young man who, as we understood, was to be your substitute, and pointed out to him the course he was to pursue, especially forbidding him to make use of loud applause. He did precisely what was prohibited, and so scandalised the public as to produce a quantity of hisses, which marred what would otherwise have been a bril liant success. Authors consequently have complained to us that they dare no longer confide their pieces to our theatre. The performers have been equally loud in their complaints; and their dissatisfaction, joined to our own, has induced us to adopt the resolution of no longer intrusting to you, after to-morrow, the service of the theatre."

Mennecier, not choosing to submit to this summary dismissal, brought an action for fulfilment of his contract, and the cause was tried on the 30th of August.

The plaintiff's counsel, after maintaining that the contract, originally made with a former manager of the theatre, was binding on his successors, proceeded to vindicate the conduct of his client. Mennecier, he said, had for twenty years exercised the profession of chef de claque, and during his long career had obtained the most honourable testimonials of satisfaction from authors and managers.— Among these was the following attestation from the former manager, M. de Cès-Caupenne :

"I hereby certify that for these six years past, under my management at the Ambigu, and also for several months at the Gaîté, M. Mennecier has performed the functions of conductor of the claque; and that during this period, the management, the authors, the performers, and the public have the highest reason to congratulate them. selves on their relations with him, and on the regularity of his conduct on all occasions."

But this was not all. The approbation of the defendants themselves appeared from their correspondence with the plaintiff. In one note, M. Cormon wrote him thus :-"To insure the success of the piece, and satisfy you as much as possible, we shall let you have two pit places till its last representation; and I hope, on the other hand, that you will take good care of us." In another note he said, "I send you six places; you see that I always keep you in mind. Let us make a strong stand to-night." And in another, "My dear Menne. cier, I am anxious that you should be satisfied with me; I send you four pit places for to-night. You see we take care of you; do you, in turn, take care of the piece."

As to the imputation that Mennecier had absented himself without permission, and had devolved his duty upon an inexperienced boy, whose incapacity had compromised the success of Raphael, it was sufficient to say, that this brief substitution had been consented to by the managers; that this inexperienced boy was one-andthirty, and was the son of Mennecier, who had spared no pains in his education, so that he might worthily inherit his father's repu. tation.

M. Cournol appeared to plead his own cause and that of his fellow-defendant, and gave a magnificent account of the important and responsible functions of a claqueur. The claque, he said, like other arts, has had its infancy. In its earlier period, applause was all that was required from a claqueur. In those days, large and sonorous

hands were all that was wanted; but the public are not now to be taken in with clapping-they know too well where it comes from. We must now, therefore, have people who can not only clap their hands, but who can laugh, sob, and weep in the proper places, and whose gaiety and sensibility can excite the sympathetic feelings of the audience. They require to be carefully formed for the profes sion by education and discipline; and the claqueurs have rehearsals as regularly as the actors. "This, gentlemen," said M. Cournol, “is divulging the secrets of the green-room; but I am constrained to do so, in order to make you comprehend why Mennecier, and people of his school, will not do for us. They have neither the will nor the ability to deviate from their old-fashioned routine; but we must have persons capable of performing their duties with a degree of skill and refinement suited to the present wants of the stage."

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The court annulled the contract as being contra bonos mores. Seeing," says the sentence, "that such a contract is essentially based on falsehood and corruption; that its object is the obligation to employ subordinate agents, who undertake for hire to make feigned manifestations and play concerted tricks to deceive the public, and that consequently it is derogatory to the principles and laws which relate to public morals; seeing, moreover, that such agreements are contrary to public order, as these fictitious and purchased manifestations create disturbance in the theatres, and destroy freedom of judgment on the part of the public who pay; for these reasons, the court declares the contract in question to be null, as being illicit," &c.

