Lupino, since Mrs. Noble, whose clever self and husband may dancing preserve! We thought, when she married, she had made the fittest choice in the world. We hope these declarations, which are the first we ever made, are innocent; especially as we make them only to our Companion the reader. They are for nobody else to hear. We speak in a stage whisper. Our theatrical passion, at present, as he well knows, is for Madame Pasta; and we shall proceed, as we did in the other cases, to show our gratitude for the pleasure she gives us, by doing her all the good in our power, and not letting her know a word on the subject. If this is not a disinterested passion, we know not what is.

A word or two on our English manner of dancing in private: our quadrilles and country dances. A fair friend of ours, whenever she has an objection to make to the style of a person's behavior, says, "he requires a good shaking." This is what may be said of most of the performers in our ball-rooms, particularly the male. Our gentlemen dancers forget the part they assume on all other occasions, as encouragers and payers of compliment; and seem, as if in despair of equalling their fair friends, they had no object but to get through the dance undetected. The best thing they do for their partner is to hand her an ice or a lemonade; the very going for which appears to be as great a refreshment to them as the taking it is to the other. When the dance is resumed all their gravity returns. They look very cut and dry, and succinct; jog along with an air of indifference, and leave the vivacity of the young lady to shift for itself.

The most self-satisfied male dancer we ever saw, was one who, being contented with his own legs, could never take his eyes off them, but seemed eternally congratulating them and himself that they were fit to be seen. The next thing to this, is to be always thinking of the figure; which, indeed, is the main. consideration both of gentlemen and ladies. Where there is anything beyond, the ladies have it, out and out. The best private dancer we know among the male sex, is one who makes it his business to attend to his partner; to set off with her as if she were a part of his pleasure, and to move among the others as if there were such things in the world as companionship, and a sense of it. And this he does with equal spirit and modesty. Our readers may know of more instances, and may help to furnish them; but the reverse is assuredly the case in general. Perhaps it was not so in the livelier times of our ancestors, when taxation had not forced us to think so much of 66 ber one;" and the general knowledge, that is preparing a still better era, had not unsettled the minds of all classes of people as to their individual pretensions. Perhaps, also, dress makes a difference. Men may have been more confident in cloaks and doublets than in the flaps and horse-collars of the present day. To get up a dance on the sudden, nowadays, on the green lawn, would look ridiculous on the men's part. At least, they feel as if it would; and this would help to make it so. On the other hand, a set of gallant apprentices in their caps and doublets, or of wits and cavaliers in their mantles and plumage, had all the world before them, for action or for grace;

num

and a painter could put them on canvas with no detriment to the scenery. We are far from desiring to bring back those distinctions. It is very possible for an apprentice nowadays to know twice as much as a cavalier; and we would have no distinctions at all but between spirit and spirit. But a dress disadvantageous to everybody, is good for nothing but to increase. other disadvantages. Above all, a little more spirit in our mode of dancing, and a little more of the dancing itself, without the formality of regular balls, would do us good, and give our energies a fillip on the side of cheerfulness. Families and intimate friends would find themselves benefited in health and spirits, perhaps to an extent of which they have no conception, by setting apart an evening or so in the week for a dance among themselves. If we have not much of "the poetry of motion" among us, we may have plenty of the motion itself, which is the healthy part of it; and the next best performer to such a one as we have described is he who gives himself up to the pleasure and sociality of the moment, whether a good dancer or not.

1828.

RECOLLECTIONS OF OLD ACTORS.

TH

HE removal of our place of publication to Brydges Street has reminded us, that many years ago we began writing theatricals at the house two doors from us, where the paper (The News) is still published in which we made our début. May it live forever! We rejoice in its neighborhood, and hope it is not sorry for ours. It must now be nearly thirty years since we first wrote articles in the newspapers. We were then in our boyhood; or rather lad-hood. Not many years short of that period, we adventured on the perilous task of criticism; and here we are again, in the same street, almost on the same spot, occupied with a new paper,* and pursuing the old

The Tatler, a literary and theatrical paper, which Hunt edited from September 4, 1830, to February 14, 1832. "It was a very little work," he writes, in his Autobiography, "consisting but of four folio pages; but it was a daily publication. I did it all myself, except when too ill; and illness seldom hindered me either from supplying the review of a book, going every night to the play, or writing the notice of the play the same night at the printing-office. The consequence was, that work, slight as it looked, nearly killed me; for it never prospered beyond the coterie of play-going readers, to whom it was almost cxclusively known; and I was sensible of becoming weaker and poorer every day. When I came home at night, often at morning, I used to feel as if I could hardly speak; and for a year and a half afterwards a certain grain of fatigue seemed to pervade my li:nbs, which I thought would never go off. Such, nevertheless, is a habit of mind, if it be but cultivated, that my spirits never seemed better, nor did I ever write theatricals so well, as in the pages of this most unremunerating speculation." According to Sir Thomas N. Talfourd, Leigh Hunt gave theatrical criticism a place in modern literature. "In criticism, thus just and picturesque," says Sir Thomas, "Mr. Hunt has never been approached; and the wonder is, that instead of falling off with the art of acting, he even grew richer; for the articles of the Tatler, equalling those of the Examiner in niceness of discrimination, are superior to them in depth and coloring."-Talfourd's Critical and Miscellaneous Writings, article On the Late William Hazlitt. — ED.

track. It makes us feel as if we were beginning life over again.

Drury Lane Theatre is not the same identical Drury Lane it was then. It is on the same spot, but its body has been altered. It is the old friend with a new face. Covent Garden has experienced the same rejuvenescence. Alas! why cannot actors and play-goers grow young again too! Why cannot they be old friends with new faces, the interior spirit the same, but the body remoulded! How patiently one would stand to have the scaffold set up round about us, while the little genii (whoever they were that acted the part of bricklayers) should pursue their task of restoration, elevating one's front, extending the wings, and new glazing those dimmed windows, the eyes! Then to take down the scaffolding; and like the statue of Memnon, we would sing at the touch of morning.

It is a pity that some such thing cannot take place, for the sake of those that particularly desire it. Rabelais says that he was sure he must have been the son of a king, because nobody had more princely inclinations. We incline, in the same manner, to be so young in our feelings, and to desire such a good long life before us to do a world of things in, that it seems as if we had a right to it. Mortality is a good provision, considering that the world has not come to its state of enjoyment, and that people in general, by the time they are forty, hardly know what to do with their Sundays: but an exception might be made, we think, in favor of those who could occupy all their hours some way or other for