the name of Palais Royal, surrounded by ten or twelve huts, and containing as many stalls, some in the open air, others with a slight covering, with one end fixed to the ground, and the other supported by two poles. Here were sold bread, some salt fish, scraps of cloth, thread, needles, wooden forks, and spoons; the various produce of the industry of the prisoners: pepper, twine, and other articles in the smallest quantity, for one could buy a single thread, a scrap of cloth no bigger than one's hand, and even a pinch of snuff, three of which cost a sous. I remember a Polish officer who owed nine pinches, and the shop-keeper refused to give him any more credit. We bought two bits of twine, and, after fixing on the weapons, we hastened to the cemetary. It was on a hill about a quarter of an hour's walk from the Palais Royal. Since the arrival of the prisoners at Cabrera, they had uniformly chosen this spot as a place of rest for those who had sank under their misery, or who had fallen by the hands of their companions; it was there that they also met to settle their differences in single combat. When we reached the ground, I again, for form's sake, spoke about making the matter up. When I saw they were determined on fighting, I told them that as I was the first cause of the quarrel, it was for me to uphold it, and take Ricaud's place. Neither he nor his adversary would agree to this, and I saw myself forced at last to give them up the weapons, which I had carried till now. Ricaud threw off his waistcoat; and as Lamber had nothing but pantaloons on, he was soon ready. They put themselves in a fighting attitude, and both displayed great coolness and courage. Lambert was much the stronger of the two, and my friend required all his skill to parry the thrusts that were aimed at him; the razor flourished round his head and shoulders without intermission, and struck him at last on the chin. He made a furious thrust in return, but fortunately it did not reach its object fully, though it made a pretty scratch on Lambert's nose. We rushed between them when blood began to flow; we separated them and made them shake hands; as their wounds were not of much consequence, we all returned to breakfast together in front of our hut.'-pp. 95, 96. Guillemard's next care was to erect for himself a hut. Upon looking out for tools, he found that the whole colony had but one hatchet, and one saw made out of an old iron hoop. These he hired at the rate of three sous a day, and in little more than a week he built a hut, which, when completed, astonished everybody. 'One could stand up in it! He was scarcely established in his new habitation when he conceived the project of making his escape from the island, which, however, he was not able to effect for seven or eight months. It is amusing, if one can for a moment forget their deplorable misery, to observe the manner in which these halfstarved Frenchmen endeavoured to occupy their time. 'We had tailors, shoemakers, public criers, artisans in hair, bones, and tortoise-shell, and some who cut out with their knives little figures of animals in wood; and about two hundred men, the wreck of a dragoon regiment, raised in Auvergne, were quartered in a cave, and made spoons of box wood. The latter had only one pantaloon and one uniform among the whole corps, and these articles seemed ready to leave them very speedily, and were delivered successively to one of their number appointed to receive their provisions. All the articles I have enumerated were sold at low prices, to the crews of the brig and gun-boats, and to some Spaniards, whom our singular mode of life, or the hope of making a good speculation, attracted to our settlement. But the most abundant articles with us were professors of all kinds. One half of the prisoners gave lessons to the other half. Nothing was seen on all sides but teachers of music, mathematics, languages, drawing, fencing, above all, dancing and single-stick. In fine weather, all these professors gave their lessons at the Palais Royal, quite close to each other. It was quite common to see a poor devil half naked, and who had often not partaken of food for twenty-four hours before, singing a very gay air of a country dance, and interrupting it from time to time for the purpose of saying, with infinite seriousness of demeanour, to his pupil dressed in the remains of a pair of drawers-"That's right, keep time with your partner, wheel round, hold yourselves gracefully." A little farther on, a teacher of single-stick was showing off his acquirements, and endeavoured to excite the emulation of his pupil by such phrases as -"That will do; I am satisfied with you; if you go on with the same success, in less than a fortnight you may show yourself in company." A scrap of paper, about as large as one's hand, was placed as a sign, and the most eminent of all our professors had no better.'