Nor do the working people fail to import with them the habits of that section of modern England. They have their Mechanics' Institutes, where they are lectured in what they consider "the principles" of chemistry, poetry, taste, and mechanics. And they have their trade unions, for the purpose of protecting themselves against low wages; though there, any more than in England, they have not detected the method of forcing people to buy their productions at higher prices than they are disposed to give for them.

Sydney has two theatres, but one only (the larger of the two) constantly in operation. It is about the size of the Princess's Theatre, in Oxford Street, and is tastefully enough decorated. Except upon particular occasions it is not a place of fashionable resort, but it is much in favour with the larkish "native lads," the younger squatters on their occasional trips to town, the "gents" of Sydney, and the sailors from the shipping in port. The acting is really very creditable, considering that, having to play so constantly to the same audience, there is a necessity for the production of perpetual "novelties." Every description of piece is atternpted-grand operas, melo-drama, the legitimate, farce, and panto

mime.

In an antipodean city you will be struck with the stands of cabs which you will see in several directions; and the colonial cabman you will find true to the traditions of his caste-incomparable in the expertness of his abuse, yet he may be bribed into the promptest assumption of civility.

Omnibuses have also been started, and you feel yourself mesmerised with the conductor's "passes" as you walk along, though your eyes are studiously turned in another direction.

The fair sex are remarkable for their dressiness-truth constrains the admission, their over-dressiness; in this respect having something of the New York ladies' love of display. The fashions are, of course, English ; and very studiously taken from the latest Belle Assemblée. The men more commonly affect the "varmint" in style. Tweed shooting coats and strutting jackets are the prevailing taste. The young men you meet, with Tam o' Shanter hats, moustaches, and beards, will probably be squatters. You may note in them a sort of fashionable ruffianism—a graft of the Nomade Tartar on the "young man about town." But, be it observed, they are as a class, to my certain knowledge, a very excellent set of fellows. Their line of life has, like most others, its solacing vanities; but they have enterprise and hardihood, are useful men of their generation, and in the combination of causes leading to the great effect of Australian advancement, we may perhaps point to the squatter as, singly, the most efficient of all. We must hereafter become better acquainted with these fellows on their own ground.

Jan.-VOL. LXXXV. NO. CCCXXXVII.

F

MAJOR HEARTLY: OR, THE FLUSH OF THE BOTTLE.

A SKETCH FROM LIFE.

WINE has a very different effect on different individuals. Those in whom it produces somnolency are sorry companions; and as a friend of mine says, I would as soon sit down with a huge sponge, or a sand-bag, as with one of them; since the pouring of wine into either one or the other would be just as amusing and profitable, as consuming time and liquor with these live absorbents. Some very taciturn men grow communicative over the decanter; these it improves; whilst others seem to draw nothing but the acetous property out of the grape, and turn sour, peevish, and quarrelsome; these every man of sense would avoid.

But my friend Major Heartly, who is very easily excited with a very small quantity, is affected differently from all this; the generous fluid expands his heart; and whilst the fumes of modern moderate Bacchus rise into his head, his benevolence flows with the purple tide.

"What can I do to serve you?" is his first question after the first half dozen glasses. "Command my purse, my person, my influence, my abilities, if I have any; in fine, dispose of me in any way I can serve you.' These are his common table phrases over the latter end of the dessert of a bachelor's dinner party. Does he hear a tale of distress ?—He nearly melts into tears! "I will relieve the object," exclaims he, with a right warm and noble zeal. Is a friend embarrassed?-he will lend him the money necessary to extricate him from his difficulties. Is an extravagant friend confined for debt? "Let us call upon him, and consult means together to liberate him," are his constant words. Is the circle particularly convivial? he must name a day, and that a near one, for the whole party to meet at his apartments and renew the festive scene; to strengthen still more the bonds of unity, to add another link to the social chain, and to indulge in the sympathies which cordial friendship excites and practises.

