Homer's Iliad. She had a gymnasium, with shady walks, on ber upper decks; garden-plots, stocked with various plants, and nourished with limpid water that flowed circulating round them in a canal of lead. She had, here and there on deck, arbours mantled with ivy and vinebranches, which flourished in full greenness, being supplied with the principle of growth from the leaden canal. She had one chamber particularly splendid, whose pavement was of agates and other precious stones, and whose pannels, doors, and roofs, were of ivory, and wood of the thyatree. She had a scholasterium, or library, with five couches, its roof arched into a polus, or vault, with the stars embossed; she had a bath, with its accompaniments all most magnificent; she had on each side of her deck ten stalls for horses, with fødder and furnishings for the grooms and riders; a fishpond of lead, full of fish, whose waters could be let out or admitted at pleasure: she had two towers on the poop, two on the prow, and four in the middle, full of armed men, that managed the machines, invented by Archimedes, for throwing stones of three hundred pound weight, and arrows eighteen feet long, to the distance of a furlong. She had three masts, and two antennæ, or yards, that swung with hooks and masses of lead attached. She had, round the whole circuit of her deck, a rampart of iron crows, which took hold of ships, and dragged them nearer, for the purpose of destroying them. The tunnels or bowls on her masts were of brass, with men in each. She had twelve anchors and three masts, It was with difficulty they could find a tree large and strong enough for her highest mast. Great Britain an ominous circumstance for the superiority of British oak!-had the glory of bestowing upon her a sufficient tree for that purpose; it was discovered amid the recesses of Albion's forests by a swine-herd! What is remark able in the construction of this gigantic vessel is, that her sentina, or sink, thongh large and deep, was emptied by one man, by means of a pump invented by Archimedes. Hiero, on finding that the Syracusan was too unwieldy to be admitted with safety into the harbours of Sicily, made a present of her to Ptolemy, who changed her name to the Alexandrian. VOL. VI. THE MODERN TANTALUS; OR, THE DEMON OF DRURY-LANE.+ "There are more things in Drury Lane, Sir Walter, than are dreamt of in your Demonology." COURTEOUS READER-Has it ever been your fate to visit what is called the privilege-office of Drury-Lane theatre? We do not ask if you are a renter, or a translator of two-act atrocities; but have you ever, by any chance, found yourself in the box-lobby of that temple of Melpomene, music, and melo-drama, without having performed the customary ceremony of depositing seven shillings at the doors? If such has been your lot, you must inevitably have encountered a quiet, broad, short, shrewd-looking elderly gentlemen; who, sitting in a nook that fits him like a great-coat, with his hat drawn a little over his eyes, to shade them from the glare of the lamp beside him, has received your credentials, or presented a book for your lawful signature, You may possibly have observed the calm, scrutinising air with which he has surveyed your free-admission ticket, or the inquisitive glance which he has directed to the flourish that accompanies your autograph. If you are an author, you must have seen him put a mark of honour opposite your name, to distinguish you from the rest of his visitors. (Our friend has a taste for literature, and he thus evinces it most delicately in conferring distinctions upon its professors). But you are little aware, probably, that there is a circumstance connected with the history of that individual, which is entitled to a place in a more imperishable register than the short memories of the few to whom the fact may be familiar. We had paid him several visits before we discovered that he had any thing that particularly distinguished him from the rest of his fraternity-or it might with justice have been said, of his countrymen -nay, of mankind. But at last, when he became sufficiently acquainted with our visage to recognize it at a glance, the fixed, placid, sculptured sort of smile which invariably tempers the business-like serenity of his features, began to relax into something cordial and communicative, It was then that his astonishing faculty, or inspiration, or whatever philosophy may decide upon calling it, was developed. He communicated circumstances that must have happened precisely in the same moment at different places-and all within a few minutes after they occurred. + From the Monthly Magazine.-No. LIX. Here was the source of our wonder, His rumours were all just born, fresh from the nursery of time-tender, delicate revelations, almost too vapoury, too ethereal to handle. You had his intelligence with the gloss upon it; although much of it must have travelled some distance. He seemed like tile centre, not of gravity, but of society; and the news naturally fell towards him from all points. There he sate in his snug small box, like an encyclopædia with a hat on-or rather it was as though a newspaper had been compressed into a nnt shell. His ears could never have been the medium through which those multifarious reports had reached him-there was not time for them to travel in the ordinary way. of but ONE way in which the intelligence could have been obtained. We admit that it was superstitions; but we really felt there was a fearful agency at work-that the mysterious individual before na was a dabbler in some dreadful art. As we were really anxious to unravel the mystery, we visited him again and again. It was precisely the same- every theatrical incident of the evening was proniulgated. He repeated to as an apology --as we found by the papers next morning-verbatim, and within five minutes after it was delivered. We tried him on past personages and events, and mentioned Mrs. Siddons. "A wonder of a woman, Sir!