-pp. 106-108. Our author, amidst so much bustle, could not remain idle. He resolved to set up a theatre! He knew well the genius of his countrymen, who would spend their last sous to see a comedy, even though they were to be without a meal the next day. Luckily for his purpose, he found a large cistern that was falling to ruin. He emptied it of its mud and water with great labour, seasoned it with fires of pine-wood, made an elevation for the stage of sand and stones, daubed the walls with ochre and red lead, hung all round garlands of leaves, which served as a screen between the stage and the spectaors; and to crown his work, wrote, not on the curtain for he had none, but on the back of the stage, the motto, Castigat ridendo mores. All went on gaily for some time. Guillemard, if he is indeed in this part of his narrative to be believed, wrote out several plays from memory! which were enacted with marvellous skill. Their first performance was the Philoctète of Laharpe. About three hundred persons could find room in my cistern, and as I had put the places at two sous it was completely crowded; the company descended into it by the ladder I had made; and a confidential man was placed on the first step to receive the money, which he put into a little cloth bag that was tied round his neck. The theatre was lighted up by torches of pine wood, borne at different distances by the attendants of the theatre, and they lighted fresh ones in proportion as the others were consumed. All the allusions to our situation in the tragedy were noticed with a tact that would have done honour to the taste of a more brilliant assembly. At the début "Nous voici dans Lemnos, dans cette ile sauvage, we were covered with shouts of applause; and I thought they would bring down the roof of the cistern when I pronounced this line : "Ils m'ont fait tous ces maux; que les dieux le leur rendent." I was obliged to repeat it, and to stop for some time, to allow the agitation of the audience to be calmed.'-pp. 109, 110., All their amusements were suspended on one occasion by a dreadful calamity which befel the island. Provisions did not arrivé for some days. The prisoners perished in great numbers from famine. The only ass which was upon the island, and which had been found extremely serviceable for the carrying of wood and other burthens, was condemned to die, and divided in small portions among the survivors. At length the provision brig appeared, and after the unfortunate prisoners recovered from their privations the cistern was again opened for dramatic performances, and the professors resumed their various avocations. Guillemard, after spending more than eight months in this island, effected his escape to Spain, where he rejoined the French army, and for his services was made a serjeant. He soon after went with the grand army to Russia, was taken prisoner very shortly after he was created an ensign on the field by Napoleon-a rank, however, which was never confirmed to him-was sent to Siberia, which he considers by no means so desolate as is generally supposed; is sent home after the peace, and becomes a royalist until he hears of Napoleon's return from Elba; joins the emperor's standard during the hundred days, and after his downfal skulks homeward as well as he can. His adventures with Murat we have already touched upon. His next step was to join the army which marched into Spain under the Duke d'Angouleme; there it was his fate to be wounded, when he was sent home and discharged. It must be admitted, that whether this book be in a great measure fictitious or not, it is well calculated to amuse an idle hour. It is too apocryphal to serve as a document for history, yet it presents a sufficiently probable sketch of the vicissitudes attendant upon the life of a French soldier during the imperial regime. We have not seen the original work; the translation is, as the reader must have observed, very indifferent. ART. VIII. A Selection of Popular National Airs, with Symphonies and Accompaniments. By Henry Bishop. The words by Thomas Moore, Esq. Fifth number, pp. 66. 128. London. Power. 1826. THERE is scarcely any part of literature which owes so little to criticism as that which most probably once constituted the whole literature of every people,-poetry adapted to music. Upon every other species of composition learning has poured out its redundant stores, and ingenuity has been tortured in devising rules, intended to shorten the labours, or supply the deficiencies of genius. Critics though we profess ourselves to be, we are not of the number of those who yield implicit faith to the canons of the commentators. They have been, somewhere or other, called "the crutches of genius." But they have their use, if not in giving speed to a true poet, at least in deterring those whom nature never designed for any place upon Parnassus, from vainly endeavouring to mount the sacred hill. Perhaps it may be partly owing to the want in this department of the hints, not always the gentlest, which criticism will occasionally bestow upon the efforts of an untoward muse, that the twin sisters, Poetry and Music, sometimes agree so ill together as hardly to seem kindred. Be this as it may, certain it is, that although the