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"the painter, author, soldier, and diplomatist," known as Sir Robert Ker Porter, the brother of the accomplished novelists Jane and Anna Maria Porter.

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"An actor of great powers, a good face, a commanding figure. His action is vigorous and dignified, but partaking too much of the strut and pomposity of tragedy in all characters. His changes of voice and manner are various and impressive; and, on the whole, making allowance for the French style of acting, which, like everything else in the nation is a kind of bravura, I am not surprised at Talma's high reputation."

In 1803-4, came an invasion panic. Shee was anxious to form a volunteer corps from the ranks of the Royal Academy, in which academicians, associates, and students were alike to be enrolled. But the scheme failed. So Mr Shee joined as a private a corps formed in Bloomsbury, which, from its consisting mainly of members of the legal profession, obtained the soubriquet of "the Devil's own." A name which a recurrence of events has revived.

The panic passed away. Mr. Shee, precluded from the battle of arms, contented himself with the battle of letters. In 1805, he published his Rhymes on Art; or, the Remonstrance of a Painter,-a satire upon other things besides painters and painting. Of the French Republican school, for instance, he penned :

In 1792 died Sir Joshua, “Sergeant-Painter to the King' since the death of Allan Ramsay. Mr. Lawrence now succeeded to that distinction. In the presidentship of the Academy, Reynolds was followed by Benjamin West, the favourite painter of the king, whose utter ignorance of art must stand excuse for his patronage of so mediocre an artist. In the first exhibition after these appointments were seen portraits by Shee of Lewis, the comedian, in the character of the Marquis, in the play of the Midnight Hour; of Mr. Williams, who, under the pseudonym of Anthony Pasquin, was the jester of the day; and of a Mr. Grant. These were highly landed. Stothart declared them to be equal to Reynolds, Abbot, the painter, pronounced them the best pictures in the exhibition. But the hanging committee did them injustice, -they often do injustice. In spite of the admiration excited by his works, the artist's actual receipts from the practice of his profession were, at this time, barely sufficient to afford him sustenance. He was nearly regretting the days of his Dublin prosperity. Indeed, we are told that "for one whole winter, during the time when he occupied apartments in Craven-street, he rarely, if ever, dined, except when enjoying the hospitality of his friends. His daily practice was to walk, With kings and priests they wage eternal war, after his labours in the painting-room were over, from And laws, as life's strait waistcoats, they abhor!” Craven-street to St. Paul's Churchyard, and back again, And so on. Now and then there are in this satire terse and this expedition occupying about the time which a man might vigorous lines enough, but most of its references are to things be reasonably supposed to devote to the business of a solitary gone by, and censures of dead abuses form very dull readdinner, at a tavern or eating-house within some moderate ing. Still, the work is evidence of the talent and cultivation distance of his lodgings. Of course, on his return he lost of its author, and is indeed in its time supposed to have no time in calling for tea, and it is highly probable that the stirred up the connoisseurs to the foundation of the British inordinate consumption of bread and butter with which he Institution for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts, a society accompanied his liberal potations of that cheering and sooth-which has perhaps done its best, but in respect of whose ing beverage betrayed the secret of his abstemiousness, which his daily pilgrimage to St. Paul's was expressly devised to conceal from the notice of his landlady and her

household.

In 1793, Shee entered his name as a candidate for an asso

ciateship, not, as he announced, that there was any probability of his being chosen, but that he might not be wanting to himself in any fair and honourable exertion, and lest his withholding his name should be construed into union with the opposite party. Beechey and Hoppner," he writes, " notwithstanding all their violence, intend doing the same."

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In 1796, Mr. Shee married Mary, daughter of James Gower, of Youghal, Cork. He had been occupying apart ments in Jermyn-street. He now moved to Golden-square; two years afterwards to move again to Cavendish-square, to the house which had been for many years the residence of Ramsay, the eminent rival of Reynolds. His success had come slowly but certainly. In 1798 he was made associate, having exhibited a successful portrait of a cavalry officer with his horse. In 1799 he was elected an academician. He had exhibited a portrait of Colonel Vicars, of the Life Guards, on horseback. "In both instances," as he remarked, "I rode into the Academy." There were two vacancies in the ranks of the Academy,-one from death, one from the expulsion of Mr. Barry. Shee and Flaxman supplied the gaps.

