names, and Don Francisco named his discovery Australia of the Holy Spirit. Ambitious of the fame of another Columbus, he applied to the court of Madrid for ships and soldiers to complete his conquest; he was refused, and the country was left to the kangaroos. The Dutch, who soon became the universal navigators, during the next forty years, came coasting round the land. The Dutch were active discoverers; and in 1642, Tasman was sent from Batavia by Van Diemen, the Dutch Governor General of the Indies, to survey the coast. He discovered New Zealand. Tasman was attached to the Governor's daughter, and he signalized his respect for both, by giving the name of the Governor to the fine island now belonging to the British, and naming the northern extremity of New Zealand Cape Maria Van Diemen. The English then came into the field, and the celebrated Dampier, in his cruises against the Spaniards in the South Seas, at the close of the seventeenth century, arrived on the coast, a considerable part of which he accurately surveyed. Since that period, discovery has fallen almost wholly into English hands. The indefatigable Captain Cook surveyed upwards of two thousand miles of the coast; but still what time must elapse before we shall know even the coast of a country whose sea-line is but little less than the whole circle of Europe !

The Rector. Australia must be regarded as the largest experiment ever made by humanity. Other nations have formed penal settlements for their convicts. Spain once sent her criminals to the Philippines, or let them loose on the South American main; Russia sends her criminals to Siberia; but those are strictly places of punishment. England herself, from the time of James the First, sent criminals to North America, whose services were hired out, or rather sold to the settlers for the time of their sentence; but it was only in the formation of the settlement at Botany Bay, on the east coast of New Holland, then but recently discovered by Captain Cook, that the first rules for the restoration of character, and the acquirement of habits of industry, were contemplated. The American war had put an end to the banishment of convicts across the Atlantic. Australia was a new world, and therefore it was there that a new life was to be begun. The avowed principles of this design were, first, to rid the country of the increasing accumulation of criminals in her gaols ; to ensure the safe custody and punishment of those criminals, with their progressive and ultimate reformation; and thirdly, to form a British colony from the reformed criminals, and the emigrants who might arrive from England. A facet of eleven sail