our own part, the illusion that she was Shak- | intellect, and the manifestation of that faculty speare's own Juliet came so speedily upon us, is a pervading charm of her acting. It gives as to suspend the power of specific criticism- her courage, it gives her promptitude-the so delicious was the fascination, that we dis- power of seeing what is to be done, and of liked even the remarks of by-standers that dis- doing it without faltering or hesitation. She turbed that illusive spell; and though, half an always aims at the highest effect, and almos hour before, we had blessed the applauding always succeeds in realizing her finest concep bursts of the audience, like omens of propi- tions. tious thunder, we were now half-impatient of their frequency and duration, because they intruded on a still higher pleasure, and because we needed no assurance that Miss Kemble's success was sealed.

Feeling that the occasion formed an era in our recollections of the theatre, we compared her, in our imagination, with all the great actresses we had; and it is singular, though we can allege nothing like personal likeness, that Mrs. Jordan was the one whom she brought back, in the first instance, to our memory. We might have set down this idea as purely fanciful, if we had not learned that it has crossed the minds of other observers. As form and features seem to have nothing to do with this reminiscence, we attribute it to the exquisite naturalness of Miss Kemble's manner, and we cannot help connecting it with an anticipation that she will one day be as pre-eminently the comic as the tragic muse of our stage.

The Juliet of Shakspeare is young and beautiful; but no mistake can be greater than the idea that her character can be impersonated with probability by a merely beautiful young woman. Juliet is a being of rich imagination; her eloquence breathes an ethereal spirit; and her heroic devotedness is as different from common-place romance, as superficial gilding is unlike the solid ore. By many an observer, the beautiful surface of her character is alone appreciated, and not that force and grandeur in it which is capable of sustaining itself in harmony, not only with the luxuriant commencement of the piece, but with the funeral terrors of its tragic close. Hence the expec tation has been so often excited, that a lovely girl, who can look the character very innocently, and speak the garden-scene very prettily, is quite sufficient to be a representative of the heroine throughout; and hence the same expectation has been so often disappointed. The debutante may be often carried, without apparent failure, through a scene or two, by' her beauty and pretty manner of love-making; but when the tragedy commences in earnest, her intellectual expression sinks under it terrors, and she appears no more than a poor young lady, driven mad with the vexation of love.

Her traits of family resemblance struck us most powerfully in the deeper and more earnest parts of her tragic performance. On one occasion, when her face only was revealed by her drapery, its intense expression brought Mrs. Siddons most vividly back to us. Miss Kemble's personal qualifications for her profession are, indeed, such as we might expect from one so parented and related. Her head Far remote from this description is the is nobly formed and admirably placed on her Juliet of Miss Kemble. It never was our forshoulders-her brow is expansive and shaded tune to see Mrs. Siddons in the part, but Miss by very dark hair-her eyes are full of a gifted Kemble gives it a depth of tragic tone which soul, and her features are significant of intel- none of her predecessors whom we have seen lect to a very extraordinary degree. Though ever gave to it. Miss O'Neil, loth as we are scarcely reaching the middle height, she is to forget her fascinations, used to lighten the finely proportioned, and she moves with such earlier scenes of the piece with some girlish dignity and decision that it is only on recollec- graces that were accused of being infantine. tion we discover she is not tall. In boldness Be that as it may, there were certainly a hunand dignity of action she unquestionably ap-dred little prettinesses enacted by hundreds of proaches more nearly to Mrs. Siddons than any actress of our time excepting Pasta. Her voice, whilst it is perfectly feminine in its tones, is of great compass, and though, perhaps, not yet entirely within her command, gives proof of being able to express the sweetest emotions without monotony, and the sternest passions without harshness. She seems to know the stage by intuition, "as native there and to the manner born," and she understands even now, by what magic we cannot divine, the precise effect she will produce on the most distant spectators. She treads the stage as if she had been matured by the study and practice of years. We dreamed for a while of being able to analyze her acting, and to fix in our memory the finest moments of its power and grace; but her attitudes glide into each other so harmoniously that we at last gave up enumerating how often she seemed a study to the painter's eye and a vision to the poet's heart.