The Peace of Amiens sent Mr. Shee, as it sent many others, to Paris. He travelled with Rogers, the poet, whom he found an expensive companion. "A painter should never travel with a banker," he writes. He stood for more than an hour face to face with Bonaparte in the Presence Chamber. "He is scarcely taller than I am, and much thinner. His figure is not very good. His face is, in my eyes, handsome, sedate, steady, and determined. The prints do him no sort of justice. When you see him you are satisfied that such a man may be Bonaparte the conqueror of Italy, the grand monarch of France, and the pacifcator of Europe." Of David, the painter, he writes:-"He has no feeling of the higher kind of art, no eye for colour, and no powers of execution. He draws well, however, and has, I think, a good knowledge of compostion. His merit as an artist is, I think, always over-rated or under-rated. I find him neither so good nor so bad a painter as I have heard him described. As a portrait painter he is almost contemptible." Of Talma:

"Their heads with straws from Rousseau's stubble ground, Our metaphysic madmen rave around;

present vitality very little can be said.

Mr. Shee ventured again into verse in the Commemoration of Reynolds, and made attempts at poetic art in his Lavinia, from Thomson's Seasons, and in Belisarius, his diploma picture. About this time he exhibited also his Prospero and Miranda during the Storm. In the same room was displayed his Legions. The success of these two works was not remarka large picture by Lawrence from Milton, Satan calling up able. The joke of the day was, that the " Calling of the Legions" should decorate the lecture-room of the Incorporated Law Society, and that the "Raising the Wind" (as walls of the Stock Exchange. Mr. Shee assisted in the the Tempest subject was christened) should be hung on the foundation of the Alfred Club, which, though at first successful, soon declined altogether. It was supplanted as a literary institution by the Athenæum, and was in the end merged

in the Oriental.

the presidential chair on the death of West, in 1820. The
In 1830, died Sir Thomas Lawrence, who had succeeded to
choice of the Academy as to their new president rested
between Shee and Wilkie. As to which was the greater
painter there was very little question. But the Scotchman
was not very courtly, and had rather crabbed, rugged, un-
conciliatory ways; while the Irishman's manners were irre-
And then, too, he
proachable! What mattered his art?
wore hair-powder. "Shee's their only man now," the king
was heard to exclaim; and Shee was elected accordingly,
by a large majority. The Academy has more often toadied
than opposed royalty. By William IV. Shee was knighted,
and became in due course an official trustee of the British
Museum, a trustee of the National Gallery, a fellow of the
Royal Society, a member of the Athenæum, of the Society of
Dilettanti, etc.

Mr. Shee had been again testing his literary powers. In
But prior to the accumulation of these honours upon him,
1829 he published Old Court, a novel in three volumes,—a
novel not of plot, but of discussion, disquisition, and obser-
vation, and, as a necessary consequence, an utter failure. It
was published anonymously, and attracted no attention what-

Amongst the metropolitan volunteers of our own day there is an "Artist's Corps," but it has not, we fear, received much aid or countenance from the Academy.

ever. The novel reader insists upon narrative and interest,
and, asking for such bread, and receiving in lieu such a stone
as a political argument, or a speculative reflection, soon
flings down the book. Mr. Shee wrote no second novel.
For another literary attempt Mr. Shee succeeded in ob-
taining more attention. It was some years before the produc-
tion of Old Court. He submitted to the management of Covent
Garden Theatre a tragedy, Alasco. Mr. Charles Kemble
accepted the play, cast himself for the chief character, and at
once commenced rehearsals. The play was founded on a
purely fictitious story of an insurrection in Poland, and the
sympathies of the public were of course to be enlisted on the
side of the oppressed people of the play. A new licenser or
examiner of plays under the chamberlain, the Duke of
Montrose, had just been appointed. He was no other than
Mr. George Colman, the younger, himself the author of many
plays, and of Broad Grins,-broad enough, in all conscience.
Alasco, it seems, was the first play that fell to his perusal. He
professed to be horrified at what he chose to regard as its
revolutionary character. He was new in office, and liked to
air his zeal. So he returned the manuscript to the manager,
its pages scored, in red ink, with obliterations and suggested
modifications. It says something for the opinions of the
times that peril was deemed to lurk in very mild expressions.
Such lines as,—

and,

and,

"With most unworthy patience have I seen

My country shackled and her sons oppressed." "Tyrants, proud lord, are never safe, nor should be."

"Some district despot prompt to play the Tarquin, Our country's wrongs unite us."

which it derived its existence, and repudiated all direct responsibility to the House of Commons.

As an artist, Sir Martin must be regarded as the last and least of the great professors of portrait painting. He flourished during the decline of that branch of art; it is left to the present generation to lament its absolute fall. He painted without much force or variety of expression, but his colouring is agreeable, if occasionally redundant, and he had the art to invest his sitters with an air of refinement and ease, not perceptible on modern canvasses. Failing portrait painters with mind, the present age must be content with the grim, dusky, hard realism of photographic likenesses, "untouched."

