penury and neglect under which she now languishes.""Was she beautiful?" asked Catherine: "I see no remains of former lovelniess."-" She is much changed," answered Charles; "but even I can remember her a most splendid woman. She had the presence and air of a queen. Poverty and her father's displeasure have wrought this change in her," and perhaps her husband's death."

"Chiefly want of money," observed Mr. Mordaunt, sealing and directing his letter. She had pretty well got over the loss of Captain Sullivan. "Want of money is the pressing evil."-" I wish I were as rich as Mr. Darrell!" cried Sarah; and then she blushed and stopped, adding, in a hesitat ing voice, “what a pity it is that good wishes can do no real good."

"Except to the wisher, Sarah,” replied her father; the slightest emotion of disinterested kindness that passes through the mind improves and refreshes that mind, producing generous thought and noble feeling. Cherish kind wishes my children; for a time may come when you may be enabled to put them in practice. In the mean time," added he, in a gayer tone," tell me if you were all very rich, what you would wish for your selves for your own gratification, ladies and gentlemen.' pa,

"Oh papa," exclaimed Sarah, "a great

library

"And I," said Miss Bab, from the floor, I'd have a great doll.”

"I'd go to Italy," said Charles. "I to Oxford," said his brother. "And I to Ranelagh,” said Catherine, laughing." In the mean time," added she, as the footmen-it being now six o'clock, for they had dined at the usual hour of three-brought in the tea equipage, followed by the silver kettle and lamp :"in the meantime, we may as well go to tea, and afterwards take a walk in Gray's Inn Garden, as we meant to do, for the evening is beautiful, and my new hat is just come home.”

About two months after, the same party, with the exception of Mr. Mordaunt, were assembled at nearly the same hour in a very different scene. They were then passing the long vacation at the farm, and it being Bab's birth-day, had adjourned to the root-house, a pretty rustic building at the end of the garden, to partake of fruit and cakes, and a syllabub from the cow, which the delighted little girl herself had been permitted to compound, under the direction and superintendance of the house-keeper. It was a scene beautiful in itself and full of youthful enjoyment. The somewhat sombre root house, with its gothic painted windows, its projecting

thatch, supported by rongh pillars clothed with ivy, clematis, passion-flowers, virginin-the-bowers, looked out on a garden, gay with holly-hocks, balsams, Chinaasters, marigolds, the rich scarlet geranium, and the sweet marvel of Peru. The evening sun gleamed brightly around, and shone on the old farm-house, whose casement windows peeped through a clustering vine, beneath which stood Catherine blooming as Hebe, catching in a wickerbasket, the large bunches of grapes which her younger brother, with one foot on a ladder, and one on the steep roof of the house; threw down to her and Charles, who was at once steadying the ladder and directing the steps of the adventurous ga therer. Little Bab, the heroine of the day, was marching in great state down a broad gravel walk, leading from the house to the root-house, preceding a procession consisting of the footman, with a tray of jingling glasses-the housekeeper, bearing the famous syllabub, her own syllabub- ; and the housemaid, well laden with fruit and cakes. Sarah, faithful to her flowers, was collecting an autumn nosegay, partly as an offering to Miss Barbara-partly for her father, whose return from town, whither he had been summoned on business, was anxiously expected by them all. Just as the gay young party were collected together in the root-house, Mr. Mordaunt arrived. was in mourning, and although receiving with kindness Sarah's offering of flowers, and Bab's bustling presentation of a glass of syllabub, which the little lady of the day insisted on filling herself, was evidently serious, pre-occupied, almost agitated. He sat down without speaking, throwing his hat upon the table, and pushing away Catherine's guitar, which had been brought thither purposely to amuse him. He had even forgotten it was Bab's birth-day, until reminded of it by the child herself, who clambered upon his knees, put her arms round his neck, and demanded clamorously that her dear papa should kiss her and wish her joy. He then kissed her tenderly, uttered a fervent benediction on her, and on all his children, and relapsed into his former silence and abstraction. At length he said, "My sadness saddens you, my dear boys and girls, but I am just come from a very solemn scene, from Mr. Darrell's funeral."

He

"Good gracious! "exclaimed Charles, with much emotion," I did not even know that he was dead."-" Nor I till reached London yesterday," returned Mr. Mordaunt.

"Poor, poor Mrs. Sullivan," cried Sarah: "did her father forgive her before he died?"

