wrists. This sketch, to those who acknow- || clumsy cobbler that we owe this pleasing trifle; ledge Paris to be the fountain of dress, may serve as a model. For home and dinner dresses, sarsnets, Opera nets and coloured muslin, among those who reject virgin white, seem the most prevailing; and they are more frequently made high in the neck with ruffs, decp vandyke lace, or work laid on, than from the season one would naturally imagine. it is the ladies who have taken this art into their own hands, and so much improved upon it. The prevailing colours for the season are primrose, straw, celestial blue, pale pink, lavender, lilac, and buff. LADIES' DRESSES ON HIS MAJESTY'S BIRTH-DAY. HER MAJESTY. -A lilac petticoat covered with silver net lace. The draperies tastefully In full and evening dress, black and white lace, silver tissues, crapes, Imperial nets, and satins, are in the highest estimation, as are fine muslins over satin slips. The frock style looped up with four diamond bows; a most bril liant diamond sun-flower on the left side; the whole interspersed with diamonds of various forms. The train to correspond. The tout ensemble was tastefully magnificent, and had a light and elegant effect. The head-dress was of diamonds and silver net. of make, with short trains, is still the most approved; the sleeves are frequently in the bell form, bound with silver, as are the bo soms to correspond. Black velvet bands for the waist, with diamond, pearl, or other clasps, are new, simple, and becoming. Brocaded THE PRINCESS AUGUSTA.- 1 celestial crape ribbands bave just appeared, consequently dress, composed of rich clusters of fig-leaves, and coufined for the present to fashionable circles; but there is a style of ribband, woven in a scollop at one edge, which does credit to the taste of the inventor, and thus forms a very pleasing ornament for the bottom of dresses Fillets for the head, formed of crape or velvet, fancifully intermixed with beads or pearls; and long rolls of velvet, twisted with silver, wound up with the hair behind, the latter belonging to a very ancient style of dress, we believe to the costume of the reign of Charles the Second; these ornaments we have observed to decorate the heads of ladies of the first distinction. Lace handkerchiefs, though a more homely kind of dress, are entitled to notice for their modest elegance, they agree well with the round Madona face, and are always interesting on a pretty woman. In respect to the fashion for jewellery, except in full dress, a rustic kind of ornament at this season seems to prevail; necklaces and bracelets in Egyptian pebbles, with brooches to correspond, as also in bark, Maltese beads, Indian spice, shells suspended from gold chains, with coral, amber, &c. In full dress garnets bave a pretty cool appearance, and afe for that reason much adopted; necklaces in pearl, emeralds, amethysts, with bracelets, crosses, and brooches to correspond; earrings in the top and drop fashion. In regard to shoes, the brocaded silk is happily just introduced; and works up so elegantly into Grecian sandals, and when composed partly of silver, as well as silk thread, into that fascinating ornament the Cinderella slipper, it must afford infinite pleasure to some of our fair friends who more particularly lay the stress of beauty on the foot. It is to no a fringe formed of medallions at the edge. A broad border at the bottom of the petticoat, a train of celestial blue, and silver tissue; the headdress of diamonds, and a very full and elegant plume of white ostrich feathers. PRINCESS ELIZABETH-Worea dress of white satin, embroidered with silver, and ornamented with draperies of silver tissue, elegantly disposed in the Persian style. The right side of the dress was a painted drapery, terminating at the end with a Persian orescent, with Maltese ornaments, suspended in dead and bright silver; large crescents, variously interspersed, looped up the draperies which formed this elegant dress, and which had all the appearance of Eastern magnificence. Her Royal Highness's robe was a white and silver tissue, trimmed to correspond with the dress, with point lace and diamonds. PRINCESS SOPHIA-A dress of pale pink and silver tissue, ornamented with festoon draperies, embroidered with borders of silver foil, in bnuches of flowers, leaves, &c. and studded with beads of dead and bright silver. Handsome silver cord and tassels finished the whole of this beautifol dress. Robe pink and silver