documents into the albums of collectors. M. N. Roqueplan was the first to put them under lock and key for better safety. M. Charles Nuitter was the first, however, to undertake the laborious task of arranging and classifying them, which he did under the heads of Registers of Receipts at the Door, Registers of Expenditure, Correspondence, Advertisements, Plans, Livrefs, Political Songs, and Photographs. A little book of excerpts from these archives might almost be as amusing as extracts from those of Simancas. M. Nérée-Desarbres has availed himself of the said resources for the account of the more remarkable receipts at the door, as before given. The correspondence comprises ministerial letters, authors' letters, those of composers and artists, as well as offers, solicitations, and complaints, which would assuredly supply some curious reading. Up to 1790, the style of advertising was excessively simple-merely the name of the pieces to be played. The public do not appear to have cared at that epoch who were the actors or actresses, singers or dancers. The names of the latter were first introduced in small letters, and no distinction was allowed. Lays, Mdlle. Branchu, and Nourrit, appear in precisely the same sized type as the subordinates. Gradually the advertisements assumed larger dimensions, certain names appeared in larger type, then in gigantic characters-the videttes, or sentinels on horseback, of the modern Opera. Then came the sensation announcements of débuts, rentrées, and last representations. Some of the placards are crossed with bands, announcing a change of arrangements on account of change of government. Nothing could more curiously indicate the rapidity with which such changes have come about in Paris, and how little they have sometimes been anticipated! On the 1st of April, 1814, the Opera bills announced the "Triomphe de Trajan," but at the demand of the foreign potentates this was changed for "La Vestale," which had, however, to be performed with the Trajan scenery and decorations. "Vive Henri IV." was twice sung the same night by Lays, amidst thunders of applause. This might be attributed to the frivolity or to the dormant love of legitimacy of the Parisians, according to the turn of men's minds. It is quite true that a year later (April 18, 1815) "Vive Henri IV." was not sung, but the same thunders of applause welcomed the presence of Napoleon I. The same curious modifications, necessitated by incessant political changes in the metropolis of France, are to be met with in the "livrets." The words "king" and " "law are constantly made to take the place one of the other. The rhymes of "trône" and "couronne" were suppressed by the republic. The songs in honour of each successive government, and form of government, are collected together in one interesting group. "Vive Henri IV." now quietly reposes between the "Marseillaise" and "Ça Ira." Will it ever be drawn out again? The "Chant du Départ," the "Réveil du Peuple," the "Veillons au Salut de l'Empire," and Hortense's "Partant pour la Syrie,” fraternise in the same portfolio, side by side. The collection of photographs of artists, in the costumes of their different characters, inaugurated by his excellency M. Fould, at that epoch minister of the Emperor's household, will in a few years be the most interesting of all these collections, and the gem of the operatic library. "9 VOL. LVI. U 284 SIDE-WIND SALLIES OF SPLEEN. A CUE FROM SHAKSPEARE. BY FRANCIS JACOX. INFINITELY reluctant is the gentle Lady married to the Moor to believe his love departing from her, his wrath kindled against her. Fondly ingenious is she in devising excuses and suggesting palliations for his angry outburst. -Something, sure, of state, Either from Venice; or some unhatch'd practice Hath puddled his clear spirit: and, in such cases, Iago, in a subsequent scene, suggests the like consolatory explanation, to one of his victims, Desdemona, of the resentment of the other, Othello. I pray you, be content: 'tis but his humour; The business of the state does him offence, The same tendency in exasperated human nature is glanced at by Benedick when he finds Claudio out of humour at supposing Hero wooed by the Prince : Claud. I wish him joy of her. Bened. Why, that's spoken like an honest drover; so they sell bullocks. But did you think the Prince would have served you thus? Claud. I pray you, leave me. Bened. Ho! now you strike like the blind man; 'twas the boy that stole your meat, and you'll beat the post.