The story of Sir Martin's life is told in the volumes before us by his son,-a painstaking and affectionate biographer, but somewhat wordy withal.

NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN.

Is there or is there not anything new under the sun? That question M. Fournier, in two little volumes, entitled The Olden-New; or, the Ancient History of Modern Inventions and Discoveries, seems to aim at answering in the negative. We, however, for reasons exclusive and particular, would venture on a gentle affirmative, and would bashfully maintain that, even if all "facts and occurrences" whatsoever are old as the hills, their REGISTRATION, as the sun himself travels into each of his twelve zodiacal chambers, shall once a month be effected in novel fashion.

But a truce to playfulness. Ever since the earth has been the earth, and the sun the sun, there has probably been no new thing, speaking physically and materially, in either. The forces and elements of our globe, and of all its brother and sister planets,-nay, of the old sun himself, for that matter, are the same now as at their first creation. Life itself, considered as the sum of certain organic processes, may, as some think, be but the result of newer and higher workings

of the old elemental substances and forces. With the first

were mercilessly expunged. Production of the play with alterations that took away its meaning altogether was impossible. Shee appealed to the Duke of Montrose, but could obtain no redress. The chamberlain thought Mr. Colman a sufficient judge of his duty. But the discussion that had arisen about the play enabled the author to sell the copy-appearance of man upon the earth, however, there was the right of it for £500. The publisher unwisely delayed pub-advent of a new, because a spiritual nature. Yes, man was, lication until the nine days of wonder had nearly elapsed, indeed, a new thing under the sun; and, with the exception and on the whole lost money by the book. But still much of that Divine Presence, whose beams now and ever shall interest was excited, and Blackwood's Magazine, a powerful roll back the clouds of sin and death which hover over our organ at that time, chose to see in Alasco a decided league planet, the first and last new thing introduced into the physical with Moore's Captain Rock, just then published, against the world was man. Since his entrance, nothing material has been tranquillity and Protestantism of Ireland! Perhaps the dis- added or taken away. All nature's essences and potentialities cussion that arose about Alasco has given it the only vitality remain unchanged; and although man's moral impulses, and it now owns as a literary work, though its merits are by no therefore his moral conduct, have been, in the main, but means contemptible. repetitions of his earliest ways, still his wants and desires Sir Martin's tenure of office only ended with his life. I have continually enlarged, and hence he has ever been 1845, from advanced age and protracted illness, he was led to impelled to discover and invent, that is, to lay bare and find tender to the council and members of the Academy the resig-out, more and more of the virtues and uses of whatsoever lay nation of his presidential dignities, but, in a feeling address from his colleagues, he was entreated to reconsider the step, and to delay his retirement, and he could not but comply with the desire thus unanimously expressed. In the same year a pension of £200 a year was granted to Lady Shee, as a testimony of the favour with which Sir Martin's services were regarded by the crown. In 1846, he presided for the last time at the dinner of the members of the Academy prior to the opening of its annual exhibition. After four years of complete retirement from the world, and much suffering, he died at Brighton, on the 19th of August, 1856. "Do not wish for long life; you see the state to which I am reduced," were his last words. He was buried in the cemetery at Brighton, by his own desire, the wish of the Academy having been that he should be interred in St. Paul's Cathedral by the side of the former presidents.

around him.

There are men who believe in the exhaustive wisdom of the extinct lore of the Egyptians, and who imagine that if that bibliothecal bugbear, the Alexandrian library, had been preserved, we should have found the strictest parallelism between ancient and modern literature, science, and art. We have conversed with those who believe, or say they believe, that in the darkness of that remoter than Cimmerian time, not only pins and needles, printing and gunpowder, but also gigantic bridges and tunnels, crystal palaces and railways, locomotives and marine engines, and most certainly electric or magnetic telegraphs, were as common as with us now. But admitting that the germs of the ideas which have led in more recent times to the perfection of these giant helps to modern civilization were extant in far earlier epochs, still no reasonable mind can doubt that whilst nature herself is The high estimation in which Sir Martin was held by his unchanged, and man's reasoning and imaginative faculties are colleagues is perfectly intelligible. He did little enough for the same, there are ever being evolved by human agency new the cause of art, but he accomplished much for the Academy. combinations and unfoldings of her activities and instruments, Ready, fluent, sagacious, active, and a courtier, he fought its for his enjoyment and improvement. In the arena of domestic, battles for years, resisting the attacks of the House of Com-social, and national exertion, the movement of humanity may mons, led on by Mr. Hume, and the vigorous onslaught of Haydon, Martin, Clint, and others. He strengthened its monopolist armour; he succeeded in asserting the principle that the Academy is directly governed by the Crown, from

be more or less in circles, and from time to time, from tem-, porary arrest or retrogression, the wheels of the chariot of progress may follow in the olden tracks; but the tendency is inevitably to wider and wider sweeps, bursting beyond pre-'

vious bounds, but still bearing evidence of a continuous relation to that centre from which all human effort took its

start.

