THE THEATRES.

If we believed in the metempsychosis, we should certainly conclude that the soul of the Countess d'Anois (or D'Alnoys, or D'Aulnoys-spell it as you please, dear reader) had passed into the body of Mr. Planché. He has that understanding of the structure and tone of her delicious fairy tales, which, one would think, could only be acquired by a second self. A Christmas piece at the Lyceum is not a tale stretched here and docked there, and worked into the dramatic shape on a Procrustes principle, but the story seems to become a play by its own natural development, without any external pressure.

Those fairies, whose exploits fill the pages of the immortal countess, are a totally distinct race from the shadowy beings of German tradition, or the tiny midnight revellers who are called fairies in this island. They are a thoroughly substantial courtly people, who, far from slipping into a house through a key-hole, a door-chink, or any other absurd aperture, only make their appearance when they have been formally invited by the king of the country, or some grandee of his realm. Sumptuous banquets are prepared for their arrival, magnificent presents of millinery and haberdashery are got ready against their departure. They do not, like the various rabble of elves, dwarfs, nixies, cobolds, &c., stand in any hostility to the church. On the contrary, a royal christening is the ordinary occasion of their réunion, and their usual function is to stand godmother to the infant. If the good king and queen tremble a little at the approach of their visitors, it is not with the horror which is felt at the appearance of supernatural beings, but merely with a nervous uneasiness lest the entertainment should not be worthy of guests so distinguished.

There is to be sure, an old bad fairy among the body, but her badness is quite of the human character. She has all the spite of a passée beauty, and is generally nettled because she has not been included in an invitation. Doubtless, she was, once upon a time, as pretty, and as lady-like as the rest, but she has, at last, bowed beneath the weight of centuries, and her beauty and her temper have been worn out together.

The Countess d'Ânois' "fairies" are, in fact, actual ladies and gentlemen, with nothing to distinguish them from the rest of mortality, but the possession of a certain præternatural power. They eat and they drink, and they marry mortals, without any evil consequences, like those which arose from the liaison of poor, languishing German Undine-and they dress themselves in the fashion of the time, which, somehow or other, always happens to be about the period of Louis XIV., and they pride themselves on being not "good people," in the Irish sense of the word, but really "good company."

Now this is exactly the sort of society in which Mr. Planché moves easily. No one of all the dramatic authors has so nice a feeling for the conventionalities of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We know that as an antiquary, he plunges into the thirteenth and the fourteenth; nay, that he will dive among the ancient Britons, an' you will, but we are also certain that a sort of "Ranz des Vaches" feeling tempts him back to the days of the "Grand Monarque" of France, or the "Merry Monarch" of England; and that, although he can readily contemplate the baron's mail and the herald's tabard, his chief penchant is for the Watteau-ish

state of existence. You may still see the semi-modern courtliness amid the medieval costumes of the "King of the Peacocks."

Hence his affinity to the Countess D'Anois, and hence his dainty method of treating the Greek mythology. We should not like to see him busied with the grim horrors of Northern superstition-we would not have him follow the "wild huntsman," or startle us with the shrieks of the uprooted mandrake; but let him ever give us such courtly pleasantries as the "King of the Peacocks;" let him perpetually devise "kingdoms of the Green Valley," where gallant people walk about pleasantly accoutred, and strange regions, where the bird of Juno supplies the chief article of decoration. As our greatest benediction, let us wish that Mr. Beverley may ever paint his scenes, and illustrate those creations of the most tasteful brain with the touches of the most atmospheric pencil.

The Liverpool "brothers Brough," who have contrived the Yulefestivities at the Haymarket, are of quite another class. They do not respect fairy-tales-not they. The story of "Prince Camaralzaman" does not end quite according to their views; so off with the old termination, and on with an incident from the other tale about the fairy Peribanou, and lo and behold, the difficulty is solved. Nor do they care so very much about preserving a tone of elegance throughout their work. If they think it more comic for a gentleman to smoke a pipe than to leave it alone, they give him his yard of clay, and a shabby white hat into the bargain. "Fun-fun-fun," is the object of Messrs. Brough; and the power they have of bringing out verbal jokes by the score, and of fitting merry words to merry tunes, enables them to attain their object triumphantly.

In short, the two theatres-the Lyceum and the Haymarket-have both made grand "hits" with their Christmas pieces, and those of our readers who have seen them both, have made themselves acquainted with first-rate specimens of the different styles.

