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motion, of composition. When you look near, the details appear to have been the principal object and great aim of the artist; step back, and all is freedom and bold touches; the bounding deer seems starting from the canvas. Ruisdale's landscapes are cold and black, and yet beautiful. Wooverman introduces always, it seems, a white horse in his pictures; there is at Mr Hope's a white horse, par excellence, full of fire and impatience at the sound of the war trumpet.

A collection of pictures, of some reputation (Mr Walsh Porter's) is for sale at Christy's;-but I saw nothing there half so worthy of attention as the auctioneer himself. It is a received thing here, that a person of that profession is to play the buffoon, and amuse his customers with exaggerated and fantastical descriptions of the things he offers for sale,-odd digressions, and burlesque earnestness, particularly when he deals in objects of taste, of no very definable value, as china, pictures, antiques, &c. What he says does not persuade any body; it is not meant to be believed, but merely to amuse the crowd of rich idlers, who go there to kill time, and, being there, buy, what they might not otherwise have thought of buying, precisely as the mountebanks at fairs attract the populace. These have a politer audience to entertain, and need more refinement in their jokes, and really shew sometimes a good deal of humour, and strokes of real wit. It must be owned, that the anxious solicitude of amateurs about trifles, the importance they attach to certain conventional beauties and merits of their own creation, and which none but the initiated in the mysteries of taste can discover; the little tricks they practise against each other, in pursuit of their common game, and manœuvres

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of various sorts, afford ample field to ridicule, and materials to amuse the amateurs at their own ex

pence. Foote, who wrote farces, and played in them with equal success, drew for the stage a dilettanti auctioneer from nature; the wit, and general application of the satire, has survived the mere personal mimickry intended; as the Tartuffe of Moliere, (if 1 may be allowed to compare these two writers) remains an incomparable picture of hypocrisy, while the original who sat for the portrait is forgotten.

Another collection has been sold, that of Mr Greville. The object of this connoisseur was to exhibit the progress of the art from its origin, by a series of pictures of successive ages;-many were very bad, but it was at least an acknowledged consequence of his plan.

We have just seen Madame Catalani;—she is a bewitching creature, and, notwithstanding our high expectations, she has exceeded them. Her voice, which is strong, clear, and harmonious, and produced without effort or contorsions, is the least of her attractions. The grace and the modesty of her appearance,-the naïveté,-the archness of her smile, tender and playful at the same time, charmed us still more than her voice. Des Hayes and Vestris are winged Mercuries; this Vestris is, however, said to be inferior to the others. Some of my countrymen have assured me, in confidence, that he would not be endured at Paris-it may be so, I have not had the honour of being lately at Paris. The Opera-house of London is, like all the theatres I have seen in England, in the shape of a horse-shoe. The side-boxes are ill turned to see, and the front ones too far to hear. The height of the ceiling is so great that the voice is lost. It

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seems strange that the semicircular shape should not have occurred, or should not have been adopted. Each spectator would have the actors precisely in front of him, and at a mean distance equal for all. Such a theatre would moreover contain more spectators. I would lower the ceiling one-third at least, dispensing with the two upper tiers of boxes. It would be a very small pecuniary sacrifice, this high region being always but thinly filled, and by spectators whose presence, or behaviour at least, is either a great scandal, or very inconvenient ;—that is to say, in the side-galleries, certain ladies, who carry on their business quite openly, selling and delivering the articles they trade in under the eye of the public, and with a degree of shamefulness for which the inhabitants of Otaheite alone can furnish any precedent. That part of the upper region which fronts the stage is occupied by a less indecent, but more noisy sort of people; sailors, footmen, low tradesmen and their wives and mistresses, who enjoy themselves, drinking, whistling, howling as much as they please. These gods, for so they are called from their elevated station, which is in France denominated the paradis, assume the high prerogative of hurling down their thunder on both actors and spectators, in the shape of nut-shells, cores of apples, and orange-peel. This innocent amusement has always been considered in England as a sort of exuberance of liberty, of which it is well to have a little too much, to be sure that you have enough. Some persons complain even that the gods are become much too tame and tractable, and like the French tenants of the paradis,-a good thing in itself, but a bad omen. Surprised to see centinels with fixed bayonets at all the avenues of the play

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house, I inquired, whether, in case of disorders and violence, these soldiers might make use of their arms. By no means, I was told. A murder by the bayonet would be like any other. Why then have bayonets? Is it to accustom the people to the sight of the thing before it is used?

The former turbulence of the lower ranks seems to have reached the upper. There were, some months ago, certain riotous proceedings, which shook the very foundations, if not of the state, at least those of the playhouse. As it was before our arrival, I only speak from hearsay. The manager of the Theatre-Royal of Covent-Garden had become, it seems, guilty of two crimes of lese parterre: first, of having raised the prices a little, under pretence of their being no higher than in the reign of Queen Anne, although every thing else had risen threefold: secondly, of having let some boxes by the year. The pit (to use a bench expression, for here the pit divides the sovereignty with the boxes) demanded the restoration of things to the old footing. The manager insisted. The pit hissed, and made a noise every night. The disturbance increased in violence. Nobody went but the Guelfs and Ghibelins. The pit faction took the name of O. P. (old prices.) Some individuals, who had gone a little farther than the others, were arrested. The resentment of the O. P.'s knew no bounds; and they proceeded one night to the entire demolition of all that was demolishable in the interior of the house,-lustres, seats, cushions, violins, base and counterbase, &c. Some persons were again arrested by the officers of police, (no bayonets) ;-these were young men of good families, and all of them above the common people, who took no share in all this. These

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gentlemen had to pay the fiddlers. But the manager's situation was not the better for that. He had to yield, after having held out for six weeks; and was obliged to ask pardon for having done what he had a right to do. And, as to the private boxes, for what was no loss to the public, as they were the worst situated boxes of the whole house; but the public thought they saw in it that aristocratic pride which wants to be apart from the multitude. The contagion spread, and ran the round through the country theatres. The O. P.s committed the same depredations everywhere, and had to pay for them as in London, but gained the victory over the managers.

*

This despotism of the public over those who administer to their pleasures is the same, I believe, all over Europe. The actors are everywhere exposed to contumely and insult;-treated with disrespect, they cannot be respectable. Voltaire, who discovered, sixty years ago, the Britannic isles, or at least taught the French something of the manners of the people and of their literature, made them believe that comedians and their art were honoured there. It is an error. Garrick might be so in his time,-Mrs Siddons and the Kemble family are so now,—but these are only exceptions; and it is not very probable that the English, who pay the arts, but are accused of despising artists in general, should lay

* To no writer, says Lord Holland, in his Life of Lope de la Vega, are the English so indebted for their fame in France, and all over Europe, as to Voltaire. No critic ever employed more wit, ingenuity, and diligence in forming literary intercourse. His enemies would persuade us that such exuberance of wit implies want of information; but they only succeed in showing that a want of wit does not imply an exuberance of information.