concealed in a corner, was considering this | hands to Mattea, he placed her on the sadnovel sight with astonishment, while Tom- dle behind him, and without any respect maso was amusing himself by examining for the curé or his house, set spurs to the the swords and brilliant uniforms, and the animal and disappeared with the Italian white hen was running screaming and scared girl. At the same moment the other draabout the horses' feet. goon caught the white hen!

The feeble voice of the curé had not the power of Napoleon's. The soldier continued to talk to the girl, and the fat dragoon "Sir," said he, "I have lost Mattea; the continued to chase the white hen. Tom- soldiers have promised me that I shall one maso was stroking the croup of a saddle day be a captain, a colonel, a marshal of with one hand whilst the other was playing France, and I don't know what besides. I with a sword-handle. At last the assiduous-I— have enlisted for a dragoon!" dragoon went to fetch his horse, and sprang Buonaparte gave the general a sad look, on it with one bound; then giving both as he smoothed his fowl's white feathers,

and said to him: "General, I thank my Alas! he was, after all,
nephew, the emperor, for his good inten- account from which this
tions towards me, but I prefer remaining rendered into English,
the curé of the poor and unknown little vil- family.
lage, where I have been happy so long. I
hesitated for a moment, and you see, God
has punished me. Say to Letitia that
I hope (and believe firmly) she is still as
good and conscientious as she was when a
little girl. . . . Kiss my nephew, the little
Napoleon, for me; may God keep them all
on their thrones! They are good children
for taking thought of their old uncle, but I
desire neither a bishopric nor a cardinal's
cloak.... Go, general, if you respect the
wishes of your emperor's uncle, do not
come here again."

When an officer received an order from the emperor, he was obliged to execute the imperial wish. If Napoleon said, You are to take that town," it was necessary to take it; it was written that it was to be taken; his prophetic word was one of the thousand causes of his great success. Now, he had said to the general: "You will take my uncle, the curé, from his living, and make him come to Paris, or take him to Rome; he must be near me, or near the Pope; it matters not which; he will do well whichever he chooses, but it must not be otherwise; he must at least become a bishop."

says the French little narrative is the happiest of his

From The Spectator.

SIR JOHN FALSTAFF. PERHAPS the most that can now be done towards representing Shakespeare truly on the stage is done where actors or actresses, with a special genius for individual parts, give such representations of them as Mr. Mark Lemon is now giving of Sir John Falstaff, in the selected scenes from Henry IV., at St. George's Hall, Langham Place. Where whole plays of Shakespeare are revived, we are almost sure to be tortured by a crowd of failures so irritating that the one or two successes lose all their charm. Even in Mr. Mark Lemon's selected scenes no spectator can help being aggrieved by the pert and under-bred manner of the actor who represents the Prince of Wales, afterwards Henry V.,- one of the most royal of those portraitures of Shakespeare's which have, as Mr. Emerson truly remarked the other day, filled literature with conceptions of royalty far royaller than any which actual kings ever suggest. Mr. Mark Lemon's The general entreated, supplicated, and, Falstaff, however, fills so completely the at last, insisted that the curé should alter centre of the picture, that nobody cares to his decision. The brave soldier could not give to any of the minor characters more understand a man's refusing the grand cross than a passing glance of criticism. Mr. of the legion of honour, a bishopric, the Mark Lemon seems to us to deserve quite revenues of a diocese, a cardinal's hat and all the praise which a press, never too fasinfluence. However, the good curé re-tidious about praising any leader in literary mained firm to his resolution; he resisted circles, has awarded him. If there is a the general's supplications, and when threats weakness in his representation of the part, were used, he replied with the bitterness of an irritated Corsican, and with the authority of an aged relative, who was not to be coaxed or flattered by the inconsiderate youth and ambition of his great nephew: General, I have given you my answer, and I will not swerve from it."

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The disappointed general was forced to retire without executing his mission, and his noisy escort evacuated the village.

When Napoleon heard of the bad success of his ambassador and this utter want of ambition in a Buonaparte, he shrugged his shoulders with contemptuous pity.

Mattea was married to the dragoon, and became, in time, the wife of a colonel. Tommaso was, in a few years, a captain in the Imperial Guard.

