"When, lo! to dark encounters in mid air,

New wizards rise, here Booth, and Cib. ber there.

Booth in his cloudy tabernacle shrined; On grinning dragons Cibber mounts the wind!"

The nature of these pieces may be pretty well guessed from this passage. They were obviously very much the same as what we now call the introduction to the pantomime. The success of this species was so great that the prices of admission were doubled. At first the boxes were two and sixpence: for the pantomimes, they were raised to five shillings; and the "run was so great that advanced prices became, not the exception, but the rule, and formed the ordinary prices."

Out of these facts what do we gather? We gather, that serious ballet and necromantic spectacle had been introduced with success; but as yet no hint of what we call pantomime. The mixture of tumbling and buffoonery with necromancy, was not yet accomplished! yet this mixture forms the very essence of our species. Nevertheless, although not yet conjoined, these elements existed. I noticed before, the fact of the success of the French tumblers; and this fact I couple with the success of the spectacle, and deduce the following conclusion :—

Managers, it is notorious, seize with avidity on any novelty that will attract audiences. Bunn's offer to Murphy, the weather prophet, to deliver a course of lectures at Drury

Lane on meteorology, though comical enough, was but an instance of the managerial anxiety to fill his house by any means. Yates made Grace Darling an offer in the same spirit. Tamed animals and wonderful posture-masters are found to attract the public, as well as leading tragedians or low comedians. What does the manager care about congruity? His care is for pence. This being premised, I say, that managers in these days, finding French tumblers attractive, and spectacle also attractive, bethought them of uniting the two in one entertainment. Thus the necromancy was joined to the posturing. Clown and Pantaloon were not only types of adroit and studied knavery; they were also posture-masters. Harlequin was not only the lover, but he was also protected by fairies, and gifted with a magic wand.

The idea once started, various modifications soon suggested themselves. Thus the magic wand suggested transformations; and these transformations soon became political "hits," and popular bubbles. Thus, also, as scenery was lavishly employed when dioramas were invented and succeeded, they were quickly transplanted to the pantomime, of which they now form an inseparable

constituent.

I need not dwell on this matter; you have my theory, and the facts on which it is based; of the profundity of the one, and the recondity of the other, you alone can judge. I remain, &c.

VIVIAN LATOUCHE.

THE Comte de Fontaine, the head of one of the most ancient families of Poitou, had gallantly served the cause of the Bourbons during the war which the Vendeans waged against the republic. Although ruined by confiscations, the faithful Vendean constantly refused the lucrative places which Napoleon offered him. Unvarying in his aristocratic creed, he blindly followed its maxims in his choice of a wife. Notwithstanding the seductions of a rich revolutionary parvenu who very much desired the alliance, he married a Demoiselle de Kergarouët, with no other dowry than that of belonging to one of the oldest families of Brittany.

The Restoration found Monsieur de Fontaine burdened with a numerous family. Although to solicit favours never entered his plans, he nevertheless acceded to his wife's wishes, left his estate in the country, the moderate income of which barely sufficed for his children's wants, and came to Paris.

Disgusted by the avidity with which his former comrades sought for places and constitutional dignities, he was about to return to his estate when he received a ministerial letter, announcing to him his nomination to the rank of field-marshal, in virtue of the order which permitted the officers of the Catholic armies to reckon as years of service the first twenty unacknowledged years of Louis the Eighteenth's reign. A few days afterwards the Vendean received officially and without solicitation the cross of the Order of the Legion of Honour and that of Saint Louis. Shaken in his resolution by these successive favours, which he believed he owed to the monarch's remembrance, he was no longer satisfied with taking his family, as he had done every Sunday, to shout Vive le Roi in the Salle des Maréchaux in the Tuileries when the princes went to chapel, but demanded a private audience. This audience, very promptly granted, had nothing private in it. There the count found ancient com

panions who received him rather coldly, but the princes appeared to him adorable; an expression of enthusiasm which escaped him, when the most gracious of masters, to whom the count thought himself known only by name, grasped his hand and proclaimed him the most patriotic of the Vendeans.