"He sent her his forgiveness on his

bed an unspeakable comfort!-but still his angry will remains unrevoked. She and her children are starving, whilst his immense fortune descends to one unconnected by blood or alliance, or any tie save that of an old friendship. After a few trifling legacies to friends and servants, I am left residuary legatee. The property is large my children; larger, perhaps, than with your moderate views and limited expectations you can readily apprehend. You may be rich, even beyond the utmost grasp of your wishes, and Catherine may revel in innocent amusement, aud Charles in tasteful travel; college, with all its advantages, is open to his brother; Sarah may have endless books, and Barbara endless dolls; luxury, splendour, gaiety, and ambition, are before ye the trappings of grandeur or the delights of lettered ease; ye may be ich, my children, beyond the dream of avariceor ye may resign these riches to the natural heir, and return to peaceful competence and honourable exertion, reaping no other fruit from this unsought legacy, than a spotless reputation and a clear conscience. Choose, and choose freely. My little Sarah has, I think, already chosen. When some weeks ago, she wished to be as rich as Mr. Darrell, I read her countenance ill, if the motive of that wish were not to enrich Mrs. Sullivan. Choose, my dear children, and choose freely!"

"Oh, my dear father, we have chosen! Could you think that we should hesitate! I answer for my brothers and sisters, as for myself. How could your children waver between wealth and honour?" Aud Charles, as he said this, threw himself into his father's arms, the other young people clinging round them-even little Bab, exclaiming, "Oh, dear papa, the money must be all for Mrs. Sullivan!"

The relater of this true anecdote, had the gratification of hearing it from one of the actors in the scene-the Sarah of her little story, who is now in a green old age, the delight of her friends, and the admiration of her acquaintances. Her readers will probably be as glad to hear as she was, that the family thus honourably self-deprived of enormous riches, has been eminently happy and prosperous in all its branches that the firm distinguished by the virtues of its founder still continues one of the first in London-and that a grandson of Mr. Mordaunt's, no less remarkable for talent and integrity than his progenitor, is at the present time a partner in the house.

CAUSES OF THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA.†

THERE was a time when theatrical affairs were topics of paramount interest. The word "town," in these by-gone times, signified the people who visited the theatres. "The town was pleased;"" it did not hit the taste of the town;"" the town expressed its opinion;"" the town did not attend;""Tweedledum and tweedledee divided the town," &c. Those whom their ill taste and ill fortune kept away from the theatres were looked upon as barbarians not yet emerged from some of the primi tive stages of human society. Those who are now "the town"-the exquisites, the dandies, the exclusives, the ladies who are at home, and the gentlemen who are in the clubs, know nothing about them. Frequenting a theatre would be ruin to any man of the slightest pretensions. You might as well have, under the dynasty of Brummell, asked twice for soup. Literary men, with scarcely an exception of any pretension, avoid writing for the stage; if Byron or Scott wrote a play, they took care to prefix the rather superfluous notice in their cases, that it is not intended to be acted. Our modern dramas are avowedly taken from the French, and adapted by a process, which, as far as intellect is concerned, is not above the craft of a tinker, to English manners. The actors, though in general respectable men, are no longer companions of the upper classes either of rank, fashion, or literature: we feel the same curiosity about them or their affairs, as we do about the sayings or doings of our tailors. Even the éclat of an adventure with a lady of the theatre, which was once a matter that filled the rearts of rival beaux with envy, has lost its glories.

Many reasons have been assigned for this undoubted carelessness as to dramatic affairs among us. The spread of me. thodism is alleged as one cause, but by itself that could not do much more than the hostility of the severer orders in the Roman Catholic churcà might effect abroad. The travelling preachers have less influence upon English society than the Capuchins and other monastic mountebanks had upon that of France and Italy. The late dinners of fashionable life are mentioned as a second obstacle; but this is only saying in another way that it is not the fashion to go to the theatre. It merely puts us back a single step. If people of fashion were as fond of the drama as their grandfathers and grandmothers,

+ Abridged from Fraser's Magazine.—No. X.

they would very soon make their dinners fit theatrical hours. The size of the great houses a third cause, according to some -may mainly contribute to the necessity of sacrificing the ear to the eye, and therefore make the poet and wit give way to the machinist and scene-painter, But in other countries the same causes are in operation; and, let us add, that the scene- painters and machinists of Drury Lane and Covent Garden produce what we may justly call triumphs of art; things in themselves well worthy to be visited.