In this view we may regard, not with the jealousy of having been anticipated, but with the satisfaction of having inherited and improved upon a worthy patrimony, such coincidences or correspondences as may be detected between our own doings and those of our forefathers.

We will not tire the patience of the reader by going once more over the long story of the origin of the steam-engine in the Æolipyle of Hero of Alexandria, nor once more trace the commencement of railroads in the wooden tramways of the Newcastle mines. We will neither encourage nor annoy M. Lesseps by telling him that his project of a canal across the Isthmus of Suez has once already been partly carried out, but that the canal has since been filled up by nature.

into a physical disquisition; first, on the nature of the glutinous body which intercepts and keeps the rays; secondly, on the difficulties of preparing and employing it; thirdly, on the mutual action of the light and the glutinous body, "Three problems," adds Tiphaigne, on waking from his trance, "which I propose to the philosophers of our days, and which I leave to their sagacity." Thus, if for the "viscous cloth" of the dreams of Tiphaigne we substitute iodized plates, paper, or collodion, we have the realities of Daguerre, Niápèe, and Fox Talbot;-nay more, for the genii fixed the colours, as well as the forms, of the objects pictured. What will our Claudets, Fentons, Mayalls, and Herbert Watkinses say to this!

And now a word to Messrs. Ersted, Cooke, Wheatstone, and Brett, and to all the practical telegraphists throughout the kingdom. The very fluid to which they owe their greatIt is said that the Etruscans used very thin plates of copper, ness, their occupation, and their usefulness to mankind, cut into various shapes, to aid them in tracing the figures on receives its title from a substance named by the Greeks, after their vases, that the Emperor Justin used to make his sig- its peculiar property of attracting light substances when nature by following with his pen some letters which were cut rubbed. The particles which, in ancient Athens, flew to the in relief on wood, and that the Romans employed moveable frictionized amber, or "electron," were attracted by the same letters to mark their pottery and endorse their books,-but old agent as that which makes the needles of the modern who would care to surrender to them the credit of having telegraph vibrate with the news of distant revolutions or first invented stencilling? or who, out of consideration to bloody victories; with intelligence which raises, agitates, or those old bookbinders and potters, would disturb the shade prostrates the hopes of the moneyed capitalists throughout of Faust, or take down the vigorous statue of Gottenberg modern Europe; with those hurried and scant messages, the which adorns his native city? We may inform our printing thought of which blanches the cheek of the murderer as he readers, however, that the art of stereotyping was practised glances at the silent wires, conveying past him with unerring as early as 1701 at Leyden, and then fell into disuse again. and un-arrestable swiftness and fidelity the fatal information It was first applied to the printing of Bibles. About 1730, of his cruel and ghastly crime. More than this, -as far back Ged, of Edinburgh, attempted the same thing, but his com as 1636, one Schwenter conceived the idea of communipositors thinking,-the old error,-that it would injure their cating by means of magnetic needles. Le Monnier, at Paris, vocation, made so many mistakes on purpose,-which of in 1746,,—an unknown Scotchman, bearing the initials C. M., course was fatal as regards a copy of the scriptures,-that in 1753,-a M. Lesage, at Geneva, in 1765, and a M. the undertaking failed for the time. By the secret aid of his Lomond, in 1787,—were all on the track of transmitting messon James, however, he did produce in stereotype an edition sages by electric or magnetic alphabets. Lesage's telegraph of Sallust in 1736. In 1742, stereotyping was practised at consisted of as many wires as there were letters; each wire Newcastle, but it was not till 1780 that it took root at communicated with an electrometer formed of a little ball of Glasgow, in the hands of Tulloch. In France it was revived the pith of elder suspended on a thread; and on the passage by Heron and the celebrated Didot, at the beginning of this of the current these little balls struck their proper letters. century. We may notice, too, in connexion with printing, Amongst others, Frederic the Great was informed of Lesage's that women were very early employed as compositors, the invention; but even that sagacious monarch took no notice nuns of a neighbouring convent having been so set to work of it. Nor was M. Lomond more fortunate; for even a pracby a Dominican friar at Pistoja, early in the sixteenth century. tical Englishman, a Mr. Young, says M. Fournier, only writes, But let us turn to another subject. According to a M. after having seen the working of M. Lomond's "alphabet of Sobard, who writes in 1857, there has been recently disco- movement" by electricity :-" Whatever its use may be, it is, vered in Russia a translation from the German, 300 years old, at least, an admirable discovery!" Even the idea of insuwhich gives a very clear explanation of the principles of pho-lating the conducting wires, now effected by the aid of that tography. The ancient alchemists understood well one of most valuable substance, "gutta-percha," was anticipated by the properties of what we call chloride of silver; they knew a M. Linguot, who, in 1782, proposed to establish "underthat if images were produced by a lens on a coating of this chemical substance, the light parts became fixed in black, and the half tints in gray, while those parts which were not struck by the light were left white. Fabricius verified this curious application of chloride of silver in 1566, in his De Rebus Metallicis. Later still, in 1760, just a century ago, Tiphaigne de la Roche, in the singular book to which he gave for a title his own name anagrammatized into Giphantie à Babylone, supposed himself transported to the palace of the genii of the elements, the chief of whom thus addressed him :-" You know that the rays of light, reflecting various bodies, paint them on the retina of the eye, on the surface of water, and on mirrors. The spirits or genii of the elements have sought to fix these passing images; they have composed a very subtle adhesive material, which hardens very quickly, by means of which a picture is made in the twinkling of an eye. They spread this substance on a piece of cloth, and expose it to the objects they wish to depict. The first effect of this prepared cloth is that of a mirror, near and distant objects being shown upon it. But that which a glass cannot effect, this cloth with its viscous covering does, namely, it retains the image faithfully,-a process which is the work of the first instant this is received on the cloth. It is taken away directly to a dark place, and an hour afterwards the glazing is dry, and you have a picture far more precious, truthful, and lasting, than any that art can produce." The spirit then entered