Notwithstanding this ovation, none of these august personages thought of asking the amount of his losses, nor that of the money so generously appropriated to the use of the Catholic army. He perceived rather late that he had made war at his own expense. Towards the end of the evening he thought he might venture an allusion to the state of his affairs, similar to that of so many gentlemen. His majesty laughed heartily, for every thing in the least witty pleased him; but he replied, nevertheless, by one of those royal jests, of which the mildness is more to be feared than the anger of a reproof. One of the king's confidants was not long in approaching the Vendean reckoner, and insinuating in polite terms that the time was not yet come to reckon with his masters: there were accounts of much earlier date than his. The count prudently quitted the venerable group, which formed a respectful semi-circle before the august family. Then having, not without some difficulty, disentangled his sword from the legs among which it had got twisted, he regained on foot, through the court of the Tuileries, the coach he had left on the quai.

He

This scene cooled the zeal of Monsieur de Fontaine, and all the more because his requests for an audience always remained unanswered. saw, moreover, the intruders of the empire obtaining some of the situations reserved under the ancient monarchy for the best families.

"All is lost!" said he, one morning. 'Decidedly the king has never been any thing but a revolutionist. Without Monsieur, who does not change, and who consoles his faithful followers, I do not know in what

hands the crown of France would one day fall if this arrangement lasted. Their cursed constitutional system is the worst of all governments, and can never suit France. Louis XVIII. and M. Beugnot have spoiled every thing for us at Saint Ouen !"

The despairing count was preparing to return to his estate, nobly abandoning his pretensions to any indemnity. At this time, the events of the 20th of March announced a fresh tempest which threatened to overwhelm the king and his defenders. Like those generous people who do not dismiss a follower when a rainy day comes, M. de Fontaine raised money on his property in order to follow the monarch, without knowing whether this complicity of emigration would be more propitious to him than his former devotion had been; but having observed that the companions of exile were more in favour than the brave men who had formerly protested, sword in hand, against the establishment of the republic, he, perhaps, hoped to find in this journey to a foreign land more profit than in active and perilous service at home.

During this short absence of royalty, M. de Fontaine had the good fortune to be employed by Louis XVIII., and found more than one occasion of giving the king proofs of great political honesty and sincere attachment. One evening when the monarch had nothing better to do, he remembered a witticism uttered by M. de Fontaine at the Tuileries. The old Vendean did not let such an àpropos escape, and told his story with sufficient cleverness for the king, who forgot nothing, to remember it at a proper season. The august man of letters remarked the elegant turn of a few notes, the compiling of which had been confided to the discreet noble. This little merit inscribed Monsieur de Fontaine in the king's memory among the most loyal servants of his crown. At the second return, the count was appointed one of those envoys extraordinary who traversed the provinces with the mission of judging the inciters of the rebellion, and he used his terrible power with moderation. As soon as this temporary jurisdiction had ceased, the high provost took his

place in the council of state, became a député, spoke little, listened much, and changed his opinions considerably.