Let us attempt in some sort a solution of the difficulty, if there be one. We think it will be found chiefly in two causes -the march of Intellect and the march of London, Of the latter, first :

1. It is evident that the increased size of London has rendered a desire for public amusements less vivid. The fashionable people fancy themselves compelled to live apart, and to include, for the purposes of visiting, &c. their dominion within comparatively small limits. The increasing wealth (or its greater condensation, for as we are not writing politics, in this article, we shall avoid all debatable topics), has given the means of appearing fashionable to many-say thousands; whom those who are already in possession do not wish to acknowledge. This draws the line still closer. Contact, in all cases, with these people, must be sedulously avoided-and how could it be avoided if frequenting public places of amusement were permissible. The narrow circle must, therefore amuse itself; and, owing to the size of London, it can do so. The nightly parties and daily visitings can very well Supply the place of theatres to those classes who went formerly to the play only to see and be seen. The mob of the boxes do not contain their friends-for what is going on upon the stage they never pretended to care. The late dinner, which, now that hospitality is voted coarse, is no event of the day, assembles those whom a box world would formerly have assembled; and the miscellaneous rabble of the fashionable party supplies whatever might have been expected to be found in the company of a "theatre sixty years ago,"

2. The March of Intellect.--When play houses, in England, absorbed all public attention, or divided it only with politics and the pulpit, the reading classes were far less numerously supplied than at present. Those who because they had no light intellectual fare spread before them went to the play, now find their wants, in some degree at least, supplied by the improved newspaper, the superior magazine, the new creation of novel, &c. &c. It is less and less necessary every day to

go to the theatre pour se delasser; the private party is more cutertaining. The accomplishments of society have spread over a wider class-the means of gratify ing the minor intellectual tastes more easily accessible-and the play is but one of the attractions which educated life affords.

Here, then, we look upon the theatre as neither a resort of fashion, a school of taste, nor an arena for literary talents, Writing for the theatre, at all times hazardous (valcot res ludicrą, si me pulmą neguta_macrum, &c.) is only ventured upon by men of character when the reward is great. The real dramatic writer of the present day appeals to the closet, and generally chooses the novel as the shape in which he appears. The reward of Drury Lane or Covent Garden is small when compared with what literature sup plies in other directions; and, therefore, with scarcely an exception, nobody tries dramatic writing as a business, but those who have no chance of succeeding in any other department. As the author sinks, so sinks the actor. The one poorly remunerated, is careless of bis composition; the other, having lost the main link which bound him to the living intellect of the country, becomes а mere mechanic. Buffoons, and the broader they are the better-simple tune-turners, and the less of scientific music they know the better these are the really successful performers at present. The jack-pudding and the ballad-singer must ever be the favourites at Bartholomew fair.

They manage these matters otherwise in France. In France, the stage is yet connected with the literature of the country, and from the mouths of the French players you are still sure to hear the language spoken in its purity. In France, the poet, the scholar, the man of fashiou, and the gentleman, do still write plays, and the honour derived from success in their authorship is even greater than it was with us in the days of Sir Charles Sedley. A single comedy has secured the writer's election in the academy-has procured him the riband of honour-and gained him the entree to the most aristo eratic salons; while he, at the same time, is not deprived of a more substantial reward, in the shape of a regular per centage upon the receipts arising from the performance of his work in every theatre of the French dominions. There, too, the actor must be of a superior order; a single fault in pronunciation would be sufficient to occasion his everlasting expulsion. Thus it happens, that no Frenchman ever dreams of rushing to the stage from the desk or the counter, which his idleness or

dishonesty has compelled him to abandon. He knows that, even to be tolerated, he must possess that perfect purity of pronunciation, and grace of delivery, which belong not to the ignorant and the vulgar; and consequently, even in the lowest cha racters of the drama, we never see in France any of those wretched animals, who offend our eyes and hurt our ears in Horatio, and all the other parts which, in the language of our green-rooms, are described as second-rate. In France no person is considered to have a prescriptive right to the first line of characters. The actors there form a society, in which all are equal, and in which no man can rise to eminence, except by the gradual exhibition of power in the various parts which are successively committed to his charge. The actresses, too-(we will not dwell upon their character, for in all countries that must naturally be the same)-are for the like reasons, elegant and fascinating Creatures. A clumsy Celimene would be hooted from the stage; an ill-made Suzon, and an ugly Hortense, would share the same fate; and an Elmire that spoiled the verses of Molière by a provincial vulgarity of pronunciation, would be sacrificed forthwith to the offended dignity of Thalia. From the intimate connexion which always exists between effect and cause, the actresses there live in the most learned and polished society of the literary capital of Europe. The soirées of Made moiselle Mars are the most recherchées things in the world. There is more genius in her assemblies, than in half the kingdoms of Europe. All persons of rank and name in the world of letters must find themselves in her salon; and any drama, in which she is to perform, excites, long before its production, the most intense interest.

INGRATITUDE OF ENGLAND TO

HER SCIENTIFIC MEN.+.

"In England, whole branches of continental discovery are unstudied, and, indeed, almost unknown, even by name. It is in vain to conceal the melancholy truth. We are fast dropping behind. In mathema tics we have long since drawn the rein, and given over a hopeless race. In chemistry the case is not much better. Who can tell us anything of the sulpho-salts? Who will explain to us the laws of ismorphism? Nay, who among us has ever veri

+ Abridged from the Quarterly Review.-No.