—Ah! you recollect only her late achievements-now, I never saw any but her first. Her brother John too-grand even in his decline, majestic in ruins. It was just the dawn of his great day when I last saw him. And as for his brother Charles-an accomplished actor, Sir-I haven't seen his brother Charles since he came of age." Here we could not forbear looking our unbelief it was difficult to understand how anybody could exist almost within the walls of a theatre, and not Irave seen Charles Kemble act after his arrival at years of discretion (honestly and earnestly do we hope that he has not survived them!). But our enigmatical acquaintance proceeded. “And then there's Kean, Sir; he possesses great energy still Besides, how could he have emissa ries in every part of the metropolis to bring him the news every five minutes? It was impossible. Even if notes had been taken in some sublimated system of shorthand, they would have been of no use unless they had been conveyed by a telegraph. There must have been some piece of machinery at work that Watt never dreamt of; steam is certainly at the bottom of it. At first we conjectured, he had gained his information from accidental quarters. But when evening, after evening, he described the minutest matterswhen he repeated the grand joke, the lion of the new farce, at one house, and hummed part of a chorus in the new opera at another, when he told us what airs yes, it is the true light, although it may Miss Paton had introduced-how Fanny not burn so brilliantly as it did once." I Kemble had shrieked, and how Fanny inquired if he had seen all that actor's Kelly had started; when he described early performances. "No," he observed, Mr. Matthews and Madame Malabran at very calmly, and with the air of a man who the same moment; when he mentioned is perfectly innocent of a jest; "no, I what pieces had been substituted, what never saw Kean act in my life!" Let the actors had flourished their sticks in the reader imagine a reply to this declaration. box-lobbies, and who had been suddenly" You don't say so!" died on our tongue ; and seriously indisposed ;-we confess that we did stare at him for a minute or two with unfeigned astonishment and admiration. But afterwards, when we came to muse upon the matter, and reflected that the events of his narrative had happened in various places, and all within a very moderate number of minutes; and then, when we considered how unlikely it was that be should have quitted the box in which he sat, and that the tidings could not have travelled to him by chance-our surprise became more profound; it deepened into a sensation of awe. How was it possible that he should see and hear what was beyond human sight and hear ing? What sympathy could there be between the privilege-office at Drury Lane, and a pirouette just perpetrated at the Opera? What on earth had all London to do with that lobby? We could think not a single "indeed!" escaped from our FARCE FOR THESE FORTY YEARS. If a physician had told us that he had not prescribed for himself for the period mentioned, if an author had protested that he had not read one word of his own works for half a century; if a champagnemanufacturer had taken upon himself to say that he had never tasted his own liquid in his life-in any such cases we should not have felt a moment's surprise. We should have perceived immediately that they had a motive for their self-denial, But here there was none. The circumstance we have recorded is probably without parallel. To have been for years steeped to the very lips, another Tantalus, in the delights of Drury Lane, without tasting a single drop! To have had the fruit bobbed to his lips for forty years! To have grown old in the service of the stage, and yet never to have advanced further than the threshold of the theatre! To have had the door of it perpetually shut in his face! To have been the nightly medium of administering gratuitous pleasures to others, and never to have had his own name placed on the free-list! To have stood so long within sight of the promised land, without the possibility of reaching it! To have seen myriads of happy, whitegloved people pass into the theatre, dreaming of nothing but delight-yet, to have been left behind, shut up in that Pandora's box of his, and to feel that there was no hope at the bottom of it! Is there not something touching-something that amounts to a kind of ludicrous melaucholy in all this? There are nights when the free list is suspended-our friend's office on these occasions is a sinecure. Surely then he might have been passed in at a private door. Was it liberal, was it even common humanity, thus to close the gates against him?