This was followed by an appointment which gave M. de Fontaine an administration in the private domains of the crown. In consequence of the intelligent attention with which he listened to the sarcasms of his royal friend, his name was on his majesty's lips every time that a commission was appointed, of which the members were to be lucratively remunerated. He had the good sense to be silent on the favour with which the monarch honoured him, and knew how to maintain it by a lively manner of narrating (in those familiar chats in which Louis XVIII. delighted as much as in well-written notes) the political anecdotes, and the diplomatic or parliamentary gossip which then abounded. Thanks to the wit and address of the count, each member of his family, however young, ended, as he used to say laughingly to his master, by reposing like a silkworm on the leaves of the budget. Thus by the king's bounty his eldest son attained an eminent place in the fixed magistracy. The second, a simple captain before the Restoration, obtained a legion immediately after his return from Ghent; then, under cover of the movements of 1815, during which regulations ceased to be observed, he passed into the royal guard, then back again into the body guards, returned into the line, and after the affair of the Trocadéro, found himself a lieutenant-general with a command in the guards. The youngest, appointed a sous préfet, soon became maître des requêtes, and director of a municipal administration in the city of Paris, in which he found himself safe from legislative tempests. These quiet favours, as secret as the count's own, were granted unremarked. Their political fortune excited no envy. At the period of the first establishment of the constitutional system, few persons had just notions respecting the peaceful regions of the budget, in which adroit favourites knew how to find the equivalent of destroyed abbeys. Monsieur de Fontaine, who used once to boast of never having read the Charte, and shewed such indignation at the avidity of courtiers, was not

long in proving to his noble master that he understood as well as himself the spirit and resources of the representative system. Yet notwithstanding the security of the careers opened to his three sons, notwithstanding the pecuniary advantages resulting from the possession of four places, M. de Fontaine was at the head of too numerous a family easily or quickly to repair his fortune. His three sons were rich in favour, talent, and prospects; but he had three daughters, and feared to weary the monarch's kindness. He devised the plan of never speaking to him of more than one at a time of these virgins anxious to light their hymeneal torch. The king had too much good taste to leave his work unfinished. The marriage of the first with a receiver-general was settled by one of those royal phrases which cost nothing and are worth millions. One evening when the monarch was out of spirits, he smiled on learning the existence of another Demoiselle de Fontaine, whom he married to a young magistrate of bourgeois extraction, it is true, but rich, full of talent, and whom he created a baron. When in the following year, the Vendean mentioned Mademoiselle Emilie de Fontaine, the king replied in his sharp voice,

"Amicus Plato, sed magis amicu natio!"

From this time there was less amenity in his intercourse with Monsieur de Fontaine. The coolness of the monarch was the more painful to the count, because never was a marriage so difficult to arrange as this beloved daughter's. To conceive all the obstacles, we must penetrate into the handsome mansion in which the administrator was lodged at the expense of the civil list. Emilie had passed her childhood on the estate of Fontaine, enjoying that abundance which suffices for the first pleasures of youth. Her least wishes were laws to her sisters, brothers, mother, and even to her father. relations doted on her. Arriving at the age of reason precisely at the moment when her family was overwhelmed with the favours of fortune, the enchantment of her life continued. The luxury of Paris appeared to her quite as natural as the abundance of flowers and fruit, and the rustic

Her

opulence which formed the delight of her early years. As she had never met with any contradiction in her infancy, so when she wanted to satisfy her desire of enjoyment, she found herself still obeyed when at the age of fourteen she threw herself into the whirlpool of the world's gaieties. Thus accustomed by degrees to the advantages of fortune, the cares of the toilet, the elegance of gilded saloons and equipages, became as necessary to her as the real or false compliments of flattery, and the balls and vanities of the court. Every thing smiled upon her: she saw interest excited for her in all eyes. Like most spoiled children, she tyrannised over those who loved her, and reserved her coquetries for those who were indifferent. Her defects only grew with her years, and her parents were soon to reap the bitter fruits of this fatal education. Arrived at the age of nineteen, Emilie de Fontaine had as yet refused to make any choice among the numerous young men whom M. de Fontaine's policy assembled in his parties. Although so young, she enjoyed in the world all the freedom of opinion which a woman can enjoy. Her

beauty was so remarkable, that from the moment she appeared in a drawing-room she was supreme there. Like kings, she had no friend, and she saw herself every where the object of a complaisance which a better disposition than hers might not, perhaps, have withstood. No man, even an old one, had the will to contradict the opinions of a young girl from whom a glance revived love in the coldest heart. Educated with great care, she painted tolerably, spoke English and Italian, played divinely on the piano; her voice, perfected by the best masters, had a tone which lent irresistible seductions to her singing. Witty, and fed on all literatures, it might have been thought, as Mascarille says, that people of quality come into the world knowing every thing. She talked fluently upon Italian or Dutch painting, on the middle ages or the renaissance; judged both old and new books, and shewed up the defects of a work with most cruel wit. most simple words were received by the idolatrous crowd like the sultan's fetfa by the Turks. She thus dazzled