tissue, trimmed with point lace and diamonds. PRINCESS of WALES-A primrose satin court train and petticoat, richly embroidered with Iris flower, the leaves of green coloured foil, edged with fine gold; the heads of the flowers superbly studded with diamonds, the body and drapery of rich silver plate net, embroidered to correspond; the train, body, and sleeves studded with sapphire stones of great value: pocket-holes fancifully trimmed with Iris wreaths, and silver trimming, with a magnificent wreath of diamonds across the drapery. The taste of her Royal Highness was never so eminently conspicuous as in the brilliant and magnificent effect which this superb dress produced. The head-dress of diamonds and time ostrich plumes. PRINCESS SOPHIA OF GLOUCESTER.-An ele- || chenille, and beads. The head-dress, plume of gant dress of white satin embroidered with silver, and ornamented with wreaths of lilac and tassels; white satin train embroidered with silver. The DUCHESS of YORK-Was most magnificently dressed; point lace petticoat lined with green silver tissue, and point lace looped up with diamonds; the train point lace, lined with green silver tissue, and trimmed with diamonds. PRINCESS CASTELCICALA. A dress of pale blue sarsnet, ornamented with white lace draperies, and bow of ribbon. Kobe pale blue sarsnet trimmed like the dress. The other dresses inost admired or distinguished at Court were: DUCHESS OF RUTLAND.- This Lady was particularly noticed for her great beauty and elegance; her dress well adapted and becoming, entirely of lace, the petticoat of Honiton lace over pink sarsnet, the two draperies of point lace, intermixed with wreaths of rose and jessamine, the drapery looped up with two long chains of diamonds; pink silk train trimmed with lace; girdle and stomacher of diamonds. Head-dress, ostrich feathers, and profusion of diamonds. DUCHESS OF ATHOL-A buff coloured crape dress, ornamented with a Venetian border and musk flowers; a buff coloured satin train trimmed with beautiful point lace. This dress was remarkable for its elegance and simplicity. MARCHIONESS of ELY-Wore one of most suberb dresses at Court: white satin covered over with large draperies of point lace, ornamented with pearls; body and train of point lace. Headdress feathers and diamonds. COUNTESS of LOUDON and MOIRA-Her Ladyship wore a handsome dress of primrose satin; draperies of net, beautifully embroidered in silver stars, bordered with a wreath of matted silver lilies, festooned with rich cords and tassels. Head-dress feathers and diamonds. This dress was particularly admired, and becoming to its charming wearer. COUNTESS of MANSFIELD.-Body of purple erape appliqued in silver, and richly trimmed with silver and point lace; petticoat of the same; draperies trimmed with silver, and fastened up with bows of silver cord. COUNTESS OF CARDIGAN-A petticoat of white crape, richly embroidered in silver, drooping over a buff sarsnet; draperies edged with handsome borders, tastefully fastened up with silver cords and tassels; at the bottom a Turkish roll intermixed with silver cord, and pocketholes to correspond. Body and train of befi sarsnet trimmed with point lace and silver. Head. dress, plume of white and buff feathers with dia monds. COUNTESS of MACCLESFIELD. - A robe and petticoat of rich silver silk, most elegantly trimmed with lilac beads, chenille and drapery of Eght lilac crape, most magnitcently embroisered with wreaths of different shades of lilac, lilse feathers, with profusion of diamonds. RIGHT HON. LADY CAROLINE DOUGLAS A lilac sarsnet train and petticoat, with an elegant black lace drapery, fancifully ornamented with bunches of litse and other natural flowers; the bottom of the petticoat and the train finished with embossed shaded ribbon. Head-dress, a rich plume of white feathers, bandeau of diamonds, with diamond aigrette; pearl and gold necklace, diamond ear-rings, &c. ODE FOR HIS MAJESTY'S BIRTH-DAY, 1810. BY H. J. PYE, ESQ. P. L. WHEN loud the wintry tempest roars, When dark the exhalations rise, Be check'd by adverse skies a while, Uncertain April cease to smile: Look fondly with expectant smile, O'er wide Europa's trembling powers, Yields to her daring prows and warriors brave, sweep. MONTHLY MISCELLANY. INCLUDING VARIETIES, CRITICAL, LITERARY, AND HISTORICAL. PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. COVENT GARDEN THEATRE. - A new Comedy was performed on Friday night, June sth, at this Theatre, called The