Dining one day at a friend's,—a bachelor-I met Heartly, and he was peculiarly happy. The viands and wines were admirable; he praised our generous friend's hospitality, invited the whole party to his apartments in the Albany the day after, insisted on our host's taking a horse of his to ride out the next morning, and promised that we should call on Charles Lavish in the Queen's Bench, and make a subscription to pay his debts. He left the circle about half-past twelve o'clock, primed with about a pint of Madeira, one bottle of champagne, and a couple of claret. He shook us all by the hand so heartily that one might swear the tide of affection and brotherly love proceeded directly from his heart's core to the extremity of his fingers, and that he gave one his hand and heart together. When he was gone, every one praised him; we all drank his health in a very distinguished manner, and every body agreed that he was the best fellow in the world!

The next morning I received the following note :

"My dear friend, -Our worthy host's variety of good cheer is too potent for me this morning; my stomach is very much out of order, and I must stick to regimen for a few days. On this account, allow me to adjourn our dinner-party for the present.

"Yours very truly,

"FREDERICK HEARTLY."

This epistle served as a circular, for he wrote verbatim copies and despatched them to the numerous party he had invited the day before.

Sauntering down Pall-Mall, I met the gentleman at whose house we had dined, driving in his cab.

"Ha!” said I, "I thought you were going to ride Heartly's horse." "I thought so too," replied he, "but I have just received a put-off from the dinner-party, with the addition of the following P.S. I had quite forgotten that the gray horse was to be physicked to-day; you will therefore excuse me from sending him.'

We agreed that this was odd-a great falling off from the boundless warmth and kindness of the day before; but we considered it necessary to visit him, in order to put into execution our plan of relieving Charles Lavish. My friend, a good-hearted fellow, had called at the "Clarendon," and had induced some of his acquaintance to put down their names for three hundred pounds. We calculated much upon Heartly's exertions, and, sending a haunch of venison as a present to the unfortunate debtor, we invited ourselves to dine with him.

On calling at the major's we found the following note left on his table:"I totally forgot what passed respecting Charles Lavish until this moment. On inquiry I find that he is much deeper in debt than I had at first imagined. Any little thing I could do towards relieving him would be useless. Would it not, therefore, be better for him either to apply to his rich uncle, or to take the benefit of the act ?-Think well of this. I leave town for a few days.-F. H."

"Shameful!" I exclaimed.

"It is a common practice with him to act thus," said my friend; "I never knew it until I met an officer of the Guards, who told me this very day, that Heartly, dining with him, met an old tutor of his, whom he promised over his wine to lend four or five hundred pounds to set him up in house-keeping, and the next morning excused himself in the shabbiest manner possible."

This assumed benevolence, then, was nothing but the effect of stimulus, and never survived the hour of mirth and revelry: he could not, when come to himself, muster courage to perform one generous act; so that what seemed the most exquisite sensibility-the tenderest sympathy-the firmest attachment, and the most enlarged sentiment, was in reality nothing -but the bottle flush!

Such men in society are very dangerous, for they excite expectations never to be realised: they claim an unmerited esteem, until discovered; they lead one to discover one's secret to them, in the hour of confidence, merely to betray one; and thus one's friend, the brother of last night, becomes scarcely an acquaintance on the following day; he whose heart bounded to meet yours, gives one a cold ceremonious bow as he passes one at an after period; nay, he to whom one has unbosomed one's inmost thoughts, withholds his promised service, and, not unfrequently exposes one to half the town.

Verily, the only cure is a horsewhip or the compliment of a meeting. But, however, let his character be posted, and "Let no such man be trusted!" Plus aloës quam mellis habet.