LXXXVI.

fied Thenard's experiments on the oxyge nated acids? Oersted's and Berzelius's on the radicals of the earths? Balard's and Serullas's on the combination of brome, and a hundred other splendid trains of research in that fascinating science? Nor need we stop here. There are, indeed, few sciences which would not furnish matter for similar remajk.”

Such are the statements recently pu blished by Mr. Herschel, whose range of scientific acquirements is at present unrivalled in this country. Like the other writers, who have touched upon the state of our science, it was introduced by him only as an incidental topic, to which the bearings of his subject had casually led. These casual and incidental notices, as they appeared only in scientific works, which were perhaps not known even by name to those who rule over the destinies of England, were not likely to attract atten tion, or to excite discussion. An appeal, however, of a more formal kind, has been at length made from the chair of Newton, and from the pen of his successor, Mr. Babbage, whose varied and profound acquirements fitted him in a peculiar manner for such a task. A mathematician of the first order, a learned natural philosopher, and the inventor of one of the most extraordinary machines that ever proceeded from the sagacity of man, he has had occasion to be intimately acquainted with the present condition of the arts as well as the sciences of his country. Let us hope his "Reflections" will excite that serious consideration and attention to which they are so justly entitled. Among the causes which have led to the decline of science in England, Mr. Babbage enumerates, the lack of substantial encouragement extended to its cultivators. Were we to take a retrospect of the honours which have been conferred by princes, on those illustrious individuals, by whose labours the temple of modern science has been reared, we should perceive that England holds a very subordinate place. Her liberality to Newton is the only striking instance we should be able to adduce, be cause it is the only one in which the ho nour of a title was combined with an ade

quate pecuniary reward. Sir W. Herschel, indeed, was made a Hanoverian knight, and Sir Humphry Davy, a baronet, but the comforts which these distinguished men enjoyed, and the stations which they occupied in society, were neither derived f.om the sovereign nor from the nation. No monument has been reared to their memory, and no honours have descended to their families. Nor are these the only instances of national ingratitude. The inventive genius of Wollaston, and the

talents and literature of Young, have passed like a meteor from our sight. No title of honour has illustrated their name, and no tribute of affection has been pro nounced over their grave, He who buckled on the weak arm of a man of power or gigantic energy; who taught his species to triumph over the inertia of matter, and to withstand the fury of the elements, who multiplied the resources of the state, and poured into the treasury the spring tide of its wealth-the immortal Watt, was neither acknowledged by his sovereign, nor honoured by his ministers, nor embalmed among the heroes and sages of his country.

Of all the kingdoms of Europe, France is undoubtedly the one in which the scientific establishments have been regulated by the most enlightened and liberal principles, and in which science is most successfully cultivated, This high distinction she owes to the formation of the institute, which consists of four different academics, viz. the French Academy; the Royal Academy of Inscriptions and BellesLettres; the Royal Academy of the Fine Arts; and the Royal Academy of Sciences -which alone comes under our notice. It is composed as follows:

The vacancies which take place in this body are supplied by the majority of suffrages, and in the case of ordinary and associate members, the royal approbation is necessary to complete the election. Political motives have, we believe, seldom, if ever, influenced these elections; and our readers have only to look at the list of its members-a list crowded with immortal names-to be satisfied of the truth of this statement.

The sixty-three ordinary members of the academy receive each an annual pension from government of one thousand five hundred francs, and the two secretaries six thousand franes each. A considerable number of these members, from the sections of geometry, mechanics, astronomy, and navigation, compose the board of longitude, and receive a handsome additional salary; others hold situations in the University of France, in the Royal Observatory, in the Polytechnic School, in the Jardin des Plantes, in the School of Mines, and in the School of Roads and Bridges; in a word, the members of the academy may be considered as placed in opulent circumstances, and being freed from all the anxieties of professional labour, are enabled to pursue their scientific inquiries in the calm of seclusion and domestic life. Nor, in her generous care for the respectability and comfort of her seientific men, has France overlooked the most powerful stimulus of genius and industry. All the honours of the state have been thrown open to her philosophers and literary characters. The sage and the hero deliberate in the same cabinet ;they are associated among the privycouncillors of the king ;-they sit together in her house of peers and in her chamber of deputies; they bear the same titles; they are decorated with the same orders, and the arm and the mind of the nation are thus indissoluby united for its glory or for its defence.

"If we analyze the list of the Institute," says Mr. Babbage, "we shall find few who do not possess titles or decorations ;" but as the value of such marks of royal favour must depend, in a great measure, on their frequency, I shall mention several particulars, which are probably not familiar to the English reader :

2,491 000

103,791