Widow's only Son, by Mr. Cumberland. The widow Montalbert, who had recently lost her husband, is left in a state of pecuniary distress; her son, Frederick arrives from the University of Cambridge, and is induced, from prudential considerations, and in the hope to relieve his mother, to listen to a proposal from Lord Fungus, which is communicated by Heartly, to become his literary companion and white-wash his intellects. Sir Marmaduke, his uncle, who is upon ill terms with his nephew, although the cause of his antipathy is not duly made out, hath a personal interview with Lord Fungus, and proposes a union between Frederick and Caroline, ybich is rejected by her father, upon the score of inferiority; which is an event that rouses the family pride of Sir Marmaduke, and they part with sentiments of mutual disrespect. An equivoque is engendered by this circumstance, from the fear that Lord Fungus entertains that the Knight will challenge him. In this state of events, Frederick is announced to Lady Fungus and Caroline, and has the good fortune to render himself agreeable to both. Lord Spangle, who is the destined husband of Caroline, arrives during this interview, and affronts Caroline by his contemptuous demeanor, and Frederick by his direct insolence. A scene occurs between Sir Marmaduke and Isaac, his steward, in which the latter pleads with great zeal in behalf of Frederick, and at length succeeds in restoring him to the protection of Sir Marmaduke. After a succession of incidents, which are not fraught with too much novelty or force, a matrimonial alliance is effected between Caroline and Frederick, on the declaration by his uncle, that he will immediately put him in possession of his castle and domain. Lord Spangle is cashiered by the young Lady, as a contemptible suitor, and what is somewhat extraordinary, gives the only proof that he is susceptible of either good sense or good manners, when he is retiring under the heavy affliction of being despised by his mistress for his utter want of both. We have given the plot of this Piece, in order that we may be justified to our readers No. VI. Vol. I.-N. S. in some remarks which we shall make on the peculiar talents of Mr. Cumberland. The present Piece has the name of Comedy, without any of its constituent qualities; it has a fable too flimsy for a modern novel, and incidents too trite for the narrative of a teatable. It has characters so ungracefully out of nature, so ingeniously dull, and so laboriously mawkisk, that it is no ordinary praise of invention in Mr. Cumberland, that he has given to the artificial beings of the drama so perfect a non-entity, so absolute an uncreated nothinguess. Caroline, the heroine of this Comedy, exhausted her own lungs, and the patience of the audience, by a sentimental loquacity, in which much meandering language was employed without the burthen of one idea of novelty. She is meant, we suppose, as a pattern of female elegance according to the standard in the mind of the author; but certainly we never encountered on the modern stage, with a more forward and disagreeable young chit. She seemed to carry her virtue as loosely as her tongue, and her affected candour was a kind of meritricious gilding which destroyed all the effect of a chaste delineatiou. Frederick, the hero, was a pedantic insipid prig, full of formal compliment and pedantic manners. The other beings of the piece were only distinguished as they rose ar fell, more or less, in this frigorific barometer. They were all infinitely below the freezing point, and touched the very Nadir of dullness. This Comedy, however, by means of a certain portion of inoffensiveness, by a kind of bleating innocence, and an exemption from some of the grosser artifices of disgust, got safely into port, and was securely anchored under a plentiful discharge of common-place clap traps from a fortress of loyalty. Mr. Cumberland has been so long distinguished as a stage-writer, that we shall venture, though perhaps somewhat out of place, to make a few remarks on his peculiar talents, and, in so doing, on that species of comedy of which he is the dramatic parent. The modern drama seems to have laid aside a rule which our ancient writers justly considered as the basis of Comedy, that it should not only be considered an imitation of familiar life, but that such situations and such charac ters should be selected, that though still १ within the sphere of common life, the representation should have no less