stage. With this condition he agreed to comply, and taking his departure for Rye, the marriage ceremony was performed in that town. The company to which the bridegroom belonged, shortly after, went to Lewes, where the manager was desired, by the leading people, to get up the Funeral, and a wish was at the same time expressed, that Mrs. Jefferson should play Lady Charlotte. Upon being informed of the penalty attached to her appearing on the stage, they immediately applied to the father, and succeeded in obtaining his consent that the bond should be destroyed. The play was repeated several times. In 1753, while performing in Philips' (commonly called Harlequin Philips) company, at Weybridge, Mr. Lacy happened to see a play there, and immediately engaged Mr. and Mrs. J. for London. Mrs. J. (who was a remarkably fine breeches figure) appeared in 1758, in Anna Bullen, which ran eight or ten nights. When Barry and Woodward built Crow-street Theatre, they were invited upon a three years article to join them. This offer they accepted, but in their passage had a most miraculous escape. The ship in which they took their passage was lost; and Cibber, Maddox, &c. perished. Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson, Arthur, the comedian, and his family, Mrs. Chambers, and some others, leaped into a small boat, and were saved. At the end of three years they renewed their articles for four more, upon a salary which was raised from four to thirteen pounds a week. [To be continued.] LE KAIN, THE FRENCH TRAGEDIAN. THE portrait of this celebrated actor, which appeared in our last number, was copied from a large print transmitted to us from Paris, There is also another engraving from the same original, subscribed with the following quartain : Du costume oublié zélé restaurateur, C'est lui qui dans ses droits rétablit Melpomene. A chaque personnage il offre un autre acteur, Il étonne, il impose, il subjugue, il entraine. In our number for August, 1801 (Vol. xii. p. 112.) we gave a circumstantial and interesting account of this splendid ornament of the French stage; and in the succeeding volume, some curious letters to him, in French, from our English Roscius, Garrick. Voltaire the patron, friend, and ardent admirer of Le Kain, used to call him "his great actor, his Garrick, his dear son," and Garrick 66 mon cher Roscius Francois." There were, indeed, many points of resemblance between these distinguished cotemporaries. They both burst at once in meridian splendour upon the public; both were deficient in heighth, but superabundant in sensibility and genius; both succeeded in removing the stilts from tragedy, and reconciling it to nature and true feeling. Each also was the reformer of the stage with regard to dress and scenic decoration. The comparison unfortunately may be carried still further-neither of them has left an adequate successor. Panegyric was almost exhausted upon these actors; but, perhaps, Garrick never received a higher compliment, than that which Lewis XV. paid Le Kain upon his first appearance. "Il m'a fait pleurer, moi qui ne pleure guère." This epitaph has been appropriated to Le Kain by his countrymen : Il n'est donc plus de Cothurne aujourd'hui ! Ci-gît Le Kain, Melpomene avec lui. THE APOSTLE PAUL, AND PHOCYLIDES, THE GREEK POET. MR. EDITOR, WHAT a striking similarity there is betwixt St. Paul, 1 Corinth. xi. 14, 15, Ἢ οὐδὲ αυτη ἡ φυσισ διδάσκει ὑμᾶσ, οτι ανὴρ μὲν ἐὰν κομᾶ, ἀτιμία αυτῷ ἐστι ; γυνὴ δὲ εὰν κομᾶ, δόξα αὐτῆ ἐστιν, and the following verses of Phocylides, the Greek poet: Μὴ μὲν επ ἄρσενι παιδὶ τρέφειν χάιτην πλοκαμίδας I do not know whether this passage has been noticed before :-it is not so by Whitby, and I have not time to look at any other of the commentators. • Stamford, 3d April, 1804. OLEN Yours, &c. E. A. P. COWPERIANA. NO. II. THE love of power seems as natural to kings, as the desire of liberty is to their subjects; the excess of either is vicious, and tends to the ruin of both. There are many, I believe, who wish the present corrupt state of things dissolved, in hope that the pure primitive constitution will spring up from the ruins. But it is not for man, by himself man, to bring order out of confusion: the progress from one to the other is not natural, much less necessary, and, without the intervention of Divine aid, impossible: and they who are for making the hazardous experiment, would certainly find themselves disappointed. When we look back upon our forefathers, we seem to look back upon the people of another nation-almost upon creatures of another species. Their vast rambling mansions, spacious halls, and painted casements, the gothic porch smothered with honey-suckles, their little gardens and high walls, their box-edgings, balls of holly, and yew-tree statues, are become so entirely unfashionable now, that we can hardly believe it possible, that a people, who resembled us so little in their taste, should resemble us in any thing else. But, in every thing else, I suppose they were our counterparts exactly, and time, that has sewed up the slashed sleeve, and reduced the large trunk-hose to a neat pair of silk stockings, has left human nature just where it found it. The inside of the man, at least, has undergone no change. His passions, appetites, and aims, are just what they ever were. They wear, perhaps, a handsomer disguise than they did in days of yore; for philosophy and literature will have their effect upon the exterior, but, in every other respect, a modern is only an ancient in a different dress. You can no where find objects more entitled to your pity, than where your pity