‡ Molière illustrates this vicarious sort of vindictiveness again and again. In one comedy, it is proposed by Lélie that angry old Anselme, enraged by the étourderies of that Marplot, Mascarille, should be put in the way of expending his fury on pots and pans : Il nous le faut mener en quelque hôtellerie, In another, Arnolphe, wroth at the too successful schemings of Horace and Agnes, fires away at the furniture and a puppy dog: Poussant de temps en temps des soupirs pitoyables, Othello, Act III. Sc. 4. † Act IV. Sc. 2. § L'Etourdi, Acte I. Sc. 11 Il a même cassé, d'une main mutinée, Des vases dont la belle [Agnes] ornait sa cheminée, &c.* In yet another, we have fractious old Madame Pernelle cuffing her own maid, Flipote, because her temper is tried by Elmire and Cléante : (à Elmire) • Et sans- -Adieu, ma bru; je ne veux plus rien dire . . Allons, vous, vous rêvez et bayez aux corneilles. Montaigne tells of a gentleman of his country who, being subject to the gout, was importuned by his physicians to practise total abstinence from all manner of salt meats, and who "was wont pleasantly to reply, that he must needs have something to quarrel with in the extremity of his pain, and that he fancied that railing at and cursing now the Bologna sausages, and now the dried tongues and the hams, was some mitigation to his torments." Montaigne takes it that the discomposed mind turns its violence upon itself, if not supplied with something to oppose it. What is there, he asks, that we do not lay the fault to, right or wrong, that we may have something to quarrel with? "Who has not seen peevish gamesters tear the cards with their teeth, and swallow the dice in revenge for the loss of their money?" The conclusion of the Sieur Michel's essay is, that we can never enough condemn the senseless and ridiculous sallies of our passions. That very fractious as well as Holy Father, Pope Julius the Second, was once storming away at Michael Angelo, for declining to come at once and at any time at his Holiness's bidding. The pontiff leaned on his stick, as Michelet describes the scene,§-and frowned furiously and scolded savagely at the self-respecting artist. Must the triple-crowned pontiff dance attendance, forsooth, upon this painter fellow, instead of painter upon pope? Now there stood by, at this scene, a well-meaning but ill-advised ecclesiastic, who presumed to interpose with the pope in the painter's behalf. "Forgive him, your Holiness. These sort of people are but louts, who know nothing but just their trade." The Holy Father was thankful for a new object whereon to discharge his wrath. So he fell on the intercessor with a will, and with his stick. "Lout yourself!" he screamed, and drave the meddler from his presence with a downpour of whacks. When the rumour spread over Ireland, in 1689, of a wholesale massacre of the Englishry in active preparation, Tyrconnel, "lying Dick Talbot," sent for the chief Protestants of Dublin to the Castle, as we read in Macaulay; and, with his usual energy of diction, invoked on himself all the vengeance of Heaven if the report was not a (three bad participles) lie. And it is said that, "in his rage at finding his oaths ineffectual, he pulled off his hat and wig, and flung them into the fire." appears to have been a favourite trick of his, and the habit is a favourite This L'Ecole des Femmes, Acte IV. Sc. 6. Le Tartufe, Acte I. Sc. 1. See, passim, the fourth of Montaigne's Essais. Macaulay, History of England, vol. iii. ch. xii. jest of the historian's. Farther on again, for instance, Macaulay remarks, that Tyrconnel's savage and imperious temper was at first inflamed almost to madness by the news of Londonderry's resistance. "But, after wreaking his rage, as usual, on his wig, he became somewhat calmer."* And in a later volume the noble historian supplies us with an edifying illustration of our texts in the demeanour of the Grand Monarque himself, after the siege of Namur. When Lewis heard of the poltroonery of his son [the Duke of Maine], he showed the extreme of dudgeon and chagrin. "Never during his long reign had he been so moved. During some hours his gloomy irritability kept his servants, his courtiers, even his priests, in terror. He so far forgot the grace and dignity for which he was renowned throughout the world, that, in the sight of all the splendid crowd of gentlemen and ladies who came to see him dine at Marli, he broke a cane on the shoulders of a lacquey, and pursued the poor man with the handle."+ Mr. Froude seeks to explain the splenetic tone of Queen Elizabeth's letter against Sidney's tactics in Ireland (1566), by pleading in her behalf that it was written at the crisis of the succession quarrel in Parliament, and that her not unprovoked ill humour was merely venting itself upon the first object which came across her. No wonder, however, after such services and such a return, that the Deputy's patience was exhausted, and that he wrote (to Cecil) angrily for his recal. Sir Henry Sidney had no mind to become a mere vent-peg for her Majesty's too effervescent spleen. Sydney Smith, in his well-known description of the Island of Ceylon and its king, records how his Majesty one day so exasperated a little French ambassador, that "this lively member of the Corps Diplomatique, in a furious passion, attacked six or seven of his Majesty's largest elephants, sword in hand, and would, in all probability, have reduced them to mincemeat, if the poor beasts had not been saved from the unequal contest."