-to keep him waiting for forty years; until either the stream, or his inclination to cross it, had passed by! If he had only gone in at halfprice, it would, as Yorick observes, have been something. Again, on benefit-nights. Was there no one to present him with a single ticketeven for the gallery. Is all fellow-feeling and gratiinde utterly driven from Drury Laue. Are the "charitable and humane" nowhere to be discovered among the professors of the dramatic art? There is Mr. Kean, who is so renowned for liberality, and who has taken benefits, though not lately-we are astonished at bim. Even Munden might, in such a case as this, have ventured upon an act of munificence that would have cost him nothing. Suppose he had sold him a pit ticket, as they are offered to us at the doors of some of the theatres, for 18. 6d." Really, this could not have hurt him. There are one or two of the actresses, also, who would have looked still more pleasant and graceful in our eyes, could we have learned that they had evinced any gentleness of heart and kindling of sympathy touching this matter. But surely-the notion just breaks upon us-surely he must have had benefits of his own! Of a verity he has had such within our recollection. "Mr. M.'s night" has more than once struck upon our optics in scarlet characters, dazzling and decoying us. What! invite his friends to a feast whereof he declines to partake himself? Provide all the delicacies of the season (the phrase applies to the theatre as well as to the table) and taste not of a dish! "Hast thou given all to thy two daughters, and art thou come to this?" As we listened to him afterwards, we thought there was a pathos mingled with his pleasantry, a magnanimity in his air, that we had never observed before. With the strong light of the lamp reflected upon him, he looked like the man in the moon. We had once likened him, in the sportiveness of fancy, to a sort of human "toad-in-a-hole;" but he now seemed to ns, as he sate there in his lonely and desolate nook, greater than Diogenes in his tub. Too busied with these emotions and reflections to enter the theatre, we returned home. There, however, mu-ing, upon mysteries of all kinds, our feelings gradually rolled back into their former channel. The confession of that night tended to confirm our past suspicions, We remembered his extraordinary communications; his narrative of events witnessed at the same instant at several places; bis rumours, whispers, hints, and inuendos, concerning facts, a knowledge whereof could only have been obtained by a power of ubiquity, that must have been purchased at a price which the Archbishop of Canterbury could never have repaid. The` fact, the dreadful fact, seems almost established. The strangely-gifted, mysterious, and miserable subject of this history, our civil but ill-fated acquaintance of the pri vilege-office, has been for more than half the term of his natural existence on terms of intimacy with * We begin to suspect that there may really be wickedness and peril in these profane stage-plays; and that he with whom we have innocently gossipped, may be an agent set there on purpose to register our names upon the free-list, to seduce us into the theatre, and to ruin us gratuitously!! I HAVE a strong personal affection for the chamber of the House of Commons, which I never could acquire for that in which their lordships hold their meetings: it is so warm and cosy, and there is so much chaste simplicity in its furniture and appearance, such a total absence of theatrical display in the mode of transacting business, and such a dignified freedom from assumption and pomposity in the deportment of its members. Although the Commons did not hold their meetings in the present chamber till the time of Edward VI. (it did not exist as a separate branch of the legislature till the reign of Edward III.), it may not be unworthy of notice, that this chamber, in which sit (at least are supposed to sit), the representatives of the people, was built by an usurping King Stephen, as a chapel which he dedicated to his namesake, the first Christian martyr to-without profanity be it said the liberty of speech + Abridged from the New Monthly Magazine. No. CXX. This article is dated November 2d. : hence the well known designation of St. Stephen's Chapel. LORD ALTHORPE.The extraordinary influence, strictly personal influence, which this nobleman exercises in the House of Commons, has always appeared to me a moral phenomenon, which the opponents' of reform might triumphantly appeal to as a proof that the present system of re presentation, with all its defects, works well." Here is a man, whose "externalities" are the reverse of imposing, of by no nicans overwhelming fortune, inferior as a speaker even to Mr. Goulbourn, not only in the choice and arrangement, but in the very enunciation (he speaks as if his throat were lined with flannel) of his words; who, by the force of good sense, good-nature, and good manners alone, without the shadow of effort, without even appearing to seek it, rivets the attention of the house to his homeliest remark, and commands the votes of nearly two hundred of its most independent and enlightened members! This fact, I cannot help re, peating, appears to me worth a thousand of the sophistries which are usually vented against reform; or rather, perhaps, they strikingly illustrate the progress which the influence of public opinion has been making of late years, in showing that common sense and integrity of purpose are sure to ultimately prevail where the most commanding eloquence and extensive information, without the moral uprightness, -would most inevitably have failed. The MARQUIS OF BLANFORD Lord Winchelsea of the House of Conmous. Like the noble hero of Pennenden Heath, Lord Blanford possesses a fine, manly, obstinate, Lord George