And the good curé, Buonaparte, died before the termination of the first empire, beloved and regretted by all around him.

it is that he gives too much geniality to the humour, and too little emphasis to the selfish envy, and even malice, which Shakespeare certainly intended to reconcile in Falstaff with what is rarely found in its company, true humour. Nothing can be more admirable than Mr. Lemon's way of giving Sir John Falstaff's humorous soliloquy on himself in the dark lane just before the robbery, when he is wondering what can induce him to rob in "that thief's [Poin's] company," and suggests to himself as the only credible account of the matter, “if the rascal has not given me medicines to make me love him, I'll be hanged; it could not be else I have drunk medicines." This conclusion is announced with a positiveness of manner and also an amused horror, as if imagination, having once apprehended this point, were roaming in search of the incalculable catastrophes which this hypothe

as melancholy as a gib-cat or a lugged bear," no one can doubt it for a moment. The touches most finely given by Mr. Lemon are the quieter touches of Falstaff's soliloquies, and, again, the fire of chaffing repartee, where there is not time for him to mount up to his highest extravagances. His momentary anxieties in ransacking his resources for an answer to the Prince and to the Chief Justice are perfectly given. When the Prince is telling him of the trick We have said that if there is a substanhe and Poins have played upon him by rob- tial defect of any kind in Mr. Mark Lemon's bing him and his party of their booty, and portraiture it is, perhaps, that he does not this just after Falstaff's magniloquent de- combine the spirit of grudge and even malscription of his struggle with the unknown ice which is at the bottom of Falstaff's charrobbers, Falstaff's look of momentary worry acter sufficiently with the play of his huand puzzle, and the sudden and impudent mour. This is due partly to the selection clearing of his brow when he devises a re- of the scenes, which are so chosen as to ply, might remind any one who has watched give a too favourable view of Falstaff, and

too predominant an effect to his humour. which Sir John appears in which Shake The scene, for instance, in which Falstaff speare attributes to him an amiable quality. falls on Justice Shallow's character, and Mr. Mark Lemon is so much in love with backbites him with characteristic bitterness, his hero's humour, that he does not in his is omitted; the scene in which he stabs the acting make the character as utterly base as dead Hotspur in the thigh to make sure of it is meant to be. For instance, when Mishim in the first instance, as well as in the tress Quickly has charged Falstaff with second to lay a foundation for his boast of having said that the Prince owed him a having killed him, is omitted; the scene in thousand pounds, and Prince Henry asks, which he vents his spite on Poins and the " Sirrah, do I owe thee a thousand pounds?" Prince, behind their backs as he thinks, Sir John turns round, according to Mr. ("He a good wit! hang him, baboon! his Mark Lemon, with quite a genuine tenderwit is as thick as Tewkesbury mustard!"), ness in his manner, and says, "A thousand is omitted; indeed, many scenes in which pound, Hal? a million; thy love is worth a the maliciousness of Falstaff's humour is million; and thou owest me thy love." Yet, chiefly shown are omitted. Nevertheless, it is evident that this, like the rest, is only enough is left to indicate Shakespeare's a repartee. Sir John cares not a jot for conception, that of a man who apparently Prince Henry, nor Prince Henry, except as never had a genuinely kind feeling for any a mere source of amusement, for Sir John. living creature but himself. It is evidently The first is shown by the contemptuous way partly malice which urges him on to his in which Falstaff picks the Prince to pieces pile of exaggerations about the flame-colour behind his back; the last by Prince Henry's of Bardolph's nose, and wholly malice with kindlier but still utterly cold farewell to which he taunts Mistress Quickly, "There's him when he supposes him to be lying dead no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune; on the field of Shrewsbury: — nor no more truth in thee than in a drawn fox; and for womanhood, Maid Marian may be the deputy's wife of the ward to thee." Moreover, though it is not the selfish malice in Sir John Falstaff which is

66

shown in his soliloquy on "honour" just before the battle of Shrewsbury, his cynicism is; and Mr. Mark Lemon's rendering of that scene was to our mind not nearly cynical enough,- too humourous, and not sufficiently contemptuous for the reputed virtues of men. This is the speech of a pure cynic who is trying to justify to himself his own baseness: What is that honour? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. Is it insensible, then? Yes; to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it." Mr. Lemon gave it with great spirit, but not with that utter disgust for humanity and all it values most, proper to the utterly selfish man who has not a spark of sympathy for any good human quality left in him.

The reaction in favour of Sir John Falstaff truly represents him as a fine humourist, a gentleman by breeding, and certainly not a poltroon, not so much a coward, as a man so selfish that he makes it a principle to avoid danger. This is perfectly just and evidently true to Shakespeare's conception. But when it goes on to find anything truly "gentle" in Falstaff's nature, beyond his breeding, it seems to us to miss entirely Shakespeare's meaning. There is not a sentence in any of the three plays in

"Poor Jack, farewell!

I could have better spared a better man.
Oh! I should have a heavy miss of thee
If I were much in love with vanity.
Death hath not struck so fat a deer to-day,
Though many dearer in this bloody fray.'

On the whole, the only fault we find with Mr. Mark Lemon's admirable impersonation is, that he does not seem to us to give the cold, envious, and malicious side of Sir John Falstaff's selfishness as finely as he gives his imaginative humour.