ground electric conductors of gilt wire enclosed in tubes covered with resin." It would seem, too, that even in Spain experiments were made, in 1796, before the court, on some sort of electric telegraph, the invention of a Signor Salva.

But if the diligent searcher after the old things under the sun can trace the successive birth, suffocation, and resuscitation of inventions of such delightful application and of such vast utility and importance as Photography and Telegraphy,to which amongst the more serious topics treated of by M. Fournier we must here confine our attention,-how much more shall we expect to find endless anticipations of the doings of poor existing humanity, in the dress, conveniences and comforts, laws and pastimes, physic, follies, and superstitions, of our forefathers?

The subject of dress, proverbially the sport of fashion and of change, we could not exhaust in many pages. It may be interesting to note, however, that Paris boots and shoes were already famous in the sixteenth century; that embroidered, be-pearled, and be-scented gloves were fashionable in the time of Louis XIV., and that Spain led the way in the manufacture of the softest and thinnest kinds. The modern crinoline was forestalled by the ladies of the sixteenth century,-whose dresses were amplified, not with hoops, but with contrivances made of horse-hair or wadding. Boots without seams were made in 1663. Umbrellas and parasols came to us from the east, where they have been in use from

the earliest ages. Our name
"umbrella" is, however, as
we need hardly say, a misnomer, really signifying something
which affords shade from the sun, and having no reference
to the use to which it is put in our rainy climate. When the
sun first saw umbrellas we will not pretend to say; but it
will, perhaps, be new to our readers that, before these arti-
cles became common in Europe, there were offices at each
end of the Pont Neuf, in Paris, at which umbrellas could be
hired with which to cross the bridge,-in fair weather, to keep
off the sun; in foul, to protect against the rain. In London,
too, for a time, they were lent on hire from the coffee-houses.
Can this custom be charged with the existence of the yet
too commonly entertained idea that the ownership of
umbrellas has a sort of ambulatory character, and passes
easily, and without fraud, from person to person? We may
note, too, as an early illustration of the prejudices of the
London Jarvies, that, in 1778, a Sir John Macdonald, who had
brought an umbrella from Spain, dared not use it in the
streets of London, for fear those prototypes of our modern
cabbies should injure it, under the idea that it was likely
to spoil their trade.

