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He accused

pretending that he had proferred him his services. Grouchy of the defeat at Waterloo, Bernadotte of not having come to his aid on the field of Eylau. He showed himself a true Corsican to the last. It was a boast of his that he had never committed any crimes privately. This was a lie. His Corsican enemies, Aréne and Cerrachi, fell into a trap of his setting and lost their lives. Pichegru was strangled by his order; several former Jacobins were summoned before a council of war, and by his private command condemned to death. The assassination of the Duc d'Enghien made a noise in the world because he was a Bourbon. History will some day relate many analogous cases, hitherto left in obscurity. Nero and Torquemada destroyed fewer lives throughout their entire career than did Bonaparte during a single month of his reign. I believe, that from 1804 to 1815 his victims (including Frenchmen and others) numbered not less than six millions of men. It would be important to know how many deserters were shot. Each principal town of the several departments had its place aux fusillades, and many towns of the second rank also. Probably several thousands of French subjects were shot before councils of war for mere desertion.

France has never had such an enemy. If she perishes, it will be by the application of the Napoleonic idea; that is to say, by falsehood, audacity, despotism, cunning, hypocrisy, war, luxury, corruption. The eulogists of this man have been visionaries, unscrupulous worshippers of brute force, soldiers, priests, the ignorant, and the servile, in fine, all who venerate the devil more than God, and who are incapable of resigning themselves for the good of humanity to the inconveniences of entire liberty. He has been popular in France because the French are imaginative, and have believed hitherto that their Emperor defended France and the republic against all Europe. Writers and artists have encouraged this notion. In exalting and poétisant the Emperor they have sold their works and attained a success. Next to the history of religion, the history of war has most attraction for the popular mind, and the apologists of Napoleon have followed the example of religious writers and artists, who repeat the lives of saints and martyrs in poetry, painting and sculpture.

To sum up the characteristics of Napoleon, he possessed one of the vastest intellects ever known, owing such superiority to his utter insensibility to impressions, his sluggish temperament, his wonderful faculty of combination and reasoning; war was to him a pastime; politics a personal affair only; he possessed neither religious, moral, nor political beliefs; he held the human race in profound contempt, and was the greatest egotist ever known; a man of prodigious aptitude for knavery and mystification, and for administrative power; an intellectual giant, who caused the retrogression of France and of all Europe, and who possessed one of the worst hearts that the history of 2 N

VOL. XXXIX.

the human race has disclosed. All lovers of progress ought to make a pilgrimage to Waterloo once in their lives: not to exult over the destruction of a French army, but to contemplate the spot where this great enemy of the human race fell a victim to his own excesses.

[AUTHOR'S NOTE, 1866.—I have never tried to print this monograph of Napoleon the First in France, though it was written many years ago. No consideration which does not recognise the first Emperor as a kind of demigod is allowed to get into print. The powers that be permit us to discuss God and the divinity of Christ, but not Napoleon the First.]

The Theatres.

THE success of Mr. Irving is undoubted and well deserved. It comes in aid of a theatre and its manager for whom all are interested who wish to see the best traditions of the stage restored. Mr. Bateman has rendered it once more possible for us to take our wives and daughters to the playhouse. No ridiculous ballet, no burlesque which one is ashamed to sit out, await those who shall visit the Lyceum Theatre.

We rarely go out of our way to touch upon matters theatrical in these pages. The keen zest which our fathers felt in the stage in the days of the Kembles was reflected in all the leading publications of the day, and the relative merits of the principal actors shared with politics in the after-dinner discussions of that time. This all passed away; scenery took the place of acting, buffoonery of comedy, and the reign of legs set in to such an extent that even the least fastidious became disgusted with an exhibition which was redeemed by none of the poetry of Carlotta Grisi's beautiful dancing.

We think we see traces that this is likely soon to be a thing of the past, and it is with this hope, and to lend a hand to the good cause, that we give a hearty welcome to such pieces as Charles the First' and Richelieu.'

No actor of the present day has made so legitimate a success as Mr. Henry Irving. After passing through a provincial noviciate he appeared some years ago at the Princess's, under the management of the late Mr. Augustus Harris, and failed; upon which he returned into the country for further practice, and did not venture to reappear on the Metropolitan stage until after he had established a high reputation in Manchester.