From The London Review. WORDS OF COMFORT.*

THE origin of this volume was the death of a little daughter of the editor, Mr. Logan, who has gathered together quite a body of literature on the subject of infant salvation, and the consolations arising out of that grand and intensely Christian idea. With the exception of the able and curious historical sketch of the subject, by Dr. William Anderson, the pieces of prose which form the first four hundred pages of the work are generally brief; and their excellence lies in this, that they have nearly all of them been wrung from the hearts of

the Children. Edited by William Logan, Author of

*Words of Comfort for Parents Bereaved of Lit

"The Moral Statistics of Glasgow," &c. With an Introductory Historical Sketch, by the Rev. Wil liam Anderson, LL. D. Glasgow. Fifth Edition, enlarged; 13th thousand. London: James Nisbet & Co.

men and women whom death has bereft of | tempted in that case to use the fearful little children. All the matter is not of words which the famous rhetorician Quincequal value in a literary point of view; but tillian expressed, on the death of the secthere breathes through the various articles ond of his two young sons, whom his wife, a tone of profound sympathy and sincerity, herself dying early, had left him. In Book as if the writers were too much filled with VII. of his Institutes of the Orator," in the reality of sorrow to care much for the which he gives an account of the state of merely artistic expression of it. Yet no his mind on the occasion, he says: carelessness is visible in the book; it is one "Whilst day and night I laboured to exeof keen reality; and the general simplicity cute my design before mortality had asand gracefulness of its contents, brimming sailed me, the bitterness of fortune all of a full of hope and consolation as they are, sudden so overwhelmed me that the fruits must make it everywhere acceptable, since of my industry belonged to no one less death has been everywhere. It is not than to myself; for I lost that promising son, our province to enter into the question of the only hope of my old age; and this was infant salvation, many interesting views of the second wound that was struck deep to which are given in Mr. Logan's volume. afflict me, now a childless father. What, The steady white light of the supreme and then, could I do? or on what any more consoling truth illumines every page; and, employ the unfortunate talents on which although it is evident that much of the the gods seem to frown? .. Who would writing has been sad and tearful work, we not detest my insensibility if I made any perhaps utter the highest praise when we other use of my voice than to vent comsay that almost none of it can be described plaints against the injustice of the gods, as weak or mawkish. Everywhere are signs who have made me survive all that was of genuine suffering and honest tears; dearest to me in the world, if I did not the reader feels that these are not theatrical proclaim that there is no providence in the sorrows; and the work is therefore a sin- regulation of human affairs? That there gularly wholesome one. But, although we is none is visible in regard to me— e- if cannot enter into the subject as a matter not on account of my own misfortunes, to for discussion, we may pause over it for a whom no evil can be imputed but that I minute or two. Even in the Christian prolong my life, at least on account of the world the difference of feeling and expres- undeserved destiny of my boys." These sion produced by the death of young chil- are curious expressions though perhaps not dren is very remarkable. In glancing at unnatural in the mouth of a man still under the mortality tables of the Registrar-Gene- the dominion of the Heathen Mythology. ral, we discover that children in this coun- It is not a little singular that Quinctillian try die annually in battalions: yet the fig- flourished in Rome while Paul was imprisures can hardly be said to produce a feeling oned in the same city; and that while the of grief; we are rather stunned than old rhetorician was venting his indignation pierced; and our feeling is one of pure on the supposed cruelty of the gods for helplessness or indignation on learning the slaying his sons, the great apostle of Chrisfurther fact that great numbers of these in- tianity was writing from his cell those fant deaths are distinctly preventible, or, epistolary expositions of that religion which worse still, that many of them are hardly a could have revealed to the upright and shade removed from murder-that some stricken old Roman, had he but met Paul, of them are murder, in the form of infanti- that the destiny of his sons was one greater cide. Should, however, the child of our and happier than any the Roman world neighbour die, we are more affected and could have conferred. How would the sad melted than we are by hearing of the vast Quinctillian have looked and felt had he numerical tragedy of the year. But if we been present, which he might have been, can imagine that the great majority of chil- and heard the Master breathe the golden dren who die yearly leave behind them in words: "Suffer little children to some hearts the same feelings which pierce unto me, and forbid them not, for of such ourselves when our own child dies, we shall is the kingdom of Heaven"! In the sechave some faint conception of the subtle ond part of his volume Mr. Logan has web of sorrow which is being perpetually gathered together a good variety of poeti woven around us. But if for that sorrow cal pieces, which appropriately and fully there were no alleviating hope -- no hope breathe the music of sorrow. We do not that these tender, unfledged souls were say that this part of the book is better than heirs of eternal life- what a source of ag- the first; but certainly the names of the ony and despair their dying would be to the principal authors are more famous; and it parental heart! A father might be is probable that readers who may skip the

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