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ment, from the sway, the disinterestedness, and even the superstitions of religion.

But the greatest merit of the work is to be found in the admirable delineation of the manners, ideas, hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, of humble life with which it abounds. The hero of the piece is a silk-weaver named Renzo, near Lecco, on the lake of Como; the heroine Lucia, his betrothed, the daughter of a poor widow in the same village; and the story is founded on the stratagems and wiles of an unbridled baron in the vicinity, whose passions had been excited by Lucia's beauty, first to prevent her marriage, then to obtain possession of her person. In the conception of such a piece is to be seen decisive evidence of the vast change in human affairs, since the days when Tasso and Ariosto poured forth to an admiring age, in the same country, the loves of high-born damsels, the combats of knights, the manners, the pride, and the exclusiveness of chivalry. In its execution, Manzoni is singularly felicitous. He is minute without being tedious, graphic but not vulgar, characteristic and yet never offensive. His pictures of human life, though placed two centuries back, are evidently drawn from nature in these times the peasants whom he introduces are those of the plains of Lombardy at this time; but though he paints them with the fidelity of an artist, it is yet with the feelings of a gentleman. His details are innumerable-his finishing is minute; but it is the minute finishing of Albert Durer or Leonardo da Vinci, not of Teniers or Ostade. In this respect he offers a striking contrast to the modern romance writers of France, Victor Hugo, Janin, Madame Dudevant, and Sue, by whom vice and licentiousness are exhibited with vast power, but in more than their native undisguised colours.

THE BRITISH THEATRE

[DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE, NOV. AND DEC. 1846]

IF the drama is the branch of composition which, by the common consent of man, requires the greatest effort of genius and intellectual power, scarcely less wonderful is the blending of the mental and physical qualities which the part of the performer requires. Acting, in its highest branches, is not merely a fine art-it is the combination of them all. The soul of poetry is its very essence; it is a thorough perception not merely of the obvious meaning, but of the secret spirit of the divine inspiration, which is its foundation. The mind of the actor must be sympathetic with that of the author-it must be cast in the same mould, and developed in some degree in the same proportions. Hence the remarkable force and beauty with which nearly all distinguished actors read poetry, and the extraordinary addition which their accent and intonation make to the effect of the most beautiful and best-known verses. When we hear the most familiar poetry read by a great performer, we feel as if we never understood it before, so vast is the impulse given, by the modulation of his voice, to its pathos and expression. A thorough acquaintance with the human heart, alike in its outward expression and inmost recesses, is not less indispensable: it is the knowledge of that which constitutes his chief power; it is its exhibition which gives rise to his greatest triumphs. The eye of a painter, the conceptions of a sculptor, are the basis of all that highly important part of the art which depends on the exhibition of external beauty, the arrangement of drapery, the exhibition of grace, the display of the witchery of expression and gesture. But vain is every such attempt,

if nature has not given to the performer the physical advantages which are the basis on which they must all rest; if the countenance has not the beauty which the eye of man never ceases to desire in woman; if the figure have not the proportions which the common consent of nations has stamped as the perfection of form. Even if all this rare combination is found in the same individual, their effect would be lost if an additional quality is wanting; for grace is the very soul of beauty on the stage, and it is its inexpressible charm-partly the gift of nature, partly the acquisition of study-which forms the chief element in the cestus which encircles the fascinating actress. The author rests on genius or intellectual power alone, and, strong in their might, he needs not the aid of physical qualities; but the stage, even more than oratory, requires the union of both for its greatest triumphs, and in its most perfect masters exhibits that rare combination of mental and bodily perfection which has ever formed the dream of ideal imagination, but is so rarely to be met with in actual life

"The youngest of the sister arts

Where all their beauty blends.

For ill can Poetry express

Full many a tone of thought sublime,
And Painting, mute and motionless,

Steals but a glance of time.

But by the mighty actor wrought,
Illusion's perfect triumphs come;
Verse ceases to be airy thought,
And Sculpture to be dumb."

