played at Drury Lane on his previous visit with triumphant success. He had not advanced twenty lines in his part when the interruptions began. By degrees the storm rose and swelled, and burst forth in all its denunciatory fury. Every species of indecent noise and offensive hindrance was resorted to. Whistling, laughter, coarse jests, and insulting raillery were showered prodigally down upon every effort of the baited actor, whose performance was often little else then inexplicable dumb show." The occasion was a trying one, and might have been expected to arouse the indignation of the most forbearing man. But to the lasting credit of Mr. Forrest he bore himself with perfect dignity, and with manly boldness persevered in his part to the end. He made no remonstrance," uttered no appeal, but let the asinine drove bray on and wreak their lowbred spite and brutal inhospitality on a stranger and an American, even while the journals were still recording the generous warmth of Macready's second reception in the United States. These outrages were continued night after night, but at last the noble bearing of Forrest, and his really great acting, subdued the humor of the London pit, and they entered their hearty protest against further persecution, by giving way to the most riotous applause and deafening shouts of sympathy and genuine admiration. There was something English in this, after all, for as a people they love fair play, and even in the ring it is considered base to strike a man when down. It were absurd to expatiate on the want of taste and correct feeling in these unmannerly assaults upon a foreign artist, for the words are meaningless in the ears of the paltry parasites who committed them. But it is a matter of some interest to know how far they were confined to this miserable set, and whether any other classes participated in, or smiled upon their doings. The press may have been misled, and have interpreted the first explosion of premeditated mal ice into the general expression of popular feeling. What favors this supposition is the fact, that the discerning "Times" newspaper took an opposite course, and rendered the fullest justice to Mr. Forrest's acknowledged talents. And at the last, even the " Morning Post" relented, and spoke praisingly of the vilified object of its early abuse. "Finis coronat opus." There was one journal, and, alas, what a falling off is there, which lent itself now, as before, to this pitiful onslaught on an inoffensive man whose only crime was his merit. The "Examiner," under the conduct of its distinguished founder, Mr. Leigh Hunt, acquired enviable reputation for the elevation and power of its theatrical criticisms which, under its present proprietor, Mr. A. Fonblanque, is fast fading away. This gentleman gives his attention chiefly to political affairs, and by his pungent style and felicitous expression has obtained well deserved popularity. Unhappily, he has transferred his theatrical columns to the direction of a person of the name of Foster, whose literary ability is grotesquely united to a low mind, and Jerry-Sneak disposition. He glories in the doubtful distinction of chief of the claque which lines the benches of any theatre where Mr. Macready plays, and his servile office seems to be to look after the interests, fame, and profits of his knowing patron. Now, whether the English Roscius" employs this jackall as a sort of puffergeneral we know not, and care as little, but we are loth to credit the general opinion that an actor of Mr. Macready's position would condescend to engage in his service the rancorous assailant of a foreign rival. This literary assassin, Foster, who stabs like the Italian bravo in the back, is certainly devoted corps et ame to his cause; and it is susceptible, if required, of the clearest proof, that he was the most active and adroit in the efforts made to hunt Mr. Forrest down. We regret We heard from a party who was present on one of these occasions that, after enduring for some time every species of galling outrage, Mr. Forrest suddenly stopped, and summoning to his face an intense expression of scornful contempt, he hurled it at the house-pit, box and gallery-in one steady, deliberate gaze, and then, emphatically turning his back, calmly ascended the stage. Our informant describes this look as one of the most terrible things he ever saw, and its effect was withering on his cowardly tormentors. It is stated that a quarrel has lately broken out between these "sworn friends." Foster was getting too greedy. that the high character of the English press is compromised for an instant by an interloper, whose servility turned up with a broad hem of vanity plays such fantastic tricks" as to lower all connected with him. "The goat is vain as goat can be, It is pretty clear, then, that the press was no party to this unworthy conspiracy, and from the minutest enquiries on the spot it is equally certain that the public, both aristocratic and plebeian, were nothing more than "lookers on," whose feelings, perhaps, were not altogether averse to the novel sport of interring the grand Yankee actor alive. It was some fun, after all their losses, to get an American fairly on the hip, and it was Mr. Forrest's peculiar ill-fortune to become in some sort the victim of a national act of retribution. We do not accuse the English people of uniting in this paltry act of theatrical immolation, nor think it necessary to heed their cry "thou canst not say I did it;" but still they were assentingly present when it was done, and though they may have turned away one eye, they looked contentedly on with the other. We are reminded of the warlike prelate of the middle age, whose religion forbade him to shed blood, but at the battle of Bouvines he blest his enemies with one hand whilst he knocked them smartly down with the other. There is always a way when there's a will, says the proverb, and the English are invariably