.

loved philosophy, but his beloved mistress, the gardener's daughter; and, in short, is half crazed with his good fortune. The man of wealth becomes, by a similar caprice, suddenly poor; and, from being proud and insolent, becomes the humble servant of the poor schoolmaster, sells him his castle, his servants, and his dinner even; and conspires with his haughty sister to make Monsieur' Marcellin his brother-in-law. They apply to a devoted friend of the family, and a constant visiter at the chateau, to assist them in their design. The friend would be delighted to aid them, is more attached than ever to his friends in their adverse fortune, but unhappily, and for the first time, he has not a moment at his disposal. The fact is, that he suddenly recollects that he, too, has a sister to marry, and he starts off privately to bring her into the field. The obsequiousness of the men, and the coquetry of the ladies to the new lord of the domain are really comic. There is some felicity and finesse in the tone of good faith with which they give the rich Marcellin credit for good qualities of the head and heart, which they never thought of in the poor philosopher who taught the alphabet in a hut on the highway. Our puppet showman is the practical philosopher and moralist of the piece, and he, too, becomes, for a moment, a puppet like the rest, but only for a moment. He sees and frankly owns his weakness, resumes his philosophy, and sets the puppets, that is, the personages, dancing to a new tune. He contrives to make it appear that Marcellin's wealth was all smoke, and that the rich inheritance really belongs to the deserted gardener's daughter. All eyes are now turned to the rich heiress, with ridiculous versatility. The end being gained, an éclaircissement takes place. The puppets are dismissed ignominiously, and Marcellin, an honest fellow in the main, is restored, by the false alarm, to his senses, his better feelings, and his mistress. The whole moral of this piece is briefly and happily recapitulated at the close. One of the personages comes in, whilst the inheritance is yet supposed pending, and asks impatiently, Well, who is rich? who is poor?' to which the puppet showman replies, "To whom shall I pay my court, you mean?' The great defect of this piece is the want of probability, and the absence of resemblance to real life. The farce called Fortune's Frolic' is an extract from it, but retaining only the common-place farce and whim of the original, and tinged over, by the usual process of Messrs. Colman, Kenny, and Poole, e tutti quanti, so as to pass current, in this realm, for sterling English.

M. Picard gave to the public and the world, in 1817, a comedy, entitled 'Vanglas, ou les anciens amis.' Here he is

once

once more on the delicate ground of place and politics,-and fails. Vanglas, the hero of the piece, once an humble clerk in the war department, has risen to one of the highest offices of the state. This man has two opposite characters. He is kind, generous, and faithful, according to his friends; insolent, ungrateful, and corrupt, according to his enemies; and he merits both reputations, according to M. Picard. But M. Picard should have remembered, that in nature, as in logic, two contradictories cannot both be true; and he should have perceived this in the failure of his own illustration. His Vanglas is merely a creature essentially weak, with some good, some bad qualities, and both equally diluted. He is not without a certain fund of good feeling, which shews itself by transient accesses; but his vanity makes him impertinent; his timidity base. The leading incident, by which his double essence is illustrated, is his sheltering in his house, an early friend, whose life is compromised politically, and at the same moment preparing the articles of impeachment against him,-lest, by refusing the odious duty, he should offend his master and lose his place. The obvious and even expressed intention of the author was to give a retrospective glimpse of the imperial regime. But he defeated his purpose by laying the scene under the regency, and the administration of Dubois. No two periods in history were more entirely dissimilar. The consequence is, that his piece characterizes neither. This unhappy choice of time and place may have been imposed on him by the strict control exercised by the restored government over the drama and the press. The censorship expressly, or his own fears of it, may have interdicted the representation of the late government by name and unmasked. But in choosing a remote and inappropriate period, he was not the more free. Cardinal Dubois is frequently alluded to, but with the utmost reserve; and no allusion was permitted to the Regent, however innoxious or insignificant. The impertinence of office is the only well-pronounced trait in the character of Vanglas. This is happily contrasted with the sycophancy of two old friends,' who come to solicit places from him. During the audience the great man sips his coffee, talks to his valets in waiting, amuses himself with giving crumbs of bread to his canary birds, and only asks them the news of the day; whilst his two friends are astonished at his genius, delighted with his affability, and in raptures with the beauty of the little caged favourites. Ah!' says one of the valets, this is going beyond me; they flatter even his canary birds.' Vanglas tells them they frighten the birds, and very cavalierly orders the valet to draw the curtain before the

cage.

cage, The valet's observation is tart and piquant, and there is finesse in the last trait of the foppish petulance of Vanglas.

This collection ends with Les Charlatans et les Compères,' (the Quacks and Confederates,) a comedy, in five acts, long enough to make seven or eight, and never performed. It seems to have been writen con amore. The professed object is to shew that a quack is nothing without confederates, and that with these, merit must give way to him. The scene is laid in Germany, and the chief charlatan, a quack doctor; but it is easy to perceive that the author thought only of Paris, the Parterre, the Journalists, and the less fortunate of his own plays. He seems to have had the poetical temperament in at least one respect-his impatience of censure. A drop of ink from the pen of a diurnal critic sinks and festers in his memory for years. He was, it appears, tormented with the desire of knowing what would be his reputation with posterity, and once intended to have it given out that he was dead, for the purpose of gratifying his thirst of fore-knowledge.

