popular theme for discussion. Her artistic merits and her charitable acts are alike talked over with fervour; and persons profess to have heard Jenny Lind, who never entered the doors of the Opera-house to hear any other performer.

The period during which she remained before the public this was year short and brilliant. When she had departed, the croakers again raised their voices. "What is to be the attraction now ?" Nothing could be more delightful than the performance of Alboni in the several characters in which she appeared after the departure of Jenny; still, as we observed last month, it was universally felt that a strong excitement was necessary to fill about six weeks of the season.

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We have said already, and the public has seen with its own eyes, how completely the difficulty was solved by the return to the stage of the Countess de Rossi. To all those who look back to the season of 1849, her re-appearance will come out among other events as the great feature of that season. She stands at present as the grand object of public attention; her biography is the brochure of the day; and a brilliant provincial career will be the sure sequence of her London triumph.

Madame Sontag may be considered especially the favourite of the aristocracy. By her connexions and by her manners she belongs essentially to the highest class, and every part that she undertakes she construes from the ladylike point of view. If, as in Susanna, she has to assume the archness of the soubrette, she is most careful that the archness shall involve nothing of pertness or vulgarity. It is her tendency always to soften down the less refined peculiarities of character, and to give an idealised version, in which, however, there is nothing insipid. Her singing is the very perfection of perfection; and probably no vocalist who has ever trod the stage has attained to such a degree the power of distinctive articulation and shadowing. The "Deh vieni," in "Figaro," was a perfect luxury of song.

As for the dancing department, we beg to thank Mr. Lumley for the abolition of that heavy recreation, the grand ballet, which cost a world of money, and produced a world of weariness. An idea neatly set forth

One

by means of dancing, and gracefully decorated with costume and one or two scenes, is all that is required by the epicurean votaries of Terpsichore. Out on the heavy processions, and the lifeless pantomime, and the dull comic fathers, who in vain labour to get humour out of stageconventionalities, and the long stories which nobody understands! or two striking tableaux, like those in "Les Plaisirs d'Hiver," where ballet fun is carried to its highest pitch-one neat, "spicy" little combination, with Carolina Rosati as the principal figure-and we shall be perfectly satisfied.

So now we take leave of the Opera for the good year 1849, hoping that in 1850 we shall again look upon Sontag, Parodi, and Rosati, and still find ourselves admiring the spirit, tact, and integrity of our old friend Mr. Lumley.

THE THEATRES.

A REVIEW of the theatres at present would be a critique on the aspect of closed doors. We see manifestations precursory to renewed activity in September, but nothing is at present fairly above ground.

LITERATURE.

THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.*

LIKE Canada, the Cape has for some time back been a hotbed of colonial controversy. When war broke out in Kafirland in 1846, popular accounts unanimously concurred in representing wars with the Kafirs as being invariably caused by the most unprovoked and wanton aggression on the part of a set of wily, treacherous, and ferocious savages; while, on the other hand, the colonial press, and certain missionary writers belonging to what has been called the "Philanthropist" party, unhesitatingly placed the whole blame at the door of "the rapacious, encroaching, and insatiable colonists."

The work now before us, written by two most competent individuals, Colonel Napier and Mrs. Ward-both some time resident at the Cape and in Kafirland, both trained by habits of observation and reflection to judge for themselves, and both distinguished in the world of literature-is devoted in its earlier parts to combating the misrepresentations of the so-called philanthropists, and to exposing the errors that have been entailed by the false position in which such views have placed the colonist and the native.

Upon the arrival of both the above parties the old system had again been brought into play—a mistaken philanthropy was again in the ascendant; and the consequence was that, instead of fighting, truces, palavers, proclamations, and protestations were the order of the day; "and these crafty barbarians, after having worsted us in the field, now fairly outwitted us in the cabinet."

We have already related from Mrs. Ward's "Five Years in Kafirland," how the chiefs, Sandilla and Macomo, gained time by their protestations, until, when it pleased them to throw off their disguise, the commissariat was nigh exhausted, the summer heat intolerable, and the herbage dried up, so that the advance of the army was rendered more and more difficult. We also alluded to that extraordinary act, called "Registration," which enabled any Kafir possessed of a ticket to claim back the colonists' cattle which had been recovered by force of arms. Colonel Napier speaks of this truly absurd and unjust regulation in language similar to that held previously by Mrs. Ward.

Colonel Napier and Mrs. Ward also alike argue, first, that the Kafirs are miscalled aborigines, for they took the land they hold from the Bushmen; and secondly, that these people have, instead of being illtreated and oppressed, invariably met with too much leniency and kindness, alike from the government and the colonists; have been assisted in time of need, and saved by us from the devastating irruptions of hordes of the same race; and that, instead of evincing gratitude for these good offices, the Kafir has returned their kindness by treachery of the deepest dye, the murder of the settlers, the destruction of their homesteads-in fact, by plunder and rapine on the most sweeping scale.