At the first sight, Miss Kemble's countenance conveys an impression of extraordinary

novices in the character, which attracted habitual applauses, but which Miss Kemble at once repudiated with the wise audacity of genius; at the same time, though she blends not a particle of affected girlishness with the part of Juliet, her youth and her truth still leave in it a Shakspearian naiveté. As the tragedy deepens, her powers are developed in unison with the strengthened decision of purpose which the poet gives to the character. What a noble effect she produced in that scene where the Nurse, who had hitherto been the partner of all her counsels, recommends her to marry Paris, and to her astonished exclamation, "Speak'st thou from thy heart?" answers, "And from my soul too, or else beshrew them both." At that momentous passage Miss Kemble erected her head, and extended her arm, with an expressive air which we never saw surpassed in acting, and with a power like magic pronounced "Amen!" In that attitude, and look, and word, she made us feel that Juliet, so late a nurseling, was now left alone in the

world-that the child was gone, and that the | with only one little touch of baser matter in heroic woman had begun her part. By her the mimickry of the Nurse-and closed by a change of tone and manner she showed that death true to nature, and exhibiting, in milder her heart was wound up to fulfil its destiny, light, all the brilliant traits of the character and she bids the Nurse "Go in," in a tone of Warde showed his good feeling in accepting dignified command. That there was such a the part of Friar Laurence, and his good taste change in Juliet we have always felt, but to in speaking the poetry of which it is made up: mark its precise moment was reserved for this Mrs. Davenport played the Nurse as excellentaccomplished actress in a single tone. ly as she has played it for the last twenty years, and not better than she will play it for twenty years to come; and Mrs. Kemble went through the little she had to do in Lady Capulet with true motherly grace.

It is hardly needless to say, that Mr. Kemble's Mercutio was delightful, independent even of the gallant spirit with which he carried off the weight of his anxieties on the first evening. It was charmingly looked, acted, and spoken

THE MELO-DRAMAS AGAINST GAMBLING.

[NEW MONTHLY Magazine.]

THERE is at Paris, where all extremes meet, | appropriate fraud, heartlessness, and misery. a kind of sub-theatrical public, which makes But the last act crowns all, and completes the amends for the severity of the orthodox dra-"moral lesson." Here, after another fifteen matic code, by running wild after the most years passed in the preparatory school of guilt, extravagant violations of all rules, and the the hero verging on old age is represented as strangest outrages on feeling and taste. Thus in the most squalid penury-an outcast from the members of this living paradox keep the society, starving with a wife bent down by balance even, and avenge the beautiful and the suffering, and a family of most miserable romantic. If they turn away with disgust from children crying for bread. His first exploit is the Weird Sisters, and defy the magic in the to plunder a traveller, murder him, and hide web of Othello's handkerchief, they dote on his body in the sand; but this is little; the Mr. Cooke in the Monster, and consecrate horror is only beginning. While his last ribands to his fame. If they refuse to pardon murder is literally "sticking on his hands," the grave-diggers in Hamlet, they seek for his old tempter and companion, who had atmaterials of absorbing interest in the charnal-tempted to seduce his wife and had utterly house which no divine philosophy illumines. If they refuse to tragedy any larger bounds of time than their own classical poets could occupy with frigid declamations, they will select three days from distant parts of a wretched and criminal life, in order to exhibit in full and odious perfection, the horrors which two fifteen years of atrocity can accumulate and mature. Of all the examples of the daring side of their eternal antithesis, the melo-drama against gambling, produced within the last few months, is the most extraordinary and the most successful. Each act is crowded with incidents, in which the only relief from the basest fraud and the most sickening selfishness is to be found in deeds which would chill the blood if it had leisure to freeze. We do not only "sup full of horrors," but breakfast and dine on them also. A youth, who on the eve of his wedding-day sells the jewels of his bride to gamble with the price, and who deceives her by the most paltry equivocations; a friend, who sup-ant on the production of this bloody trash is plies this youth with substituted diamonds which he has himself stolen; a broken-hearted father who dies cursing his son; and a seduction of the wife, filthily attempted while the husband is evading the officers of justice, are among the attractions which should enchain the attention, and gently arouse curiosity in the first act of this fascinating drama. The second act, exhibiting the same pair of fiends, after a lapse of fifteen years, is replete with

blasted his fortunes, enters his hut, ragged and destitute, and by a few sentences rekindles the old love of play, and engages him in schemes of fraudulent gaming. After this little scene of more subdued interest, the party leave the hut to inter the corpse of the assassinated tra veller, and give opportunity for the entrance of the eldest son of the hero, and his recognition by his mother. In her brief absence, contrived for this special occasion, the friends resolve on murdering the youth, of whose name they are ignorant; the father watches while his familiar stabs the stranger on his couch; and just as the full horror is discovered, a thunderbolt sets fire to the dwelling of iniquity, and the father hurls his tempter into the flames and follows him! Such is the piece which has delighted the dainty critics of Paris, who revclt from Julius Cæsar as bloody, and characterize Hamlet as "the work of a drunken savage." But the most offensive circumstance attend

the pretence that it is calculated to advance the cause of morality by deterring from the passion of gambling. What a libel is this on poor human nature! Of what stuff must that nature be made, if it could receive benefit from such shocking pictures as representations affecting it nearly! No longer must we regard it as a thing of passion and weakness,-erring, frail, and misguided, yet full of noble impulses and gentle compassions and traits, indicating

ON THE INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER OF THE LATE
WILLIAM HAZLITT.