novelty than truth. They considered it equally fundamental in this species of writing, as in others, to ob serve the point where the trite and familiar, the Latural and the gross, became confounded; they possessed ease without inanity, and strength without coarseness. Mr. Cumberland, whom we have called the father of the sentimental drama, has perhaps exalted and degraded this species of Comedy more than any other author of the age. He has shewn us, in himself, the extremes of its excellencies and defects; like the Hero in Virgil, he has bound the living soul with the dead body, and in almost every play which he has written since the West Indian, he has been cankering corrupting, and wasting away the life and spirit which he first gave to this species of writing. The plays of Mr. Cumberland, with the single exception of the West Indian, are distinguished by a sickly sentiment, a pedantic humour, virtue out of place, common situations most ungracefully placed upon stilts, and absolutely nothing of real life and man ners. The manners of his characters are not those of human beings either in real or imagined condition; and the language which he assigns to them wants the point and familiarity of dramatic dialogue. In a word, we have long wished that Mr. Cumberland had left off writing for the stage; turpe senex miles-Why should he covet, like the stag, to die where he was first roused. When the vigorous progeny of his youthful pen have ceased to inhabit the Stage, let him not thus i haunt us with spectres. For the genius and learning, and, above all, for the virtue of Mr. Cumberland, we have a sincere reverence; we wish him the honourable requiem of genius in the dignified tranquillity of his study; we do not desire to see him totter from the Stage, in the decay of his vigour, and the decrepitude of his fame. HAY-MARKET. - This Theatre opened on Monday June 11, for the summer season.The company are prodigiously strong. Bannister is at the head, supported by Mr. C. Kemble and his wife, Mathews, Mrs. Glover, &c. It gives us no common pleasure to see Banuister returned to a London audience, and recovered from the truancies of a country vagrant. As a comic actor, in his peculiar line of humour, at once farcical and pathetic, gay and solemu, Bannister has no competitor: with unmatched powers of mimickery, he has noue of its debasing qualities. It has not usurped upon its own originality, or, in the promiscuous jumble of what belongs to others, obliterated all semblance of himself. In those characters of Comedy, in which the more forcible modes of humour are represented, and whim and extravagance, though pushed to the verge of probability, are still kept within it, Bannister is truly excellent. His Jobson in The Devil to Pay, is an admirale instance of low humour, and a faithful copy of nature; and his Walter presents a rare combination of talent, a power of humour and true pathos, an energy of feeling, and a careless whim, which are seldom combined in one actor. In a word, Bannister is a true sterling actor, unspoiled even in these times, when so much has been done to corrupt the taste of the town both by writers and players. Like an old guinea, too hard to sweat or to file, he has escaped out of the hands of the Jews, without parting with one atom of his bullion. LYCEUM-A new Opera was produced at this Theatre on Monday night, June 11th, under the title of Oh! this Love, or the Masqueraders. The plot is laid in Italy, and if it had been laid in Hindostan it would have made no difference; for there is nothing in the composition of the fable, or the texture of the incidents, which renders it more suitable to one place than another. The events which occur in the progress of this fable are of the mixed kind, something between the romance and the pastoral novel, having all the extravagance of the one, and a more than usual portion of the insipidity of the other. The characters are as much out of life as the action is beyond probability. We are not exactly certain of the name of the Author of this piece, and it is not worth while to indulge in conjecture. Miss Grigli etti, who so much distinguished herself at the Oratorios during the three last seasons, made her first appearance upon the stage in this Opera. She has not much skill as an actress, but is not without spirit; as a singer she unites melody and science with a compass of voice which amply fills the Theatre. This Opera had the good luck to escape a violent death; it was redeemed by the powerful acting of Dowton, and the singing of Miss Griglietti. FINE ARTS. ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION, No. 179. A Groupe of Portraits of the Baring Family.-T. Lawrence, R. A. This is one of those family pictures which would have done honour to Reynolds or Vandyke. It is dis No. 550. Portrait of A. Yeates, Esq. by the same Artist, is a vigorous well-painted head, possessing great clearness and force of co tinguished for a peculiar taste and sentiment ment of the groupes, in the shaping of the figures, and the selection of all the minor parts, indeed all those points in which the creation of the painter and the play of fancy are most visible, there is a conspicuous taste and refinement, which are only attainable by long practice in the art, and never, at any time, without great sensibility and genius. It has correctness without formality, and freedom without any sacrifice of truth. The tints in this picture are very soft and delicate, and the colour, upon the whole, is harmonious and well arranged. If we have any thing to object, it is, that there is too much uniformity and sameness in the relief of the several heads in the portraits. They are thrown into an uniform light relief. This is wrong. If Mr. Lawrence had disposed some light objects in the back of one or two of the heads, for the purpose of contrasting them with those heads which have a dark back ground, the effect of his picture would be much improved. He will perhaps profit by this advice when he returns to his painting room. There are in the present Exhibition three more portraits by Mr. Lawrence which deserve notice. The portrait of Lord Melville is a vigorous and characteristic likeness, but is somewhat stiff and harsh. The portrait of Lord Castlereagh is an excellent likeness, and there is a freedom about the head which shews a peculiar vigour aud force of pencilling. But the finest portrait in the Exhibition is that of Mr. Canning, by the same artist. It has a youthful action, and a manly and decided character, joined to a peculiar harmony in the colouring, which we have never known to be excelled in Mr. Lawrence's portraits. No. 250. Portrait of Sir P. Francis, K. B. by J. Londsdale. The lively characteristics of an active mind are happily delineated in this picture; and in portraiture nothing is more to be commended or more difficult of acquirement than the power of justly and delicately expressing the various and nice distinctions of mind and disposition. No. 413. Portrait of the Marquis of Downshire, by the same Artist, is a fine likeness and a simple unaffected good picture. nature. Mr. Londsdale has three other portraits in the Exhibition, all equally void of that affectation, which is but too apt to infect this department of art. Simplicity and truth appear to be his aim, which must always secure him the approbation of those who possess judgment and good taste. SOCIETY OF ARTS, MANUFACTURES, AND COMMERCE. The annual distribution of the Society's rewards took place on Thursday the first of June, in their Great Room, in the Adelphi. His Grace the Duke of Norfolk, the President, entered about half past twelve, and immediately after his Grace was seated, Dr. Taylor, the Secretary, addressed the company. The Candidates were arranged in their proper classes, as heretofore, and if that branch of the Society's business, viz. Agricultural Improvements, was ever considered entitled to precedence, it is particularly so at this time, when daily experience proves the great progress which is making in a pursuit on which so much depends, and which indeed may justly be considered of the highest national import ance. The Candidates in Mechanics were as many as heretofore, and the inventions which have been brought before the Society during the present session, promise, in every respect, to be of equal utility to those which they have noticed on former occasions. The present pursuits of Lucien, the proscribed brother of Napoleon, are thus adverted to in the foreign Journals:-A high personage, who possesses a fine villa in the vicinity of Rome, and who devotes his attention to the arts and sciences, has recently made some valuable discoveries. Several houses belong. ing to the ancient Tusculum have been discovered, in which have been found, besides various pieces of furniture, seven large statues; one of them a Muse of singular beauty. The Roman antiquarians estimate this treasure at 22,000 rix-dollars. |