systematic in their modes of procedure. It may be allowed us to rejoice over the magnanimous contrast offered by the people of Philadelphia last summer when the news of Mr. Forrest's ill-treatment had reached us. Some persons were disposed to vent their indignation on Mr. Anderson, the English actor, then playing at the Arch-street theatre, but the audience at once, and unanimously, suppressed a flagrant act of injustice. There is not an American through the length and breadth of the land, whether admirer or not of Mr. Forrest, who did not feel the dastardly insults heaped upon our national tragedian as a personal wound; but a profound sense of the wrong restrained them from aveng. ing it on an innocent and helpless man who happened to be at their mercy. Let the despicable ruffians of Oxfordstreet take a lesson from the Model Republic," and shrink back rebuked at a grandeur of soul which may astonish, but cannot elevate them. Now, by the gods, we are tempted to exclaim, in the Cambyses vein, we are perplexed at the audacity of this class of grubs, these Fosters, who hover like hungry buzzards on the outskirts of the English press to pick up superfluous crumbs; we are sore perplexed, we say, to see these worthless animals crawling up to the shoulders of a great nation, and, giddy at their borrowed height, daring to stare with stupid impertinence on things truly great and noble. These are the creatures who fear to raise their abject heads in the presence of an idiot lord, and yet assail the world with clamor against the "Yankee repudiators;" loading us with terms of foul reproach; and tired at last of wasting their breath upon the desert air, they turn and pounce exultingly down on the "tarnation Yankee tragedian," exuding their harmless venom on his laurelled brow. In treating of these creeping things we feel somewhat like an elephant picking up flies. We have done. There is another class in England, however, that Mr. Forrest has never pleased, either on or off the stage; and this, the first, par excellence, in the realm, her nobility. His acting they candidly declared moved them too much to regard it with pleasure. They like tragedy spoken in a soft and boudoir tone, and when stage necessity requires force, they expect the actor to "roar it gently as a sucking dove." Their tragedians have, perhaps, judiciously consulted the artificial tastes of my lord and lady, whose condescending nod is glory enough; but our Republican actor frankly despised this overstrained refinement, and gave free scope to natural impulses. He played as genius inspired, and Shakspeare wrote; and the delicate nerves of fashion vibrated too roughly under his touch. They were made to feel; his passion frightened, and his pathos choked them. They were horrified at being thus reduced to a human level; and their dignity was shocked at betraying emotions that it is the puerile vanity of the English aristocracy to hide, and they fled in confusion back to the softer excitements of the opera and the ballet. But men of letters, of standing, and of taste, came and remained, book in hand, to follow with critical eye the novel readings of the American actor. The intelligent and respectable middleclass thronged eagerly forward, and constituted an audience far more discriminating and attentive than the titled nonentities who had withdrawn. Be sides, we may be permitted to remark, though somewhat beyond our pale, that Mr. Forrest took no pains in private life to conciliate this influential class, which a Garrick and a Siddons had stooped to do, and the indifference of the stiff-necked democrat called down upon him their Olympian frowns. With this we have nothing to do; but it is well-known that Mr. Forrest would at any time be more flattered by the honest yell of a "Bowery b'hoy," than the approving smirk of England's proudest duke. There are many men of talent who have a morbid horror of patronage, and our tragedian is one of them. His friends, however, have something left to rejoice over, and his enemies to rail at, in the fact that his greatest triumphs in England both before and now were achieved in Shaksperian parts. On the last occasion the Indian piece of Metamora was effectively got up, and great results were anticipated from its entire novelty; but though his acting was admired, the Jupiter tonans of the press, the Times," pronounced the part below him, and King Lear was called for, which he repeated for a third of his engagement. He continued to play till prejudice was converted into enthusiasm, and his cowardly assailants were shamed into silence, when he threw up his engagement and withdrew from the London stage forever. We were pre sent on one occasion when his man ager, Mr. Maddox, sought to prevail on him to play again, declaring that no faction could succeed in killing him, but to all his entreaties he returned a resolute refusal. He seemed to have fallen into the posthumous mood of the opera-heroine : "The flattering error cease to prove, Oh, let me be deceased." The triumphant progress of Mr. Forrest through the English provinces and in Scotland, where the most accomplished critic of the age, Lord Jeffrey, enthusiastically applauded him; and last in Ireland, confirms, we beg to plead, the statement we have made, to wit, that the discomfiture of Mr. Forrest in London sprang from the machinations of a low cabal, which were for awhile countenanced by national prejudice, but which only effervesced in the metropolis under the stimulus of the daily press, then highly hostile to the United States. We have been led into so much detail that our space is already exceeded, and cuts us off from the pleasure we should have had in recounting the more fortunate fate of Miss Cushman. Her talents have won her admirers on the stage, whilst her remarkable energy of character, and complete knowledge of the world, have widened her popularity wherever she has gone. We rejoice in the success of an