[FROM "THE EXAMINER" AND "THE REVIEW OF WILLIAM HAZLITT."]

As an author, Mr. Hazlitt may be contem- | single, may be traced in the history of his mind, plated principally in three aspects, as a moral at which it may be well to glance before ad and political reasoner; as an observer of cha- verting to the examples. racter and manners; and as a critic in literature and painting. It is in the first character only, that he should be followed with caution. His metaphysical and political essays contain rich treasures, sought with years of patient toil, and poured forth with careless prodigality, -materials for thinking, a small part of which wisely employed, will enrich him who makes them his own,-but the choice is not wholly unattended with perplexity and danger. He had, indeed, as passionate a desire for truth as others have for wealth, or power, or fame. The purpose of his research was always steady and pure; and no temptation from without could induce him to pervert or to conceal the faith that was in him. But, besides that love of truth, that sincerity in pursuing it, and that boldness in telling it, he had earnest aspirations after the beautiful, a strong sense of pleasure, an intense consciousness of his own individual being, which broke the current of abstract speculation into dazzling eddies, and sometimes turned it astray. The vivid sense of beauty may, indeed, have fit home in the breast of the searcher after truth,-but then he must also be endowed with the highest of all human faculties, the great mediatory and interfusing power of imagination, which presides supreme in the mind, brings all its powers and impulses into harmonious action, and becomes itself the single organ of all. At its touch, truth becomes visible in the shapes of beauty; the fairest of material things appear the living symbols of airy thought; and the mind apprehends the finest affinities of the worlds of sense and of spirit "in clear dream and solemn vision." By its aid the faculties are not only balanced, but multiplied into each other; are pervaded by one feeling, and directed to one issue. But, without it, the inquirer after truth wil sometimes be confounded by too intense a yearning after the grand and the lovely,-not, indeed, by an elegant taste, the indulgence of which is a graceful and harmless recreation amidst severer studies, but by that passionate regard which quickens the pulse, and tingles in the veins, and "hangs upon the beatings of the heart." Such was the power of beauty in Hazlitt's mind; and the interfusing faculty was wanting. The spirit, indeed, was willing, but the flesh was strong; and when these contend, it is not difficult to foretell which will obtain the mastery; for "the power of beauty shall sooner transform honesty from what it is into a bawd, than the power of honesty shall transform beauty into its likeness." How this some-time paradox became exemplified in the writings of one whose purpose was always

William Hazlitt was the son of a dissenting minister, who presided over a small Unitarian congregation at Wem, in Shropshire. His father was one of those blameless enthusiasts who, taking only one view of the question be tween right and power, embrace it with singleness of heart, and hold it fast with inflexible purpose. He cherished in his son that attachment to truth for its own sake, and those habits of fearless investigation which are the natural defences of a creed maintaining its ground against the indolent force of a wealthy establishment, and the fervid attacks of combining sectaries, without the fascinations of mystery or terror. In the solitude of the country, his pupil learned, at an early age, to think. But that solitude was something more to him than a noiseless study, in which he might fight over the battle between Filmer and Locke; or exult on the shattered dogmas of Calvin; or rivet the links of the immortal chain of necessity, and strike with the force of ponderous understanding, on all mental fetters. A temperament of unusual ardour glowed amidst those lonely fields, and imparted to the silent objects of nature a weight of interest akin to that with which Rousseau has oppressed the picture of his early years. He had not then, nor did he find till long afterwards, power to imbody his meditations and feelings in words; the consciousness of thoughts which he could not hope adequately to express, increased his natural reserve, and he turned for relief to the art of painting, in which he might silently realize his dreams of beauty, and repay the bounties of nature. A few old prints from the old masters awakened the spirit of emulation within him; the sense of beauty became identified in his mind with that of glory and duration; while the peaceful labour calmed the tumult in his veins, and gave steadiness to his pure and distant aim. He pursued the art with an earnestness and patience which he vividly describes in his essay "On the Pleasure of Painting;" and to which he frequently reverts in some of his most exquisite passages; and, although in this, his chosen pursuit, he failed, the passionate desire for success, and the long struggle to attain it, left deep traces in his mind, heightening his strong perception of external things, and mingling, with all the thoughts, shapes and hues which he had vainly striven to render immortal. A painter may acquire a fine insight into the nice distinctions of character, he may copy manners in words as he does in colours, but it may be appre hended that his course as a severe reasoner will be somewhat "troubled with thick coming

with affected contempt, as the drivelling of an impudent pretender, whose judgment was to be estimated by an enthusiastic expression torn from its context, and of whose English style a decisive specimen was found in an error of the press. Thus was a temperament, always fervid, stung into irregular action; the strong regard to things was matched by as vivid a dislike of persons; and the sense of injury joined with the sense of beauty to disturb the solemn musings of the philosopher and the great hatreds of the patriots.