And this brings us to carriages. Hansom cabs may be
new, though, with some traces of what Mr. Darwin would
call "modification in descent," acted on by "natural selec-
tion," they may have sprung from the British war-cars of
the time of Boadicea,-but, at all events, Omnibuses are not.
These were invented by the great Pascal, in 1662, and soon
afterwards ran every day between one quarter of Paris and
another. Every carriage at first conveyed six persons, but
afterwards they were enlarged to carry eight persons each.
They were decorated and gilded, and carried lanterns, and
the coachmen had a livery with the arms of the king and
of the city. At each end of the journey was an office
where places were taken and complaints received. The
name of "
carosse à cinq sous,"-in the vernacular, "a tup-
penny-ha'penny 'bus,"-shows the tariff at which they ran.
That they were becoming very useful is shown by the cause
of their downfall,, which was a parliamentary decree, pro-
hibiting soldiers, pages, lacqueys, and livery servants from
riding in them. When made by law the sole luxury of the
rich, they soon ceased to exist. As the convenience of the
people, they will flourish, till more commodious vehicles,
running, perhaps on "underground railroads," perhaps on
iron tramways, in the light of day,-destroy them in a Dar-
winian "struggle for existence!"

touching a button concealed under cover of a calyx, a rose would disappear, and a beautiful portrait of the person to whom it was presented would take its place.

Here is another olla-podrida of anticipations in manners, customs, and progress. Industrial exhibitions were held at Venice in the thirteenth century. The adoption of a decimal system was strongly urged by a Dutchman, named Steven, in 1609. Solitary confinement in cells is the revival of a very ancient form of punishment. That deadly instrument of the law, named after its re-inventor, Dr. Guillotin, who was him. self beheaded by it, was really used three centuries before him in Genoa. Fire-arms, capable of being discharged even twenty times without re-loading, are by no means novelties; whilst, in 1587, a poor Normand was broken on the wheel for having attempted to revenge a family disgrace, by means of a complex infernal machine. As a counterpoise to these horrors, we may add that swimming-belts, made of skin, in the form of a long cushion, to be fastened round the waist like a belt, were exhibited in Paris in 1677.

And now a few items for our fair readers. When pavements were laid down in Rome, in the year 579 B.C., a decree of the senate ordered that women were to have the preference in walking on them. Plato wished that there were concocters of marriages, whose business it should be to find out the qualities of persons desiring wedlock, and then to match them according to their suitability to one another. In 1732, a regular establishment was opened at Hamburg for such a purpose, the proprietor of which drew up amusing accounts of wants and qualifications on both sides. In our own days, the columns of newspapers furnish a more ready resource for bachelors or widowers in the pursuit of marriage under difficulties, and one which, we know, does not always fail. A word or two on theatres will show how, at least in its amusements, human nature repents itself. We learn that in Athens marionettes moved by steam, and automata set in action by quicksilver, were occasionally employed. Sellers of refreshments, the analogues of our cake-women and shouters of "Ginger-beer, or soda-water, sir ?" plied their trade between the acts,-the more successfully, their own writers humourously tell us, when the pieces being performed were bad. In the Roman theatres, people were admitted by ivory or metal tickets, some of which were gratuitous, and on which was often stamped or marked, besides a number corresponding with the wedge and row of seats, the name of the piece, or of the chief actor. Persons were employed to We have only space to catalogue the facts that glass was seat the audience in their proper position, and others outside, used even in Roman times, not merely for small utensils, but on great occasions, arranged them so as to prevent confusion, for purposes of construction,-in floors, on walls, on the and the modern English "opera crush." The salaries of the ceilings, and in large and massive columns; that asphalt was celebrated actors were enormous: Roscius, according to employed by the Babylonians in buildings, if not in pave- Cicero, made 500,000 sesterces per annum, equal in our prements; that had Reaumur, who suggested, and a certain sent money to £4,100; and another actor, named Esopus, Captain Fresneau, who witnessed in Parana, the manifold left his son 20,000,000 of sesterces, that is, £164,000. Huge uses of india-rubber, met or heard of each other's thoughts painted scenes from the plays, with the name of the chief and experiences, Mackintosh would have been a century too actor in gigantic, often coloured, letters, took the place of our late; that the boiled leather coracles of our forefathers, men-playbills, and adorned the walls. The system of " claqueurs" tioned by Froissart, and the waxed-cloth boats used on the Danube in 1698, foreshadowed that huge construction of caoutchouc which the United States exhibited so proudly in the Great Exhibition of 1851; that the Greco-Roman architects attempted to make wood inflammable, by steeping it in solutions of alum; that the silver reeds of the patriarchs of Constantinople prefigured the brass and iron pens used in the fourteenth century, as well as the modern "magnum-bonums," "office-pens," and "boudoir pens" of Gillott and others, whether made of iron, brass, bronze, or gold; and that for the French quill-drivers of 1666, the Academy of that day had already approved a new knife which would mend their pens at a single stroke. To go back to still more ancient discoveries, in truth, to pre-Adamite originators,-let us add that the water-spider invented the diving-bell, the larva of the sylphids the diving helmet and tube, and the gardenspider the suspension-bridge!