M. Picard, at starting, conformed with the established usage of writing comedies in verse, of course rhymed. The French consider this essential to high or legitimate comedy. One of Molière's chefs d'oeuvre, the 'Avare,' did not, at first, atone by its merit for the sin of being in prose, and was withdrawn after the first representation, and not reproduced until after the lapse of a year. The Festin de Pierre keeps possession of the stage, not in Molière's prose, but in the rhymed version of the lesser Corneille. There are, it is true, several striking exceptions in the acted drama of France; but still they are only exceptions, and prove the rule.

This predilection of the French for comedy in verse is not altogether the effect of prejudice or usage. A happy or pointed trait of pleasantry, character, or observation,-epigram, antithesis, and the sententious, are all launched with more precision, and impress themselves more forcibly on the imagination and the memory in French verse, than prose. If the poet have the art to make his versification flexible and varied, and avoid measured monotony by the skilful change of movement, and disposition of the cesura, he at once soothes the ear and fascinates the attention, and even relieves the actor in the delivery. It is known that the first comic artists of the French theatre prefer rhyme to prose. No English, or other foreign auditor of the long tirades in the Misanthrope,' having a competent familiarity with the French language, will deny that their length is felt less, and their merit more, from their being written in Molière's admirable verse. Nor is it to be

supposed

supposed that French rhyme imposes an extraordinary hardship on the writer. Rhymes abound in the French language. Scarron wrote a whole comedy, if burlesque and buffoonery may be so called, in eight-syllabled verses, all terminating in the same rhyme.*

The verse of M. Picard not having satisfied his countrymen, who are fastidious in the matter, he, after some time, betook himself to prose. It is probable, the necessity of producing two pieces a year for the Odeon may also have influenced him. But his prose seems to us not less faulty than his verse. It is sometimes negligently, sometimes elaborately diffuse. He spins out and expands, not only his ideas, but his vocabulary. There is something amusing in the mock frankness and vain self-complacency with which he criticises himself. Corneille, in his prefaces, judged himself with a proud simplicity becoming his genius, and instructive to the reader. Those of M. Picard are of little value to the dramatic art: they contain, however, a great variety of particulars which have the curious interest of personality and egotism. It is strange that M. Picard has not availed himself of so truly comic a subject as the following mis-adventure which happened to himself. We will give, exactly, his own account of it.

Ten days before the representation of my play, I was persuaded, I know not how, to read it at a house which, at the time, gave the tone to all Paris. I expected an audience of only some twenty or thirty people. But what was my dismay, when I saw walking in, after dinner, from a hundred to a hundred and fifty persons; among them women of fashion, generals, senators, judges, poets, and a cardinal. I was tempted to run away. But it occurred to me that flight would expose me still more to jokes and ridicule. I made up my mind to stay, tried to look bold, and read my play rapidly. But what a scene! The lady of the house thought little of the author

and his comedy, and wished only for something to break the monotony of cards and dancing; among the rest of the assemblage, indifference, ill-nature, hollow civilities, applauses of mere politeness, not a word of advice to the author, but exaggerated compliments to his face, sneers and censures behind his back. And the cardinal, who was placed next me, designedly, because he was deaf, after sleeping through the three first acts, roused himself suddenly to say "A very pretty comedy, sir: has it yet been played ?"

to me,

ART. III.—1. Tableau Elémentaire de l'Hist. Nat. des Animaux, par G. Cuvier. Paris, 1798. 8vo. avec pl.

2. Mémoires pour servir à l'Hist. et à l'Anat. des Mollusques, par M. le Chevalier Cuvier. Paris, 1817. 4to. avec pl.

3. Leçons d'Anatomie Comparée de G. Cuvier. Paris, 18001805. 5 tomes, 8vo. avec pl.

4. Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles, 7 tomes 4to. Paris. (three editions) 1812, 1817, 1821. Par M. le Baron Cuvier, avec pl.

5. Recueil des Eloges Historiques, &c., par M. le B. Cuvier. 3 tomes, 8vo. Paris, 1819-1827.

6. Rapport Historique sur les Progrès des Sciences Naturelles, par M. Cuvier. Paris, 1827. 1 tome 8vo.

7. Histoire des Progrès des Sciences Naturelles. Par M. le Baron Cuvier. 4 tomes, 8vo. Paris, 1829.

8. Le Règne Animal distribué d'après son Organisation, par M. le Chev. Cuvier. 4 tomes 8vo. Paris, 1817. avec pl. 9. Le même Ouvrage, Nouvelle Edition, 5 tomes, 8vo. Paris, 1829.

10. Histoire Naturelle des Poissons, par M. le Baron Cuvier et M. Valenciennes, tomes 1, 2, 3, 4. Paris, 1828-9. avec pl.

ALTHOUGH the study of Zoology is far from having yet

acquired in Britain that scientific character which it has long held on the continent, there is obviously an increasing taste for the study of that interesting science, and a more general perception of its utility, since the exertions of the late Sir T. Stamford Raffles in its behalf. The zoological treasures imported from the East by that zealous patron of the science have enriched our previously existing collections and formed the nuclei of new museums, and his influence has extended to the establishment of new societies, menageries, and journals devoted to the advancement of Zoology. The Zoological Society of London, though instituted only four years ago, is already one of the most numerous and respectable scientific societies of Great