American actress in London, and we trust the time will yet come when our really distinguished actors, a Cooper, Forrest, and Placide, will have justice done them. It is a glaring reproach to England that she suffers the grovelling jealousies of sycophantic cliques, who form a sort of body-guard around her principal actors that no rival may approach too near, to drive with insult the American player from her shores, "whose worth is warrant for his welcome thither." And least of all, of the numerous band of foreign artists, French, German, and Italian, who annually pillage London, should an American be singled out, and given up to the irritating stings of a set of green-room gnats, since his country, for long years back, has heaped its wealth and garlands on English artists of higher grade, and become the chosen home of hundreds else. We repeat, that it is time this two-fold wrong should cease; and that England should feel that her hospitality and dignity are both degraded, when an American and a stranger are thus publicly reviled; for he is there in "double trust," a kinsman, and a guest. *An amusing anecdote was related of several noblemen who could not resist the attraction of Mr. Forrest's acting, and were drawn to the theatre, but yet determined, from an esprit du corps, not to countenance him in any way, they refused to occupy their private boxes, and demeaned themselves (Heaven save the mark!) by sitting unobserved among the public. The coming steamer will probably restore to our drooping stage the American Macbeth, "scotched, but not killed." His fame is unimpaired, and his mortifying reverses have only enhanced his claims to the affectionate admiration of his countrymen. What though the rose of England be missing in his foreign wreath, where the thistle and the shamrock so gracefully intertwine, his country's esteem of his splendid genius will ne'er look back, ne'er feel retiring ebb." A greeting home awaits him, such as rarely falls to the lot of any man; and we fear not to predict that wherever his professional pursuits may carry him, spontaneous shouts of welcome will express his countrymen's admiration of the actor, and love for the man. These joyful echoes reverberating o'er her white cliffs, will be to England the only answer it beseems our dignity to make, and from it she may learn that however sensible America may be to foreign appreciation of her talent, she is proudly indifferent to all unworthy attempts to abase it. THE OLD ARM-CHAIR, THAT ROCKS SO EASY. HAYDN'S APPRENTICESHIP. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN 66 FIRST PART. In the beginning of the last century a young married couple lived in a modest-looking cottage at the extremity of the village of Rohran, on the frontier between Hungary and Austria. They were industrious, and much liked by all their neighbors. The husband, an honest wagoner, was called Merry Jobst," on account of the merry tales and jests with which he always amused his companions. His wife's name was Elizabeth, but every body in the village and neighborhood called her "Pretty Elschen;" and, indeed, Jobst and Elschen were considered the handsomest couple in the whole country around. The Hungarians, like the Austrians and Bohemians, are very fond of music; and the proverb says, "in two houses you will find three violins and one cymbal." For this reason, it happens frequent ly that persons of the poorer classes, when their ordinary occupations afford them an insufficient support, take their harp, violin or cymbal, to play on Sunday, on the road or in the taverns, and gain so much by it that they are enabled even to lay by a little. It did not occur to the merry Jobst for a long time to help on his humble house-keeping in this way; but when pretty Elschen said, one day to him, "It is time we make a little more for our family," he gave a leap for joy, kissed his wife, and replied, Well! I will put new strings to my violin and thy harp, and on the next holiday we will go to the road before the tavern, and play and sing merrily. Those who choose to do so, will give us something; and let the growlers pass by !—God and the Holy Virgin will help us! And on the next holiday afternoon merry Jobst and pretty Elschen were seated on the road-side before the village inn, and Jobst played his violin, and Elschen the harp, which she accompanied with her sweet, clear voice. Not a single growler passed them, but every one who came that road stopped a little, and listened with pleasure; and when he went on, threw at least a bright drikreutzer piece in the apron of the pretty young woman. It may be believed that Jobst and his wife were not sad when they returned home in the evening. Henceforward they played and sang every week. When, after some years, the old schoolmaster, from the neighboring little town of Haimburg, came along that road one Sunday evening, he stopped in surprise, and smiled at what he saw and heard. In an arbor opposite the inn Jobst was sitting fiddling, and near him Elschen, playing on the harp and singing; between them, on the ground, a sweet little round-cheeked boy, about three years of age. He had a small board, shaped like a violin, fastened to his neck, and he played on it, with a willow twig for a fiddle-stick. The most surprising of all was, that the little man kept exact time, paused when his father did, and Mother Elschen had a solo; fell in with his father exactly on the semi-quaver, and made the same gestures. Sometimes he raised his clear tiny voice, and shouted distinctly in the same strain of the tune his mother sing. Is that your boy, musician?" asked the organist, when the song was finished. "To be sure, sir,-it is my little Seperl."+ 46 The boy seems to love music?" * The schoolmasters in the small German towns and villages are generally the organists, and where there is no organ, the chanters in church. † In Austria, the German name for Joseph. VOL. XIX.-NO. XCIX. 3 |