Engagements at the St. James's, the Queen's, and the Vaudeville, followed; but it was at the last-named house, in the character of Digby Grand, in the comedy of the Two Roses,' that he made his first stand. The most meritorious point in Mr. Irving's professional career is, that with him success does not mean the cessation of labour and study; on the contrary, every fresh impersonation bears the marks of more arduous study than its predecessor. Charles the First' was a great advance upon Matthias.' 'Eugene Aram,' in an artistic point of view, was an advance upon both. In these parts, however, he had the enormous advantage of being the original; no one could make invidious comparisons. This limited success did not

seemingly, content Mr. Irving's aspirations; he wished to be judged by a higher standard, and in choosing the role of Richelieu' he has thrown down the gauntlet and challenged comparison with the greatest actor within the memory of the present generation, William Charles Macready, and that too in a character in which the tragedian had achieved one of his greatest triumphs, and in which Vandenhoff and Phelps were also highly successful. The school of acting of which these gentlemen were the masters has passed away; consequently any rendering of their famous parts, however fine, must present such marked contrasts as to shock the conservative notions of old playgoers, who largely sway public opinion upon these revivals. We must premise our remarks by stating that, unhappily for us, we have never seen either of the above-named triumvirate in the character of Richelieu, consequently our judgment will in so far be unprejudiced.

If we may be guided by the enthusiastic applause of the first night -not the usual manager-author-actor-friend kind of clapping of first nights, got up for the purpose of enabling the critic to state in the next morning's paper, with some show of truth, that the performance was "a decided success," when every one present was morally convinced that it was a decided failure-but a genuine spontaneous whirlwind of applause, the ring of which cannot be mistaken. Space will not permit us to analyse the performance, nor to more than glance at its most salient points. We are inclined to think that the first two acts are the most artistically finished, although the language is occasionally marred by a mannerism of intonation which has gone through all Mr. Irving's previous assumptions, and which is a prominent fault in his elocution that his most ardent admirers would gladly dispense with. The dry hard wit, the quick apprehension, the puerile vanity, the touches of tenderness, the cat-like venom, and the fine soliloquies of Bulwer's cardinal were all brought out with clearness, delicacy, and power, unmingled with exaggeration. The "Never say fail!" scene with the boy François was also good. But we think the finest scene in the whole performance was that with De Mauprat at the end of the third act, his scornful defiance of the would-be assassin's threat being the nearest approach to great acting. From this time until the end of the play the strain upon the actor's powers increases with each scene. We liked the fourth act the least of all. The delivery of the famous speech in which he threatens to launch the curse of Rome upon Baradas was finely rendered; but the defiance of the arch-plotter, whieh closes the act, failing to reach the height for which the actor struggled, fell into exaggeration that at times bordered upon the ludicrous. In the fifth act, where, apparently in a dying state, he listens to the news brought in by the secretaries from the different powers, and occasionally utters faint words of warning and advice, his acting was remarkably fine. The feeble gasping

tones, the air of helpless exhaustion, the pallid death-like face, lit up at times by a momentary flash of triumph at the incompetency of the new minister, or nervous anxiety for the arrival of the sealed packet -all these phases were admirably depicted. The great point of the play, however, is in the fifth act, the point in which Macready is said to have produced so wonderful an effect. The sealed packet has been recovered, is handed to the king, who, terrified by its contents, which tell him of treasons, plots, foreign armies invading his kingdom, exclaims distractedly: "Where, where will they be next week?" "Here, at my feet!" is Richelieu's response, snatching the paper and trampling upon it. It is usual to render these three words with all the power and intensity the actor can grasp, in order to produce the most marked contrast to the cardinal's previous feebleness. Mr. Irving's voice, on the contrary, is hoarse, gasping, and as it reaches the last word cracks into a senile falsetto. To ears accustomed to the former rendering the effect is disappointing, but consideration will show it to be the more artistic of the two. According to Mr. Irving's conception, the intense excitement produced by harrowing anxiety succeeded by boundless triumph is so powerful that it chokes his voice and deprives him almost of the power of articulation. A reference to our own experience of moments of intense excitement will prove the naturalness of the reading. Whether it is as suitable for stage effect as the older one is another question, which must be decided according to taste. Mr. Irving has made a profound study of the part; perhaps he has even over studied it; at times it is emasculated by too many minutiæ, and there is certainly throughout a lack of that dignity, of that air of high noblesse, which we should associate with the great minister of France.

Taken as a whole, the performance, if it does not realise all that tradition tells us of the first exponents of Richelieu, belongs to a very much higher order of acting than can be seen in any other theatre of London. We had almost forgotten to mention Mr. Irving's "makeup," which is perfect. Miss Bateman bas never appeared to so much advantage as in Julie de Mortemar; her acting is graceful, tender, unexaggerated, and in one scene that in which she describes the king's attempt upon her honour-artistic and really beautiful. It is a pity she has not been provided with a lover who is not quite an icicle, and who would admire the lady more than himself. Mr. Clayton's conception of Louis the Thirteenth is an excellent one-a little overcoloured, perhaps, in its imbecility, but true in its broad features. For the rest of the characters-with the exception of Mr. Forrester, who gives a careful rendering of Baradas, and Madame le Thière, who, in the small part of Marion de l'Orme, presents one of the most perfect pictures of the play-the greatest kindness we can show them is to say nothing. The mounting of the play, as regards scenery, dresses, and accuracy of detail, is superb.

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