The author and the editress alike proclaim the injustice of impeaching a community or a system for the errors of individuals; but they do not hesitate to say that there have been among the missionaries illiterate men, who, under the mask of religion, have spread discontent, distrust, Past and Future Emigration; or, the Book of the Cape. Edited by the Author of "Five Years in Kafirland." T. C. Newby.

*

and idleness about them. The appointment, happily, of a bishop and of accredited ministers will be the first step towards weeding this sacred vineyard of such ignorant and vicious men.

It was the same mistaken philanthropy, which has always been legislating in favour of the savage to the neglect of the colonist, which brought about a few years ago the emigration en masse of a large portion of the Dutch Boers; whereby the colony lost many thousand of her ablest defenders, who preferred encountering all the dangers and privations of the wilderness, to being left neglected and unprotected, plundered with impunity, and, "lastly, insult being heaped on injury, not only cruelly calumniated, but actually turned into ridicule."

In that which concerns the observations and suggestions for the defence of the eastern frontier of the Cape of Good Hope, as they were written before the new machinery had been set to work in Cape Colony by Sir Harry Smith, it will be needless to refer to them now beyond observing, that they contain many practical suggestions which might be made available in the present day, and without which the proposed colonisation of the eastern frontier could scarcely be effected with safety. Upon this subject, and that of emigration generally, the information is very full and distinct. Labour is to be provided by means of convict emigration in the west, much to the discomfiture of the existing colonial population; our authors direct the attention of the reader, therefore, more to the eastward, where, they say, "the soil and climate conspire to promise a more copious and varied fertility." England is now fully awakened to the absolute and paramount necessity of emigration, as a means by which she can alone be relieved of the burden of a poor and overwhelming population; and it is to be hoped that the stores of information as to the capabilities of the Cape, here conveyed to us, will not be lost to the country at large.

ADVENTURES OF A GREEK LADY.*

THE Greek lady who here relates her adventures is a person to whom much interest is attached. The daughter of Sciot and Candiot nobles, she accompanied her father to the court of Naples, where she attracted the attention of the late Queen Caroline, who adopted her as her own daughter. Such a close intimacy revives subjects of now by-gone discussion; but the imprudent conduct, to say the least of it, and the vagaries of Caroline of Brunswick, were seldom placed in a clearer and yet less offensive form before the public. It is needless to say that this protégé sides devotedly with her royal protectress; yet she relates examples of the relations that existed between the notorious Bergami and her royal highness that are, even according to her own words, of a very suspicious character. Such most especially is the account of the dinner-party at Genoa, at which the princess appeared leaning on her pseudo-lacquey's arm, and placed him at her right hand. Well may the English portion of the company have been filled with dismay! Equally and glaringly improper was the princess's conduct at Patras.

When only five years of age the little Countess Stephano was affianced to a young Scot named Donald, an officer in the English navy. The ceremony of the betrothal, she intimates, was performed with great solemnity, and the princess settled a handsome dowry on her protégé. Consi

* Adventures of a Greek Lady, the adopted daughter of the late Queen Caroline. Written by Herself. 2 vols. H. Colburn.

dering that such things as the betrothal of children is unknown in this country, it reflects highly on Captain Donald that he adhered through life to this engagement, and that he was ever kind, attentive, and affectionate to the Greek lady; who herself, with the vanity so peculiar to the Eastern character, avows that, " brought up as I had been in the courtly circle of an accomplished princess-introduced by her to many of the most distinguished persons of the age, and having been the companion of her travels through the most interesting regions of the earth, it can scarcely seem surprising that my tastes, and indeed my whole turn of thought, rose somewhat above the ordinary level. The consequence was, that I did not look forward with much of happy anticipation to the time when I should be called upon to enter into a less brilliant position of life."

There was not much promise of happiness here; and indeed the career of the Greek lady, from the time that she parted from her protectress, appears to have been solely devoted to the display of herself and costume throughout Europe and America. At Glasgow she says,

My Greek costume, and my power of conversing in various languages, interested several gentlemen of the company, who had travelled in those parts of the world which I had visited with the Princess of Wales. Some of the ladies present did not, however, appear to be quite pleased with the marked notice directed to me. Lady E▬▬ D—— was particularly piqued, and did not disguise her dissatisfaction, though without departing from those rules of politeness which are always observed by well-bred persons. That the umbrage she felt on this occasion was not either slight or transient, is certain; for, in after years of my life, some passages of that lady's conduct towards me savoured strongly of

vengeance.