Gordon bearing: and like the same doughty champion of the Protestant cause, has turned reformer because he thinks, forsooth, that if every mau in England had had a vote at the passing of the Catholic Relief Bill, the "book of numbers" would have told against that measure of long delayed jus tice. words, "give the long-winded speakers a bit of his yarn;" and, be it a joke, or abuse, or eulogy, out it comes, red hot, just as it suggests itself at the moment of speaking; regardless whether it be illtimed or apposite, whether it hits or misses, or offends or pleases: but always wrapped up in a jovial, frank, sailor-like good humour, which converts into pleasantry, what from another would be, at least, impertinent. As a consequence of this free expression of his opinions and fancies, Sir Joseph is ever amusing and often very pointed; as every man must be who pursues the same course. His satisfaction at Mr. L. Wellesley's practical knowledge of finance, and that one so experienced in the expenditure of money, was likely to soon enlighten the house on the subject of retrenchment, excited only langhter, though it bordered on personal sarcasm. MR. HUME. If ever there was a man whose external appearance squared in the minutest particular with my preconceived notion of his features and person, it was Mr. Hume. I had figured to myself a robust iron-figure, capable of any fatigue, with broad massive Scotch features, in whose expression one might discern a not unusual mixture of Poor Richard" scrutiny and the most indomitable perseverance; and I found my conception realized in Mr. Hume. If Lord Althorpe is individually the most influential member of the House of Conimous, Mr. Hume is certainly the most useful. It is little to say that he is a moral study, whose illustration derives no aid from what we know of other men; for Mr. Hume is not only without a parallel in (at least) modern parliamentary history, but should seem to be made up of other men's contraries. The majority of mankind love ease, and seek as many short cuts to any end they may have in view as are compatible with its attainment. To Mr. Hume, on the contrary, labour would seem desirable for its own sake alone, and, as in the chase, the game to be run down is of no value, save as it gives a motive and employment for labour. Again, to most people success is the stimulus to farther exertion, as the want of it generally tends to languor and indifference. Not so with the member for Middlesex: an object loses its charm, in his eyes, so soon as it comes within his grasp, and his energies become more and more braced as failure and disappointment follow their exercise. The consequence of this extraordinary perseverance has been much more in·Huential upon the public mind than is at all apparent to a superficial observer. Not all his sagacity and love of arrangement, nor all his practice, have made Mr. Hume even a fair debater (as to oratory, he not only not aims at it, but openly despises it as an art of putting a good face on a bad matter); and yet in a Committee of Supply he speaks more to the purpose than any member in the House; and the minister who would boldly palm an ad ditional item on Sir H. Parnell, or Sir J. Graham, or Mr. Maberly, or any other financier now in parliament, shrinks from the slate and pencil scrutiny of Mr. Hume, But it is not in this way only that Mr. Hume has effected a most beneficial change in the expenditure of the public money. He is now I believe about fourteen years a member of the House of Commons; and from the day he entered it to the present, not less than fifteen out of the twentyfour hours have been devoted by him to public business. Before his time, attention to details was considered as beneath the dignity of the representatives of the people; once or twice in the session, to be sure, Mr. Tierney used to exercise his talents, and his wit, and his marvellous acuteness, at the expense of the minister for the time being; but there the matter ended-as Dr. Johnson says, nothing came of it." A very diff rent course was pursued by the then member for Aberdeen, instead of dealing in massy generalities, or laying down abstract principles of fiuance, he attacked each item of each estimate one by one, and by the simple aid of the simple rules of Cocker's Arithmetic, showed that five and four were not eight or ten, but nine; and that if we could buy for elevenpence farthing what we were paying one shilling for, we should have an additional three farthings in the shilling to employ either in the payment of our debts, or in other ways advantageous to indivię dual and public interest. For a time a deaf ear was turned to what was termed the interminable borings of the honourable member for Aberdeen ; but he, nothing damped, reiterated his statements the more; and the result is a crop of fellowlabourers in the vineyard of retrenchment, of whom Sir H. Parnell and Sir J. Gra ham are the best informed; as the further fruits evidently will be a remodelling of the entire system of our national expendi ture. 66 SIR ROBERT PEEL is the most satisfactory business speaker in the House, as well as the best Home-Secretary the conntry has had for a long series of years. His merits, indeed, on this score I take it to be so unquestionable that even the perverse obstinacy of party affects not wholly to deny them. The truth is, that had it been the Honourable Baronet's good fortune to continue in a secondary station, and not been forced, by circumstances, |