numbers of those in all nations who have tried their hands at adapting verse to melody, have been countless as the sands of the sea, the productions of such as have succeeded might easily find a place within a very portable volume. Before the writings of Mr. Moore there were few successful compositions of this kind in our language. The songs of Burns must not, in this view, be considered as belonging to English literature. The tendency, in the Scottish dialect, to the elision of consonants, and to the ending of words with open sounds, affords facilities to an extent unknown in the English tongue, which the exquisite car of Burns taught him how to use and appreciate. Some examples almost perfect might be selected from his writings, of all the requisites of poetry written for music. We shall here take occasion to say something of what these requisites are. They may be said to consist-in selecting, for connection with the principal notes of the melody, words or syllables sounded with those vowels which give full developement to the human voice; in suiting the quantity, or, in our language, the accent, of the syllables, to the quantity (if we may so term it) of the notes; in adapting the pauses in the verse to the pauses in the expression of the music, usually marked by the key-note of the piece; and in choosing for the poetry those subjects, sentiments, and images, which are in accordance with the general character and expression of the melody. These considerations are so plain and obvious, that one is inclined to attribute to caprice or indolence the failure of some of our best poets in their endeavours to write poetry for music. The finest lyric effusion in our language, and that too composed with this express design (the Ode for St. Cecilia's day), is in a very great part of it remarkably defficient in those vowels, and those terminations of words, which give effect to vocal melody; yet who ever possessed a greater mastery of English than Dryden? The truth is, that the English tongue is fitted for any thing better than for music, and a poet of the nicest ear and the finest genius will be often put to the most awkward shifts, in endeavours to employ such terms as may mar neither the melody nor the stanza. We do not think that this arises in any great degree from a cause, to which the want of euphony in our language is frequently ascribed the multitude of its monosyllables. There is among these a pretty fair proportion of long and short sounds; and the writings of Milton alone (especially his shorter pieces), abound with instances of the smoothest versification, composed almost entirely with words of single syllables. The pests of our language are the paucity of open sounds, and the great number of double consonants, and of words with nasal, or with sibillated, endings. Any one who has attended to the utterance of even our best singers, must have perceived, that we have but one sound (the open a as in all), which allows the full exercise of the voice, consistently with correct pronunciation. The only other sounds which do not very materially and perceptibly abridge the freedom of the voice, are the long o, and the diphthong ai, ay, or the vowel i, as in smile, which in singing receives a pronunciation apparently compounded of the dipthongs ai and oi. It is impossible to give any of the other vowels or diphthongs its due utterance, without so confining the voice, that a song would appear to be executed by the alternate performance of different vocal organs. The prevalence of double consonants, as in netting, running, missing, stopping, &c. are scarcely manageable in verse composed for music. They chop the note before it is half drawn out, and never fail to blemish the most abrupt and rapid movements. But we doubt if any part of the language gives, both to singers, and to those writers and composers who seek in vocal music something better than a succession of melodious but unmeaning sounds, so much trouble as words ending with s, s8, st, and ng. These form a very large portion of our stock of words, and (especially those of the last, which is the participial termination) comprise many terms that cannot be dispensed with, and that are among the most nervous and expressive in the language. These defects in our tongue have been long felt and acknowledged. The difficulties which they present were deemed so formidable, that until of late years few poets of much reputation amongst us have applied themselves to the union of poetry with music. A very rare combination of qualities was indeed required in the writer who should seriously engage in the task. A fine ear and a fertile fancy, joined to a thorough acquaintance with all the sweetest and simplest modes of expression in the language, were not his only requisites. He must have been somewhat of an enthusiast in his art. To some of the highest powers and attainments of a poet, he must have united a musical genius of no common order. For we are strongly inclined to believe, that none but those who have tried the work of musical composition, and have |