These points of attraction, as well as others frequently alluded to in the pages before us, brought about many offers of marriage; at Montreal, for example, from an officer of marines; and when in India, she says, "That I am not a begum, or Indian princess, is no one's fault but my own," a native prince, one Allum ud Doulah, having made a formal proposal for her hand. Upon the death of Captain Donald, the persecutions the poor countess underwent to force her into the apparently much abhorred state of marriage are really painful to peruse! Whether these confessions, by their extreme personality, and the peculiarly Oriental turn of mind of their author, do not go beyond what is strictly permissible, we will not venture to say, as a lady and a foreigner is in the case; but there can be no doubt that the mixture of naïveté, ingenuousness, and vanity which belong to them, impart to these said confessions a rich and rare interest. On one point the Greek lady's memory, we suspect, has played her false; it is when she says that Bergami was not with the princess at St. Omer's.

BELL'S WAYSIDE PICTURES.*

THIS very tasteful book must become popular with tourists. Strong appreciation of the beautiful, quick sense of the peculiar and characteristic, and lively perception of social anomalies, are the distinguishing features of the mind of the author of " Wayside Pictures through France, Belgium, and Holland."

Landing at Havre, a first and truly French scene presented itself to Mr. Bell-four Frenchwomen at breakfast, eating, drinking, laughing, and screaming all together with indescribable volubility.

"It was," he says, "a striking sight, upon first landing from Englandstaid, decorous, conventional England-to come suddenly upon such a party in a public room: four ladies, without a gentleman, ordering the waiters with a loud * Wayside Pictures through France, Belgium, and Holland. By Robert Bell, Author of the "Life of Canning," &c. R. Bentley.

confidence that defied criticism, and feasting away at the top of their animal spirits. Of course, that was only the first image which involuntarily forced itself upon us, to be displaced by a moment's reflection; since the universality of such usages may be accepted as evidence of a more advanced stage of civilisation than exists in England in reference to the conduct of women-little as we are disposed to exchange our retreating manners for this boisterous fearlessness."

It is impossible to follow Mr. Bell in his zigzag paths through town and city, in and out of wood and glen, by mill-stream, village, and hill-side, losing himself in all manner of places, but still touching with the same interest shattered towers, dusk woods,

The hives of men, or whispering solitudes.

The fortifications of France, he justly remarks, and the mercantile spirit enclosed by them, are antagonistic principles, and cannot subsist together. The government of France might as well issue an edict to stop all the clocks and watches in the kingdom at a particular moment every day, for the purpose of regulating the sun, as build fortifications to restrain the free action of industry. All such hindrances must vanish, as knowledge makes head against ignorance, and discovers to us surer safeguards than bastions and dykes. The passport system is a similar contradiction to the spirit of the age, and cannot, even as a source of revenue, continue to co-exist with railroads and steam-packets.

Mr. Bell remarks of the Seine, as compared with the Rhine, that both are dotted all over with traditions, but they are of a different order. On the one, ruined castles of great land-pirates, mouldering in a legendary atmosphere of love and rapine; on the other, the monastery reigns paramount over the château: but where strongholds exist, their traditions are those of knights who won their spurs in legitimate fields, and who, in spite of the vicissitudes of civil and foreign wars, transmitted honourable names to their posterity. Next come antique Norman towns-Rouen and Caen at the head-with annihilated old churches; towns whose history is as much mixed up with English tradition as with that of the Normans themselves; and then the diligence, the interior of which has so long been a complete comedy-in-little of French life, but soon destined to disappear before its potent rival, the railway carriage. To these again succeed the fairy legends of Normandy, "full of a humanising tenderness, which falls in gracefully with the sombre earnestness of the popular temperament.' Vaux de Vire, and its lyrists-Ville Dieu, and its pious galantie-show— Norman caps, and the faces under them-economical Avranches-Mont St. Michel, its chivalrous legends, and its memorials of war and prisonSt. Malo, "the gustiest spot on the whole coast"-Dinon, and its hero Du Guesclin-the habits and superstitions of the Bretons-the great green Loire, with populous Nantes, and reminiscences of the Duchess of Berri— and Angers, and the war of La Vendée; which lead the way to Saumur, the town which Mr. Bell especially recommends to the settler, "the paradise of the demi-fortune," he expressively calls it. From Saumur to Blois and Orleans is now, it is needless to say, but a step.

And here dropping the curtain on France, Mr. Bell carries the reader, by a sudden change of scene, to "drowsy, stately old Antwerp,”—to Malines, the centre of the railroad system in Belgium-to Bruges, to Brussels, to Waterloo, down the Meuse to Liège, and thence by the Rhine to Holland. This will suffice to give an idea of the variety presented in these Wayside Sketches, though not of the interest imparted to them by the author.

Mr. Bell's remarks upon the English abroad especially deserve perusal; and we sincerely hope they may fall in some places, not as seeds cast upon the wind, to be blown away, but to take root, and work reform.