fancies." And if the successful pursuit of art | whole "Quarterly Review," were dismisse may thus disturb the process of abstract contemplation, how much more may an unsatisfied passion ruffle it, bid the dark threads of thought glitter with radiant fancies unrealized, and clothe its diagrams with the fragments of picture which the hand refused to execute! What wonder, if, in the mind of an ardent youth, thus struggling in vain to give palpable existence to the shapes of loveliness which haunted him, "the homely beauty of the good old cause" should assume the fascinations not properly its own! At this time, also, while at once laborious and listless, he became the One of the most remarkable effects of the associate of a band of young poets of power strong sense of the personal on Hazlitt's abstract and promise such as England had not pro- speculations, is a habit of confounding his own duced for two centuries, whose genius had feelings and experiences in relation to a subbeen awakened by the rising sun of liberty, ject with proofs of some theory which had and breathed forth most eloquent music. grown out of them, or had become associated Their political creed resembled his own; yet, with them. Thus, in his "Essay on the Past for the better and more influential part, they and the Future," he asserts the startling propowere poets, not metaphysicians; and his inter- sition, that the past is, at any given moment, course with them tended yet farther to spread of as much consequence to the individual as the noble infection of beauty through all his the future; that he has no more actual interest thoughts. That they should have partially in what is to come than in what has gone by, understood him at that time was much, both except so far as he may think himself able to for them and for him; for the faculty of ex- avert the future by action; that whether he pression remained imperfect and doubtful until was put to torture a year ago, or anticipates the quickened at that chosen home of genius and rack a year hence, is of no importance, if his kindness, the fire-side of the author of "John destiny is so fixed that no effort can alter it; Woodvil." There his bashful struggles to ex- and this paradox its author chiefly seeks to press the fine conceptions with which his establish by beautiful instances of what the bosom laboured were met by entire sympathy; past, as matter of contemplation, is to thoughtthere he began to stammer out his just and ful minds, and in fine glances at his individual original notions of Chaucer and Spenser, and history. The principal sophism consists in old English writers, less talked of, though not varying the aspect in which the past and future less known, by their countrymen; there he are viewed; in one paragraph, regarding was understood and cheered by one who them as apart from personal identity and conthought after their antique mode, and wrote in sciousness, as if a being, who was "not a child their spirit, and by a lady, "sister every way" of time," looked down upon them; and, in to his friend, whose fine discernment of his another, speaking in his own person as one first efforts in conversation, he dwelt upon who feels the past as well as future in the inwith gratitude even when most out of humour stant. When the quarrels with a supposed with the world. He wrote then slowly, and disputant who would rather not have been with great difficulty, being, as he himself states Claude, because then all would have been in his "Letter to Gifford," "eight years in over with him, and asserts that it cannot sigwriting as many pages;" in that austere labour nify when we live, because the value of existthe sense of the beautiful was rebuked, and ence is not altered in the course of centuries, his first work, the "Essay on the Principles he takes a stand apart from present consciousof Human Action," is composed in a style as ness and the immediate, question-for the dry and hard as a mathematical demonstration. desire to have been Claude could only be But when his pen was loosed from its long gratified in the consciousness of having been bondage, the accumulated stores of thought Claude-which belongs to the present moment, and observation pressed upon him; images of and implies present existence in the party beauty hovered round him; deep-rooted attach-making the choice, though for such a momen ments to books and works of art, which had been friends to him through silent years, glowed for expression, and a long arrear of personal resentments struggled to share in the masterdom of conscious power. The room of Imagination, which would have enabled him to command all his resources, and place his rare experiences to their true account, was supplied by a will-sufficiently sturdy by nature, and made irritable and capricious by the most inexcusable misrepresentation and abuse with which the virulence of party-spirit ever disgraced literary criticism. His works were shamelessly garbled; his person and habits slandered; and volumes, any one page of which contained thought sufficient to supply a

he might be willing to die. He strays stil wider from the subject when he observes a treatise on the Millennium is dull; but asks who was ever weary of reading the fables of the Golden Age? for both fables essentially belong neither to past nor future, and depend for their interest, not on the time to which they are referred, but the vividness with which they are drawn. But supposing the Golden Age and the Millennium to be happy conditions of being-which to our poor, frail, shivering virtue they are not-and the proposal to be made, whether we would remember the first, or enter upon the last, surely we should "hail the coming on of time," and prefer having our store of happiness yet to expend, to the know