This judgment, by defeating this impudent attempt to enforce by the authority of the law the fulfilment of one of these precious contracts, has of course put an end to the permanent transactions of this nature. But it seems to have had little or no effect in abating the nuisance; the claqueurs in the Parisian theatres are as industrious, as noisy, and as insufferable as ever. Opposite parties of them often come into collision, and a row is not unfrequently the consequence. Within these few weeks, a violent disturbance took place at the Grand Opera, occasioned by the great success which attended the appearance of Fanny Elssler in one of Taglioni's principal parts. The partisans of the latter divinity were alarmed at the prospect of her being superseded by her more youthful rival, who, on her next appearance, was hissed by a band of claqueurs in the Taglioni interest. This produced, on the following evening, a detachment of Elsserites, and a regular battle was fought in the pit, commencing with hissing, hooting, clapping, and shouting, and ending with kicks and cuffs, amid the screams, oaths, execrations, and other mellifluous noises so abundantly used by the French combatants. The fray was ended by the police, who carried off the ringleaders; but not till ladies begun to make their escape out of the house, and the enter tainment of the evening was effectually marred. The enjoyment of the audience at the same theatre has of late been repeatedly interrupted by squabbles between the hired supporters of Duprez, the admirable tenor-singer now the rage in Paris, and those of Nourrit, whose laurels have been somewhat withered by the suc cess of his competitor. Even in the temple of the classical drama, the

Théâtre Français, similar collisions take place between the partisans of the still charming, though antiquated Thalia of the French stage, Mademoiselle Mars, and those of the young Melpomene, Mademioselle Rachel. This actress, though a girl of seventeen, has burst upon the public in all the brightness of matured excellence, and has revived in their ancient splendour the long-forgotten masterpieces of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire. Whenever she appears, the doors are besieged by enthusiastic crowds, while poor Mademoiselle Mars (for the Parisians will not worship more than one idol at a time) has been on alternate nights performing her most exquisite parts to empty benches. Sic transit gloria mundi!

The strange trial and the other circumstances we have mentioned, have of late drawn the attention of the Parisians to this gross nui. sance and public opinion, it is to be hoped, may have some influence in putting it down. Le Temps, a journal of distinguished ability and influence, speaking of the trial, makes the following remarks :—

"Here is a case in which the manager of a theatre publicly avows that it is customary for himself and his brethren to employ claqueurs, -to train his theatrical vermin, multiply them, and class them under different species;-that it is usual for them to attend rehearsals, and take notes of the places at which they are to laugh or cry, sob or clap their hands! We could not have conceived it possible that any one could have had the courage to proclaim his participation in such disgusting manœuvres. What are we henceforth to think of authors who have had recourse to this kind of support, and of theatrical managements which resort to it in the regular course of business? The judges and king's counsel did not perceive or point out all the abominations of the claque. They did not know that these mercenary bands are accustomed to attack, insult, and beat the spectator who wishes to judge for himself; they did not know that every impartial spectator is actually in danger on the first night of a new piece; they did not know that there are bullies ready to fall upon any spectator who ventures to disturb the performance by a hiss, however well merited; they did not know that the assistance of the police had been procured to arrest inmates of a box who chose to be of a different opinion from the claqueurs; they did not know that the claque is a traffic highly profitable to wealthy managers and authors, at the expense of the poor, the conscientious, and the public. Can we be any longer at a loss for the causes of the degradation of dramatic art, and the ruin of the stage ?" Another journal, La Presse, speaking of the feud between the partisans of the rival dancers, Taglioni and Elssler, enters upon a sarcastic vindication of the claqueurs against the attack of its contemporaries.

"All these eloquent invectives," it says, "against the Romains du lustre' seem to be unreasonable and unjust. There is nothing personally disagreeable in the claqueur, and he is serviceable to the public as well as to the theatre. He is a man of letters, quite au fait as to the taste of the day, and full of dramatic erudition. He knows the strong and the weak points of a piece; and though he never withholds from the marked passages the number of rounds of applause that have been bargained for, yet he can admire or disap

prove for himself, and is by no means the dupe of the noise which like other persons in higher stations, he himself contributes to make. If it is true that the stage castigat ridendo mores, nobody ought to have manners more chastened than the claqueur; for nobody frequents the theatres so assiduously as he does in the way of his business. If he sometimes protects mediocrity, he often supports originality and merit, decides the hesitating opinion of the public, and silences malignity and envy. He gives spirit and vivacity to representations which, without him would be dull and cold; he gives courage to the young actress, trembling when she first appears before the public; his applauses are balm for the wounded self-love of an author, who, while they are music in his ears, easily forgets that he paid for them in the morning. In short, the claqueur is an accommodation furnished by the manager to the public, who are too fine and too fashionable to commit the vulgar. ism of clapping their own hands. The smallest gesture, the least symp tom of feeling being proscribed in good society, and every body believing himself to be good society, the theatres, but for the enlivening sounds of the claqueurs, would be the abodes of silence as dismal and funereal as that which reigns in the catacombs of Egypt. queurs were suppressed, they would be loudly called for by the public before a week was over; and the proof of their being indispensable, is that we have always had them. Le claqueur, n'est, du reste, qu'une nature admirative un peu exagerĕe.”*