Her

superficial people; as to profound people, her natural tact helped her to recognise them; and with them she displayed so much coquetry, that she escaped from their examination under favour of her attractions. This varnish concealed an indifferent heart, and the opinion common to a great number of young girls that no one inhabited a sphere sufficiently elevated to be able to comprehend the excellence of her soul, and a pride based as much on her birth as on her beauty. In the absence of the violent sentiment which sooner or later ravages the heart of a woman, she carried her youthful ardour into an immoderate love of distinction, and betrayed the most profound contempt for the plebeians. Excessively impertinent to the new nobility, she did her utmost to induce her parents to place themselves on an equality with the most illustrious families of the Faubourg Saint Germain.

These sentiments had not escaped the observant eye of Monsieur de Fontaine, who more than once, at the time of his two eldest daughters' marriages, sighed over Emilie's sarcasms and wit. Reflecting people will wonder to see the old Vendean giving his eldest daughter to a receiver-general who possessed, it is true, a few baronial lands, but whose name was not preceded by that particle (the de) to which the throne owed so many defenders, and the second to a magistrate too recently ennobled to allow any one to forget that his father had sold fagots. This notable change in the ideas of the noble, when he was about to attain his sixtieth year, a period of life at which men rarely alter their opinions, was not owing only to the habitation of the modern Babylon in which all country people end by rubbing off their asperities; the Count de Fontaine's new political conscience was again the result of the king's friendship and advice.

The new ideas of the chief of the Fontaine family and the wise alliances of his two eldest daughters which were their results, had met with strong resistance in the bosom of his family. The Comtesse de Fontaine remained faithful to the ancient ideas which could not be renounced by a woman belonging, on the mother's side, to the Rohans. Although

VOL. XXXIII. NO. CXCHI.

for a moment she opposed herself to the happiness and fortune which awaited her elder daughters, she yielded to those secret considerations which married people confide to each other at night when their heads repose on the same pillow. The countess yielded, but she declared that at least her daughter Emilie should be married so as to satisfy the pride which she had unfortunately contributed to develope in that young mind.

Thus the events which ought to have spread joy in the family introduced into it a slight leaven of discord. The receiver-general and the young magistrate were received with the most freezing ceremony the countess and Emilie could create. Their etiquette soon had ample means of exercising its domestic tyranny: the lieutenant-general married the only daughter of a banker; the president wisely married a girl whose father, a millionnaire two or three times over, had been a manufacturer of printed cottons; and the third brother remained faithful to these plebeian doctrines by taking his wife from the family of a rich notary in Paris. The three sisters-in-law and the two brothers-in-law found so much pleasure and personal advantage in remaining in the high sphere. of political power, and in haunting the salons of the Faubourg Saint Germain, that they all agreed in forming a little court round the haughty Emilie. This compact between interest and pride was not so thoroughly cemented but that the young sovereign frequently excited revolutions in her little state. Scenes, which good taste would have disavowed, kept up between all the members of this powerful family a spirit of ridicule which, without sensibly diminishing the friendship displayed in public, sometimes degenerated in private into sentiments far from charitable. The air of ridicule with which the sisters and brothers-in-law sometimes greeted Mademoiselle de Fontaine's avowed pretensions, excited in her an anger hardly appeased by a shower of epigrams. When the chief of the family suffered some diminution of the tacit and precarious friendship of the monarch, he trembled the more, as, but for her sisters' challenges, his beloved daughter had never looked so high.