Perfumed and decorated note-papers are not new; neither sare coloured inks, which, in olden times, were perfumed also. Artificial flowers and bouquets then appealed to both the sight and the smell of their fair wearers; and sometimes, on

was at its extreme of perfect organization. They made three kinds, or degrees, of noises: the "bombus," produced by striking the hollowed hands together; the "testæ," a noise like that of a broken pitcher, which indicated a greater degree of enthusiasm; and lastly, and the most rapturous, the "imbrices," which sounded like showers of hail. Sometimes thousands of these claqueurs, most elegantly dressed, were hired to applaud, whilst the real audience might hiss. To come down to the middle ages, they had their "tableaux vivans," their pieces constructed entirely for the sake of the decorations; scenes painted on pentagons, so that they could be quickly changed by being rotated; revolving audience-seats, and stage-machinery of all kinds,-flyingdragons, air-chariots, ships and rocks, waves and storms, lightning produced by igniting resin, and thunder emanating from an Olympus in the shape of a big drum, beaten by a stalwart soldier of the guard, or from a Jovian carpenter rattling a toothed wheel upon some planks. Under Louis XIII., flowers personified, as in our metropolitan pantomimes of Christmas last, were put upon the stage; and in Imperial Rome, in the reign of Tiberius, an enter

now.

prising manager, the E. T. Smith of his day,-one Asellius Sabinus,-put on the stage, in grand costume, a mushroom, a bird called a fig-pecker, an oyster, and a thrush, all of which spoke and argued in character. For this grand hit, Tiberius gave the successful manager 200,000 sesterces, or £1,640! This, for the encouragement of good caterers for royal and popular amusement; now something for their consolation. Ludicrous mistakes and contretemps have happened on the stage before In 1558, a M. Jodelle wrote, in four days, the poetry and music, and prepared the "machinery," of a piece called the Vessel of the Argonauts, to be performed in honour of the Duc de Guise, who had just taken Calais from our expelled countrymen. On the stage, near Jodelle, who played Jason, stood Orpheus, singing such music as was to make not only living but inanimate nature pursue his steps, or melody. At the proper moment certain rocks, "rochers," duly in waiting behind the side scenes, were to move on to view, fascinated by the sweet harmony, and Jason (alias Jodelle), anxious for the success of this culminating scene, summoned them in a low voice, when lo! a lot of bell-towers, "clochers," coyly came in sight. We can imagine the roar from the "half-prices in the gallery." And now a word of warning, In the olden days an actress at Marseilles was obliged to quit the town, in consequence of a riot, we shall call it an O.P. row,-which was caused by her raising the prices to what was deemed an exorbitant height.

property, when the place of concealment is demanded. This is their mode of enchantment. A person carries his complaint to the Lama, praying him to discover the object which has been stolen from him: it is seldom that the Lama at once aquiesces. He dismisses him for a few days under the pretext of preparing his act of divination. When the day and hour indicated arrive, he seats himself on the ground before a little square table, places his hand on it, and begins reading in a low voice from a Thibetan work. Half an hour after, the priest rises, takes his hand from the table, and raises his arm, but otherwise preserves the same position in reference to the table as before; the table then rises too, following the direction of his hand. The Lama then stands upright, lifts his hand above his head, and the table ascends level with his eyes. The enchanter makes a movement forward, the table does the same; he runs, and the table precedes him with such rapidity that the Lama can scarcely follow it. After having moved in various directions, it oscillates a little in the air, and finishes by falling. Of the several directions which it has taken there is one the most marked; it is on this side that the stolen objects will be found. The day," adds the Russian, "that I was present, the table fell towards a place where, however, the stolen property was not discovered; but the same day a peasant living in the direction indicated committed suicide. This suicide awakened suspicion, and in his dwelling all the stolen articles were found. Not daring to To our friends the doctors we must briefly refer for con- trust blindly in what I had seen, I accused the Lama of lifting firmation of the statement that nearly all our active reme- the table by means of an invisible thread; but, after most dies, such as opium, colchicum, henbane, hellebore, aconite, minute examination, I could find no trace whatever of imposiand belladonna,-were known to Hippocrates, or the Egyption. The table was made of pine wood, and weighed a pound tians, whilst the principal mineral remedies now in use sprang into note in the time of Paracelsus. We can only find room to add that the use of anaesthetics, for the production of insensibility on the occasion of surgical operations, is not so modern as some may suppose. In 1681, one Papin, whilst teaching at Marburg, wrote a Traité des Opérations sans Douleur, the manuscript of which is now preserved in the library of the Elector of Hesse. Even in the middle ages Mandragora wine was known to produce temporary insensibility, without any subsequent ill effects. All the writers of that time speak of this property of the mysterious plant, either the bark or the powdered root of which, given in a glass of wine to a suffering person, will soon allay his pain, and will cause him to sleep so soundly that his arms and legs might be cut off without his feeling it.