Mind, pantomimes are no longer the order of the day. A melancholy fate that of Harlequin and Columbine, of Clown and Pantaloon! Their glory was connected with that of the "large theatres," and when the latter were turned into foreign opera houses, or equestrian arenas, they ceased to exist, like feudal retainers, after the destruction of the old baronial castles. The Haymarket and the Lyceum-now the first theatres in the metropolis-show no desire to leave their beaten path of burlesque for the sake of resuscitating the ancient heroes of harlequinade; and the Adelphi, which long stuck to pantomime, gives it up as a bad job. Even at the theatres where the successors of Bologna and Grimaldi are allowed still to make their appearance, a long "introduction" makes awful intrenchments on their dominion, and is, in fact, another form of burlesque, which thus attacks pantomime in its own camp. In the suburbs, the old class of Christmas entertainment still exhibits signs of vitality, but in Westminster, we fear, the case is desperate.

Mr. and Mrs. Kean have gone bravely through their Windsor career and the performances at the Castle draw immense houses when repeated at the Haymarket. The "Merchant of Venice," "Hamlet," and the "Stranger," are the principal pieces that have thus produced a sensation both in town and country.

Among the important events of the to the stage of Mr. James Wallack. "Don Cæsar de Bazan."

month may be noted the return He was cordially welcomed in

LITERARY NOTICES.

ADVENTURES IN BORNEO.*

THE incidents upon which this narrative is founded-the adventures of a shipwrecked boy in Borneo-are, we believe, alluded to in the works that have recently appeared, recording Sir James Brooke's proceedings in that quarter of the globe. The boy in question was the son of a clergyman, who was bound with his wife and two children, a boy and a girl, to some remote colony. This clergyman had married a young lady of family against the wishes of her relatives, and their persecutions had brought poverty and disgrace upon both. The ship in which they had taken their passage was wrecked off the coast of Borneo, the father was slain, and the mother and daughter perished partly from fatigue and privations, and partly from wounds inflicted by Illanun pirates. The boy was preserved by some Dyak peasants, who found him lying insensible from wounds received in the same conflict. They took him to their huts, nurtured him and tendered him; and he grew up among them, learnt their language, and was admitted into their tribe. Except that the little boy felt mortified that his nature was running to waste, he was comparatively happy among these poor islanders. He always entertained a latent hope of making his escape, or of going in search of some European settlement, even with the permission of his protectors; and he only waited till he was older and had grown strong enough to thread the almost impervious mangrove forests, and to defend himself in his travels, to put his plan into execution. In the meantime, the village was suddenly attacked by a host of Badjows, or sea-gypsies, who came in prahus disguised as a friendly tribe. These savages slew most of the villagers and carried away the remainder to slavery, and among them our little hero.

The boy was, at this time, ten years of age, and he endeavoured to conciliate his master-Hussim Atim by name-by conducting him to the spot where certain moneys had been deposited by the English boat's crew at the moment of the attack of the Illanuns, but they were unsuc cessful in their search. The poor boy was scourged, and he was placed on deck under a vertical sun, with a lighted match fastened between each of his fingers. But he was upheld amidst all these trials by the hope that all the days of his life were not appointed for submission to the bondsman's scourge, but that he should live to see white faces again, and listen once more to the almost forgotten accents of his native land.

Nor was he mistaken, the cruel brother that had persecuted his father and mother had been called to his last account. An uncle, who had always loved and befriended his parents, had come into the enjoyment of the family titles and property, and the first thing that he did was to set sail in search of the lost family. The boy had, at the same time, induced his master, by a promise of a large ransom, to convey him to Bruné; and the first sight of an English frigate lying in that harbour, with his uncle on board, is a far more touching climax to the story, than fiction ever depicted.

* Adventures in Borneo. 1 vol. Henry Colburn.

MARTIN TOUTROND; A FRENCHMAN IN LONDON IN 1831.*

MARTIN was the son of "a highly distinguished" sausage manufacturer, in the Rue du Bac; and his parents having seen an ill-favoured youth of the neighbourhood succeed in gaining the affections of "a young miss" who had as her marriage portion, 500l. per annum, they had reckoned that sum up in francs, ascertained that it amounted to 12,500 rentes, and resolved that a youth like Martin, of fashionable and lively manners, should also be married to an Englishwoman, as the shortest or royal road to fortune.

Martin is, in pursuit of this scheme, after familiarising himself to a certain extent with the English language, despatched to London with letters recommendatory, and his adventures in search of the lady proprietress of the 15,000 rentes, form the staple of a clever and amusing volume. Martin is not at all particular; young or old, so long as they are rich, come in alike for a share of his attentions. Social position, appearance, character, and disposition are all minor considerations before this one important point, to succeed in which the son devotes himself with an energy and perseverance that could only be met with in the descendant of an experienced and successful sausage-maker.