If the cla

Such is the claqueur system in the French metropolis. Among ourselves it has not attained the matured state of organization to which it has been brought by our neighbours. We are not aware of there as yet being in London a bureau de la claque, conducted with all the regularity of a public office, from which managers and authors can be provided with troops ready disciplined and trained for their purposes; yet every frequenter of our theatres knows that in all of them, save one, the nuisance is already great, daily increasing, and likely soon to become intolerable. A dramatic author will always have his friends, who will come to see his new play for the purpose of supporting it; and their endeavours can never do much harm, while they may really do some good. If they applaud through thick and thin, without judgment or discrimination, they will be treated by the audience as "babbling" hounds are treated by the rest of the pack; while, on the other hand, their previous knowledge of the play may enable them, if they have tact, to direct the attention of the audience to beauties which otherwise might have been overlooked. But this is a very different thing from a house packed by managerial effrontery full of hirelings, for the purpose of brow-beating the audience, and stifling by noise and clamour the voice of criticism. Such practices, in place of being, as at present,tamely acquiesced in, ought to be visited with the strongest manifestations of public dipleasure.

* This very expressive phrase is quite untranslatable.

WE were lately travelling from Cheltenham to town, and a change of position at Oxford placed us on the box beside the coachman whose task it was to pilot us from Alma Mater to the metropolis. Though a young man, he had all the distinctive signs of an experienced whip, and was in form and hue a perfect Jehu. Bulky in figure, rubicund in complexion, and knowing in physiognomy, he lacked no "complement externe" that Nature could bestow, and art had not been appealed to in vain. A green cut-away,-blue bird's-eye neckerchief,spotted waistcoat, cord breeches, and boots with drab-cloth tops; a broad-brimmed white hat, a pink in his button-hole, and a thick gold ring on the little finger of his whip hand, assimilated the outer with the inner man, and made all in perfect keeping. His "'haviour" on the box was, in his own language, "ondeniable." As soon as we were well clear of the city, and fairly started on the Henley road, we fell into conversation. The discourse, at first general, and chiefly allusive to "hosses" and the weather, shortly became quite confidential. We gradually fell into discourse on matters intimate, and we found that our friend had not limited his peregrinations to the space that lies between the Angel at Oxford and the Bell in Holborn. He had seen more of the world, and was willing to impart his knowledge. The first remark that bore upon the subject was a question which he put in a somewhat abrupt transition from the high price of corn, which he had just been lamenting" Are you fond of the sea, sir ?"—" Why, yes," we answered," in spite of having crossed the Atlantic some five or six times." "Ah," he replied, I've never been on that 'ere hocean; but I went across the sea too, last summer as ever wos ;- -Be quiet, will you? What is that mare about?"

Heedless of the interjection, we inquired on what occasion.

"Why, you see, sir, I'll tell you. I got tired last summer o' drivin' a hempty cútch up and down, and wanted to have a bit of a spurt, jest to make things a little lively. So says I to some friends of mine as drives on the Porchmouth and Suthanton roads, suppose we takes a start in the steamer, and goes to Hantwerp. You knows Hantwerp, I suppose, sir? Well, they was all agreeable, so off we trundled, first to Ramsgate, where we picked up a few more good'uns, and then off we sets. When we was aboard, them as warn't sick talked a good deal about what they meant to do and say, and was mighty strong with the French then; but I reckon it was a different thing when we got there; damme, if a man on'em could speak no more than that 'ere near leader!"

"Never a one, sir; we was all gen'l'm'n as drives, some one road, some another. As it was a'most dark when we left Ramsgate, we wasn't long a-turnin' in; and when we got up in the mornin' quite