§ It was for a large class that Constable the publisher might be taken as representative man, when Sir Walter Scott described him as "violenttempered with those he dared use freedom with. He was easily overawed by people of consequence; but, as usual, took it out of those whom poverty made subservient to him."|| The justice of this particular portrait may be open to exception; but unexceptional at least is its typical truth. With perfect justice does the poet make his crossed and baffled lover, writhing with the pangs of love despised, take credit to himself for not venting his frenzy on insects and flowers-for sparing the worm on his footpath, and the rose by the hedge-side: A bitter strength was in my mind: like Samson, when she scorn'd him-blind, It was early in the railway era that Sam Slick said, "Ax the first * Macaulay, History of England, vol. iii. p. 146. § Sydney Smith's Works, vol. i., Island of Ceylon. ¶ Owen Meredith, Good Night in the Porch. † Ibid., vol. iv. p. 587. coachman you get alongside of, what he thinks of the railroads? and jist listen to the funeral hymn he'll sing over the turnpikes. When I was to England last, I always did that when I was in a hurry, and it put coachee into such a passion, he'd turn to and lick his horses out o' spite into a full gallop." Execrations wholesale would he pour on "them that sanctioned them rails, to ruin the 'pikes (get along, you lazy willain, Charlie [and he'd lay it into the wheeler]), they ought to be hanged, sir [and he'd whop the leader],-yes, sir, to be hanged, for what is to become of them as lent their money on the 'pikes? [whis-s-s-st, crack, crack goes the whip]-hanged and quartered they ought to be. . . . . Take that, and that, and that [he'd say to the off for'ard horse, alayin' it into him like mad]."* So again when Mr. Tulliver, he of the Mill on the Floss, is agitated during a confidential conference with his needy sister, the horse that has carried him to see her, comes in for a passing token of its good master's emotion. "Mr. Tulliver gave his horse a little stroke on the flank, then checked it, and said, angrily, Stand still with you!' much to the astonishment of that innocent animal."+ " Pleasant, popular A.K.H.B., whilom Country now City Parson, incidentally observes, that when you see a poor cabman on a winter day, soaked with rain, and fevered with gin, violently thrashing the wretched horse he is driving, and perhaps howling at it, you may be sure that it is just because the poor cabman is so miserable that he is doing all that. "It is a sudden glimpse, perhaps, of his bare home and hungry children, and of the dreary future which lies before himself and them, that was the true cause of those two or three furious lashes you saw him deal upon the unhappy screw's ribs."‡ Quite analogous is the incident of Lucy Robarts (one of Mr. Trollope's most engaging and soon engaged demoiselles) whipping Puck, the pony, in the drive over to Hogglestock, when her companion broaches the probability of Lord Lufton (Lucy's Lord Lufton) marrying Griselda Grantly. Lucy, we read, could not refrain from giving a little check at the reins which she was holding, and she felt that the blood rushed quickly to her heart. But she did not betray herself. "Perhaps he may," she said, and then gave the pony a little touch with her whip. "Oh, Lucy," cries the other, "I won't have Puck beaten. He was going very nicely." "I beg Puck's pardon. But you see when one is trusted with a whip one feels such a longing to use it." And then they resume their discourse. And Lord Lufton and Griselda Grantly being again discussed, Lucy makes a rather excited speech, of some length, and "then as she finished her speech, Lucy again flogged the pony. This she did in vexation, because she felt that the tell-tale blood had suffused her face." Anon there is further discourse, and next a quarter of a mile's progress without speaking. "Poor Puck!" at last Lucy says, recovering herself: "he shan't be whipped any more, shall he, because Miss Grantly looks like a statue ?" The significance of this symbolic procedure on Miss Lucy's *The Clockmaker, Second Series, ch. xxi. †The Mill on the Floss, book i. ch. viii. Leisure Hours in Town: Concerning People of whom more might have been made. § Framley Parsonage, ch. xxi. |