the most pleasurable ideas. We profess to be anything but prudes; we have no objection, for instance, to Zanina's being reconciled to "little fellows," whose ways are delightful; but because we are not prudish, we become the more jealous in behalf of what may be called the humanities of license.

We must own we could not help laughing at some passages of Miss Goward's acting in this scene; and perhaps we scan the matter somewhat too nicely. Those who laughed most would probably have been among the first to hug the remnant of their maimed friends to their heart. But the experiment is dangerous. There is not too much sentiment in society after all; and it is better not to risk what there is. With what relief did we not call to mind, in our graver moments, the sight we had once, in those boxes, on the left hand, of a charming woman sitting next her gallant husband, Colonel C., who had returned from the wars with the frightful loss of his lower jaw. His wife married him after his return; and this, we were told, was she. He had his mouth and chin muffled up. But how did he not seem more than repaid in her sweet and loving presence, which we fancied that she pressed still closer to him than was visible in that of any other woman seated by her husband's side. When she looked in his face, we felt as if we could almost have been content to have lost the power of kissing with lips, that we might have received in all its beauty that kiss of the soul.

1828.

LADIES' BONNETS IN THE THEATRE.

N default of having anything better to write about

IN

in our present number, we beg leave to remonstrate with certain bonnets, and other enormities, with which the ladies put out our eyesight in the theatres. The bonnet is the worst. If you sit right behind it, it shall swallow up the whole scene. It makes nothing of a regiment of soldiers, or a mountain, or a forest, or a rising sun; much less of a hero, or so insignificant a thing as a cottage and a peasant's family. You may sit at the theatre a whole evening and not see the leading performer. Liston's face is a glory obscured. The persons in your neighborhood, provided they have no bonneted ladies before them, shall revel in the jocose looks of Farren or Dowton, and provokingly reflect the merriment in their own countenances, while you sit and rage in the shade. If you endeavor to strain a point, and peep by the side of it, ten to one (since Fate notoriously interferes in little things, and delights in being contrary," as the young ladies say) ten to one but the bonnet seizes that very opportunity of jerking sideways, and cutting off your resources. We have seen an enthusiastic playgoer settle himself in his seat, and evidently congratulate himself at the evening he was about to enjoy, when a party of ladies, swimming into the seats before him, have been the ruin of all his prospects. Even a head-dress, without the bonnet,

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shall force you to play at bo-peep with the stage half the evening; now extinguishing the face of some favorite actress, and now abolishing a general or a murder. The other night, at the Queen's Theatre, we sometimes found ourselves obliged to peep at the Freemasons in a very symbolical manner through the loops of a lady's bows. But the bonnet is the enormity. And we are sorry to say that the fair occupants who sit inside them, like the lady in the lobster, too often show a want of gallantry in refusing to take them off; for, as we have said more than once, we hold gallantry, like all the other virtues, to be a thing mutual, and of both sexes; and that a lady shows as much want of gallantry in taking advantage of the delicacies observed towards her by the gentlemen, as a man does who presumes upon the gentleness of a lady. We felt, the other night, all the reforming spirit of our illustrious predecessors of the Tatler and Spectator roused within us, and in the same exact proportion to our regard for the sex upon witnessing the following prodigious fact: A lady, who came with a party into one of the boxes at Covent Garden, joined very heartily in expressing her disapprobation of some person in a seat below her, who was dilatory in taking off his hat. It chanced that this lady got into the very seat that he had occupied, and her bonnet turning out to be a much greater blind than the hat, what was the astonishment and the merriment of the complainants, upon finding that she was still less accommodating than the gentleman? Nothing could induce her to perform the very same piece of justice which she had joined in demanding from the other.

We are aware that in modern, as in ancient theatres, ladies come to be seen as well as to see.

Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsæ."

But we are desirous that they should not pay themselves so ill a compliment as to confound their dresses with themselves; it is the bonnets that are seen, in these cases, and not the ladies. When seen themselves, they make a part of the spectacle, but who cares to look upon these great lumps of gauze and silk? Something is to be allowed to fashion, but the wearers might be content with showing that their heads could be as absurd as other people's, and then lay aside the absurdity, and show that they understood the better part of being reasonable. They urge, when requested to take their bonnets off, that they "cannot" do it; meaning, we suppose, besides the "will not," which "cannot" so often signifies, that their heads are not prepared to be seen that their hair is not dressed in the proper manner; but it would be easy to come with it so dressed; the bonnet is not the only head-dress in fashion; and, above all, it would be a graceful and a sensible thing to remember, that in coming to a place where the object is to enjoy pleasure, their own capability of pleasure is interested in considering that of others. We never feel angry with a woman except when she persists in doing something to diminish the delight we take in complimenting the sex.

1831.

TH

MOLIÈRE'S TARTUFFE.

HERE is something very delightful in the friendliness of intercourse that has sprung up between France and England since the late troubles. Cabinets may quarrel again, and wars be renewed; but the more intimacy there is in the mean time between the two nations, the less they will be disposed to be gulled into those royal amusements. Formerly this kind of intercourse was confined to kings and courtiers; and whenever these gentlemen were disposed to pick a quarrel with one another, the people were sent on to fight, like retainers to a couple of great houses; their employers all the while making no more of the business than if they were playing a game of chess. Nations are growing wiser on this head; and nothing will serve better to secure their wisdom than an interchange of their socialities and an acquaintance with the great writers that have made them what they are.

It was with singular pleasure, therefore, that we found ourselves, the other night, sitting at a French play in the British metropolis, and that play Molière's. There, on the stage, was Molière, as it were himself; there spoke his very words, warm as when he first uttered them; there he triumphed over hypocrisy, and was wise and entertaining and immortal. But what, in the mean time, had become of Louis the Fourteenth and his splendor? What of all those lords and courtiers, who used to make a brilliant assemblage