The story is told, however, with as much good-nature as talent. The mistakes in language made by Martin, and his solecisms in habits, are in the vein of our friend, Mr. Jolly Green. Throughout, the Frenchman is fairly dealt with; there is quite a penchant on the part of the writer to his hero, although there was not such on the part of the young misses to whom he paid his addresses; and his adventures wind up with a fair example of Gallic good sense and propriety. The severest satire is most certainly directed against our own countrymen. The aristocratic Dippses, chandlers in Thames Street, who affect to despise Tugdug, the wholesale cheesemonger, although he has a westend house, because he is a democrat; the Misses Tugdug affecting to be what they are not; the puritanical Bacon family (not to omit the religious tract mistaken by our hero for a love-letter) are familiar phases in our social system. Unsuccessful in the city sphere, our hero is induced, by a friend he meets with at the lord mayor's ball, to try his chances in another circle as the Vicomte Chateaurond, in which character an infinite variety of perplexities, misfortunes, and disgraces await him; all happily terminating-not in a marriage-but in a proper sense of what is due to himself and to others, and in a full conviction that the practices of deception are neither productive of happiness nor success in life. The work is attributed, and we believe with justice, to the author of "Hajji Baba."

LUCILLE BELMONT.+

"LUCILLE BELMONT" has introduced a new and successful writer of fashionable fiction to the public. He should rather have called his work "Cecil Graham," for the fair Lucille plays a very subordinate part to that of the soi-disant son of the premier, whose morbid sentimentality and fashionable selfishness would weary and disgust the reader,

Martin Toutrond; a Frenchman in London in 1831. 1 vol. Richard Bentley.

† Lucille Belmont. A Novel. 3 Vols. Henry Colburn.

if they were not relieved by much earnest feeling and passion. Cecil, favoured by birth, is by no means so by circumstances. An account of youthfulness so mispent, and of time so squandered, in boating on a Highland loch and making love to an ill-fated little girl, we never read. Nor, according to his own account, did he devote himself more to study when at college, than when exiled at Solecombe. Cecil is one of those self-created geniuses who scorn to acknowledge the preliminaries that others have to go through. Called at a moment's notice to enter into London life and commence a diplomatic career, he is at once at home with ministers and ambassadors; he can ridicule "a middle-aged traveller, who had negociated I do not know how many treaties of commerce, without having brought one to a successful issue, knew every language in civilised Europe, and had translated whole folios of barbaric rhapsodies into English sonnets;" he can at once win the steadfast friendship of the almost "wondrous" Vavasour, the Rodolph of English fashionable society, and a person without whom no novel of fashionable life would in the present day be able to uphold its pretensions. But sentimental Cecil falls in love with the beautiful Lucille, the sister of his dearest college friend, at his very first ball, fancies himself thwarted by Vavasour, repairs to the country, and woos and wins only to discover that a mystery hangs over this fair maiden, which not only puts a bar to all thoughts of union, but actually requires his immediate forfeiture of her society.

The sketches of high official personages, and of the great and the learned of the land, that are here and there scattered through the work, attest the author's intimacy with the society which he describes, and efficiently relieve the scenes of human weaknesses and sufferings which otherwise preponderate in this tale of romantic love.

AUSTRIA.*

THE dream of security from which Austria has been so suddenly and so rudely aroused, the supposed immutability of her system for once and for ever broken up, and the triumphs of her military over insurrection in every direction, from the heart to the remotest extremities of the empire, constitute an epoch in the history of that remarkably constituted country, which attaches a peculiar interest to all real and authentic statements in regard to its social and political condition; and such we can truly say are contained in Mr. Thomson's little book. His accounts bear internal evidence of truth and fairness, and exhibit every proof of having been most carefully collected, and that with a sound and discriminating judgment. We do not think that the author has done justice to Prince Metternich, in not distinguishing the system of which he was the representative, or rather the head, from the man himself. Mr. Paton, in his recently published "Highlands and Islands of the Adriatic," has, in this respect, furnished us with a far more spirited and just view of the Austrian political system. Mr. Thomson is more happy when he signalises the proximate extinction of the farce of a German federal parliament. Public opinion, he says, which in Germany is decidedly in favour of monarchy, will ere long pronounce the doom which is due to the utopianism and arrogance of the Frankfort Assembly. A consummation devoutly to be wished!

* Austria. By Edward P. Thomson, Esq. Smith, Elder, and Co.