Still more remotely, the Chinese made use of anaesthetics. At a time corresponding with the year 220 of our era, we find a Chinese doctor having recourse to this great expedient every time he had a serious operation to perform. His name was Hao-Tho, and his mode of stupefaction is described in the Kou-kiu-i-tong, a collection of ancient and modern medicine. He gave the invalid a preparation of Indian hemp, mayo, and in a few instants the patient became as insensible as if he was dead drunk, or really deprived of life.

We have only left ourselves space to treat of one other subject. In these table-moving, table-lifting, and tablebreaking times, it may be interesting to our readers to know what Oriental nations think about the magnetic power contained in the fingers, especially in the ring and little fingers. Among the Turks there is an old superstition that "these fingers are unlucky, for the devil uses them to eat his rice with." All good Mussulmen, therefore, eat it with the three other fingers. The inhabitants of Macassar, on the contrary, believe that the soul is in the fingers, and that when we die it escapes out by them. When, therefore, a person is in the agonies of death, the priest who is called to aid him in dying, whilst muttering his prayers, rubs gently the middle finger to prepare the way for the soul to escape.

A Russian traveller, apropos of the table-turning mania, took the opportunity, a short time since, of communicating what he had seen in Thibet to the Russian journal, the Abeille du Nord. He begins by speaking of the different kinds of legerdemain to which the Lamas, or king-priests, of Thibet have recourse, in order to maintain their influence over the people. Then he adds: "Among the number of means employed, there is one more curious than the rest. A little moving table is their divining rod; it serves to discover stolen

and a half."

If the reader desires any further illustrations of how little there is really new in the greater number of our modern novelties, he will find them in plenty in the volumes of M. Fournier.*

THE ADVENTURES OF DR. WOLFF.+ Ar sixty-five years of age, Dr. Wolff, "late missionary to the Jews and Mohammedans in Persia, Bokhara, Cashmeer, etc.," sits down to narrate the events and trials of a very remarkable career, dictating the narrative aloud, as he says, plain, nervous language, with quite a Defoe's force in its pre"in a family circle where willing scribes are to be found." In ciseness of detail and straightforward truthtelling, he recites the story of his life, with, by way of preface, this motto from Xavier "Who would not travel over sea and land to be Mr. Gladstone, whose high sympathies with science, literainstrumental in the saving of one soul ?"—and a dedication to ture, and religion are not his least claims upon the admiration and regard of his countrymen. Only the first volume of the work has yet been published. This brings the great missionary to the gate of Bokhara, the goal of his enterprise, the stronghold of the Mohammedan faith. "Be cautions," says One word against our religion will make the people forget the governor of Karrakool to Wolff; "be cautious in Bokhara. that you are a guest, and they will put you to death."

Wolff was born in 1795, of Jewish parents, at a little village called Weilersbach, near Forcheim, in the district of Bamberg, then a portion of the Germanic Empire. A fierce persecution, led by the students of Prague, and generally followed throughout Bohemia, had compelled the emigration of great bodies of Jews to Germany. Hardly had they raised to themselves new homesteads in Bavaria, when the invasion of the French struck them with a new panic. David Wolff, the father of the subject of this memoir, fled to Kissengen, and was made rabbi of a Jewish congregation there. The future missionary was only fifteen days old at the date of his parents' flight to this watering place. He is said to have been so beautiful as an infant "that the Duchess of Weimar and the whole court of Weimar, and other visitors at the Spa of Kissingen, would frequently take him from the arms of his nurse, carry him about, and show him to each other as a prodigy."

• Le Vieux-Neuf: Histoire Ancienne des Inventions et Découverts Modernes. Par EDOUARD FOURNIER. Paris: 1800.

Travels and Adventures of the Rev. Joseph Wolff, D.D., LL.D. Vol. L London: Saunders, Otley, and Co. 1860.

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