The feasibility of an Hereditary House of Performers (peer-formers rather), being thus established, the next thing is earnestly to recommend its adoption, and the next to enjoy the imagination of it. We fancy ourselves going to the Hereditary Play-house, not, as now, doubting of the success of this and that player, and vexed at the truth that is in us, because we may have to record his failures, - but sure of fine actors and actresses in all the parts, delighting in the report we shall have to make of them, and wondering how that Jacobin fellow that criticises them in the Tri-color, can dare to contradict the whole feeling and intelligence of the community, which is a rapture of hereditary delight. For always let us bear in mind, that if some tens among us inherit the power to legislate, and may be made to inherit the power to act plays, all the rest of the world inherit a natural respect for them, and would be as much charmed to pay money at the pit door to see the Right Theatrical the actor of Macbeth, as they are to give up their pound notes, daughters, and tenements to the Most Noble the Ejector and Legislator.

The following may be taken as a specimen of the criticism in which it would be the "pride and pleasure" of all the loyal critics to indulge:

Last night the tragedy of Othello was performed at the Hereditary House of Players. The part of Othello by the Right. Theatrical Joseph Garrick ; Desdemona, by the Right Fascinating Mrs. Betterton; Emilia, by the Most Forcible Mrs. Pritchard; Cassio, by the Right Clever Mr. Williams; Iago, by the Most Acute and Insinuating Mr. Ebenezer Cooke;

and the Duke of Venice, by his truly noble Representative Mr. Algernon Booth. We have only to name these illustrious peer-formers, to show how well they must have sustained their characters. The speech of the great Joseph Garrick - Had it pleased heav'n, &c., was all that could be expected from the known pathos of the performer's house; it would be needless to dwell on the hereditary tones of Mrs. Betterton; the title of Most Forcible shows what a hand and arm Mrs. Pritchard must derive from her ancestors; Mr. Williams in Cassio, had all the drunkness and incapability of speech for which his progenitor was conspicuous; and the Duke was most ducal. It is well known to the critical reader, that no part in the list of hereditary characters is better sustained than that of Duke: it has the singular good fortune of being at once the most easy and most noble of them all; and the Duke before us could not have performed his part better if he had been the founder of his title. The unhandsome critic who writes in the Tri-color, and who is the antagonist of everything established and all moral orders to the private boxes, would in vain dispute the talent and utility of this noble house, and its power to represent adequately its original worthies. In vain he says that the Right Theatrical Mr. Joseph Garrick is laughable instead of pathetic; that the present Mrs. Betterton is the transmitter, not of her great-greatgrandmother's face, but of the several foolish ones that have intervened; that the Most Forcible Mrs. Pritchard is as weak a woman as ever got in a passion; and that Mr. Algernon Booth, though good

enough for a Duke, is fit for nothing else, and has not an idea in his head. Such opinions as these can only end in bringing everything great and established into contempt, and rendering the poor dissatisfied with the salaries paid to these delightful servants of the public. His enmity is the more absurd, when we come to consider that it does not signify, after all, whether the worthy progenitors of this noble house were, in a certain sense of the term, worthy or not, since it is the king that makes noble actors; so that if the whole race were to be destroyed, he could make as many again to-morrow, and therefore secure the blessings of hereditary genius to our posterity. It is true shallow minds might argue against the necessity of demanding any talents in the first possessor of a theatrical title: but a mixture of these, as great stage-men well know, makes the system "work better:" and whether such were the case or not, there is this final argument to put down all sneerers and innovators forever; to wit, that without an Hereditary House of Performers, to stand midway between the royal and plebeian ends of the town, there would be no safety for East-end or West. The city, for want of a tragedy to keep them in awe, would immediately go in an uproar, and get up a tragic comedy at St. James's, to the great danger of his Majesty's person; or the executive powers, for the want of a tragedy to remind it of the right of the subject, would march into the city, and help itself to all those pockets of the middle orders, out of which the Hereditary House is at present maintained for keeping them inviolate.

All which, if it is not the case in other countries, and vile untheatrical republics, ought to be; and so the argument holds as good as if it were.

1830.

G

MADAME PASTA.

I.

OING to the King's Theatre again is a very dif

ferent thing from renewing one's acquaintance with the other theatres. We confess, with all our love of Italian and of singing, we do not like it so well. The quiet seems pleasanter at first; treading upon matting is a sort of polite and gingerly thing; and it is interesting to look around for those beautiful faces belonging to Lady Charlottes and Carolines, dropping their lids down upon us as if they wore coronets, and not always the better for it. But the cue of polite life is to take indifference for selfpossession; and you are not seated long before you begin to feel that there is an air of neutralization and falsehood around you. The quiet is a dread of committing themselves; - people come as much to be seen as to see; - the performers in the boxes prepare for disputing attention with those on the stage; men lounge about the alleys, looking so very easy that they are evidently full of constraint; the looks of the women dispute one another's pretensions; if you have been long away, you are not sure that something is not amiss in your appearance; that you are not

guilty of some overt act of a wrong cape, or absurd reasonableness of neckcloth; in short, you feel that the great majority of the persons around you have come to the Opera because it is the Opera, and not from any real love of music and the graces. The only persons really interested, with the exception of a few private lovers of music here and there, are the young and inexperienced; musicians, who come to criticise the music; and foreigners, whom it is pleasant to hear speaking their own language. After all, these last are the only persons who seem at home. The musicians are apt to be thinking too much of their flats and sharps, and compasses of voice. young people, though they dare not own it to themselves, soon get heartily tired of everything but looking at the company; and the private lover of music gets as tired with the glare and commonplace of nine tenths of the performance.

The

Thanks and glory to Pasta, who relieved us from all this spectacle of indifference and pretension the moment we heard the soul in her voice, and beheld the sincerity in her face. Pit and boxes were at once forgotten, quality, affectation, criticism, everything but delight and nature. Like a lark, she took us up at once out of that "sullen earth," and made us feel ourselves in a heaven of warmth and truth, and thrilling sensibility. If these are thought enthusiastic phrases, they are so. What others could we use to do justice to the enthusiasm of genius, and to the delight it produces in those golden showers out of its sky?

We saw Madame Pasta, for the first time, years ago, in the character of the page in Figaro, and