It is the extreme rarity of such a combination, either in man or woman, which is the cause of so few really great performers ever appearing on the stage of any country. England, in her long period of intellectual activity and success, can boast only three or four; France or Italy can hardly point to a greater number. Like the other fine arts, greatness on the stage generally appears in more than one individual at the same time, or nearly so; and the lustre of this constellation is succeeded by a long night of mediocrity or decline. It would appear to be a law of nature, to which there is no exception in the mysterious regulation of the life of nations, that the highest productions of genius can only be created by them once; that the

efflorescence of the general mind, in all the departments in which it is destined to attain perfection, takes place at the same time; and that the fruits of autumn are invariably succeeded by the desolation of winter, not less in the moral than in the physical world. It may be difficult to explain how it happens, but the most cursory acquaintance with history has impressed upon all thoughtful observers the melancholy conviction, that the corruption of taste invariably follows its perfection, and that the florid riches of the Corinthian order follow the manly proportions of the Doric, the simple grace of the Ionic, in other branches of literature, taste, and the fine arts, besides architecture. How long did the era of Pericles endure in Grecian-of Augustus, in Roman story? Where is now the immortal genius of Dante or Raphael, in Italy; of Camoens or Velasquez, in Spain? And when the present generation shall have gone to their graves, what traces will remain on the stage of Britain of the mighty genius of Garrick or Siddons; in France, of that of Talma and Mademoiselle Georges?

The thirst for novelty, the desire of change in the public, the variety of originality in artists, is the main cause of this downward progress. Like the Athenians, in the days of St Paul, highly civilised nations spend their time in the search of something new. Change is incessantly required, even though that change is from perfection to mediocrity. Great reputations become obnoxious from their very greatness envy criticises, malice derides, mediocrity tires of them. Men weary of hearing men called the Just. This prevailing disposition of human nature may be observed in the perpetual changes of dress, furniture, and architecture, which are constantly going forward, apparently for no other reason but in order to make the new productions different from what the old had been. When the old were perfect, it may readily be conceived what the new must be. Variety, and the desire for praise in the artist, coincide with and foster this tendency in the public. Each one strives to strike out something new, in the hope of earning the praise of originality. Imitation of preceding greatness, or even the inhaling of its spirit, is deemed the indication of a little mind. Hence the invention of new orders in architecture, conspicuous only for their deformity; hence the

overloading of former ones with meretricious ornaments; hence the extravagance of Turner's colouring, after the once spotless style of Claude; hence the fantasy and horrors of the modern French drama, after the noble models of Corneille and Racine. To other arts beside architecture, the lines of Thomson are applicable

"First, unadorned

And nobly plain, the manly Doric rose;

The Ionic next, with decent matron grace,
Her airy pillar heaved: luxuriant last

The rich Corinthian spread her wanton wreath."

In addition to these sources of corruption common to the stage with all works of imagination, there are others peculiar to itself, which render the downward progress of that noble art more certain and rapid than any other. These are to be found in the adventitious aids which it derives from the extraneous but far inferior charms of scenery, music, dancing, and decoration. Immense is the danger, incalculable the degradation, which originates in this source. It is only the greater from the attractive nature, especially to the multitude, of those seductive allies to the naked majesty of thought. Every one knows how strongly they act upon the imagination-how powerfully they stimulate the senses-what a whirl of delightful sensations, for the moment at least, is produced by their combination. If any one doubts it, let him go to the opera of London, Paris, or Naples; his scepticism will probably not survive five minutes after their splendid exhibitions. though the effect of these half imaginative, half physical displays, when the eye, the ear, and the imagination are alike entranced, is for the time irresistible, they are very different, on the retrospect, from the recollection of the noble pieces of the drama represented by the great masters of the histrionic art. They partake of the fleeting nature of sensual pleasure, so closely resembling, according to the beautiful image of the poet, flakes of snow falling on a wintry stream

"A moment white, then lost for ever."

But

But the noble lines of Corneille, recited by Talma-the dignified characters of Shakspeare, personated by Siddons—

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