seeks them. A man whose vices and irregularities have brought his liberty and life into danger, will always be viewed with an eye of compassion by those who understand what human nature is made of; and while we acknowledge the severities of the law to be founded upon principles of necessity and justice, and are glad that there is such a barrier provided for the peace of society, if we consider that the difference between ourselves and the culprit is not of our own making, we shall be tenderly affected by the view B-VOL. XVIII, of his misery, and not the less so, because he has brought it upon himself. There is a pleasure annexed to the communication of one's ideas, whether by word of mouth, or by letter, which nothing earthly can supply the place of; and it is the delight, we find, in this mutual intercourse, that not only proves us to be creatures intended for social life, but more than any thing else, perhaps, fits us for it. I have no patience with philosophers-they, one and all, suppose, (at least I understand it to be a prevailing opinion among them) that man's weakness, his necessities, his inability, to stand alone have furnished the prevailing motive, under the influence of which he renounced at first a life of solitude, and became a gregarious creature. It seems to be more reasonable, as well as more honourable to my species, to suppose that generosity of soul, and a brotherly attachment to our own kind, drew us, as it were, to one common centre, taught us to build cities, and inhabit them, and welcome every stranger that would cast in his lot amongst us; that we might enjoy fellowship with each other, and the luxury of reciprocal endearments, without which a paradise could afford no comfort.There are, indeed, all sorts of characters in the world; there are some whose understandings are so sluggish, and whose hearts are such mere clods, that they live in society, without either contribut ing to the sweets of it, or having any relish for them. A man of this stamp passes by our window continually. I never saw him conversing with a neighbour but once in my life, though I have known him, by sight, these twelve years; he is of a very sturdy make, and has a round belly, extremely protuberant, which he evi, dently considers as his best friend, because it is his only companion, and it is the labour of his life to fill it. I can easily conceive that it is merely the love of good eating and drinking, and now and then the want of a new pair of shoes, that attaches this man so much to the neighbourhood of his fellow-mortals: for suppose these exigencies, and others of a like kind, to subsist no longer, and what is there that could possibly give society the preference in his esteem? But other men have something more than guts to satisfy; there are the yearnings of the heart, which (let philosophers say what they will,) are more importunate than all the necessities of the body; that will not suffer a creature, worthy to be called human, to be content with an insulated life, or to look for his friends among the beasts of the forest. ON THE EVILS OCCASIONED BY A MISTAKEN ZEAL FOR LIBERTY. No hypothesis can be more firmly established, by the occurrences of the present, or the records of past ages, than, that the best of things may be converted to the worst of purposes. Has not the sacred name of religion been the veil under which the greatest atrocities have been committed? Has it not been so stained with blood, that it is only to be wondered that mankind did not entirely abandon it, as a system of superstition, formed for keeping them in awe, and for the purpose of making them endure the most flagrant violations of justice with impunity? But the abuse that has been made of reli gion, I think, is equalled, or perhaps even outdone, by the abuse of that choicest of human possessious, liberty. The enthusiast for liberty seeks for her in the same way as the libertine does for pleasure, in some fancied and chimerical state which is yet to come, and the attainment of which is attended with disappointment, so that recourse must again be had to the expedient of looking forward to some distant period. Instead of seeking for liberty in the paths of virtue, we generally find men who are destitute of that nice principle, the leaders of those despicable factions, who, under the mistaken idea of attaining it, have been hurrying themselves, and perhaps a whole nation, into an abyss of woe, from which it has been unable to extricate itself for ages, No one can look upon the transactions of this kingdom, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, without feeling convinced of the impotency of all efforts to raise the shrine of liberty upon the destruction of the fabric of virtue, verned as it was by a king, whom all historians agree in calling a good and virtuous man, how could it be supposed that a democracy founded on his disgrace, would afford security to the state, or peace to the subject? The event has clearly proved the reverse; and, were it not for the blind infatuation with which men are beset at such times, they would discover the fatal error and the bad consequences which must inevitably result from such untimely opposition. Every leader of a public faction, at the same time that he fights with the word liberty in his mouth, is trampling under foot the very qualities essential to its preservation. His success, instead of accomplishing what he has professed to obtain, liberty for his followers, serves only to raise his own power, and render him despotic, How deeply must a nation feel its error, when this mistake is disco Go |