THEODORE HOOK.*

THEODORE HOOK may be said to have been nurtured in a hot-bed of talent, wit, and dissipation. His father was a musical composer and an established favourite, for upwards of half-a-century; first at the Mary-lebone Gardens, and, lastly, at Vauxhall. His mother was the author of at least one theatrical piece, "The Double Disguise," played with success at Drury Lane, in 1784. There were two brothers, James and Theodore, and the elder, although sent to Westminster School, and afterwards to Oxford, where he graduated and took holy orders, and became ultimately Dean of Worcester, still exhibited throughout life the wit and vivacity of the stock, and the same indications of the family taste for the drama and authorship. But James was blessed with advantages which never fell to the lot of Theodore; in his case the inebriety of wit was sobered by a regular education; and the exuberance of animal spirits was restrained by the ties of his sacred calling, which were further strengthened by an early and a happy marriage. "Who," asks his biographer, the Rev. R. H. Dalton Barham, "does not lament that such a boon was denied to Theodore ?"

The first school that Theodore, born on the 22nd of September, 1788, in Charlotte Street, Bedford Square, was sent to, was a sort of "seminary for young gentlemen," a green-doored brass-plated "establishment," in Soho Square. Subsequently, he went to Dr. Curtis's, and thence to Harrow, but with little or no real advantage, and, as his biographer justly remarks, a sufficient reason for his want of success is to be found in the confessions of "Gilbert Gurney," where he says, with evident reference to himself: "My school-life was not a happy one. I was idle and careless of my tasks. I had no aptitude for learning languages. I hated Greek, and absolutely shuddered at Hebrew. I fancied myself a genius, and any thing that could be done in a hurry, and with little trouble, I did tolerably well, but application I had not."

And who can fail to discover throughout life, and even in employments less distasteful to him, traces of the same haste and impatience of labour? Theodore soon left Harrow, and the death of his mother, the only one who could restrain the youth's exuberance of spirits, left him in the charge of a worldly, pleasure-loving father, who at once employed his son's talents in writing songs and plays. The success of his first farces, and his love of fun, soon established Master Theodore's reputation, both before and behind the curtain, and he became, at this early period of his life, the pet of the Green Room, and at the same time, by his incessant indulgence in practical jokes, the plague of the property-man and of all the minor officers of the establishment. Even Liston himself was made one of the victims of this besetting propensity.

Having procured a bladder with a penny whistle attached to it, after the fashion of a bag-pipe, Hook made his way under the stage during the performance of the " Finger Post," and introducing the orifice of the tube into the opening of the " float," close to Liston's foot, as the latter was about to commence his song, "When I fell into the pit of love," proceeded to elicit

The Life and Remains of Theodore Edward Hook. By the Rev. R. H. Dalton Barham, B.A. 2 vols. Richard Bentley.

from his apparatus the most discordant squeaks imaginable, by way of accompaniment, not more to the amusement of the audience than the bewilderment of the actor, who could not conceive whence on earth, or under the earth, the sounds proceeded. The song was tumultuously encored, and, mystified as he was, Liston of course had no alternative but to repeat it, his unseen assistant squeezing and squeaking the while more vigorously than ever.

At this early time, also, when he was scarcely in his twentieth year, Theodore Hook gave evidence of the possession of that talent which he afterwards cultivated to so much perfection, and compared with which, mimicry in its perfection sinks into insignificance-that of the improvisatore. In the art of pouring forth extemporaneous poetry, music and words, rhyme and reason, all impromptu, Hook stood alone-rival he had none. Of course (says his biographer) he had his imitators :

The charming extempore verses of T-s's,

for example, will not readily be forgotten; another gentleman, also, found reason to remember his attempt at rivalry. Ambitious of distinction, he took an opportunity of striking off into verse immediately after one of Hook's happiest efforts. Theodore's bright eye flashed, and fixed on the intruder, who soon began to flounder in the meshes of his stanza, when he was put out of his misery at once, by the following couplet from the master, given, however, with a good-humoured smile that robbed it of all offence:

I see, sir, I see, sir, what 'tis that you're hatching,

But mocking, you see, sir, is not always catching.

This is a kind of success which is, however, pre-eminently evanescent. Men endowed with such gifts must be content, like actors, whom they in a measure resemble, with the applause of their contemporaries; they have little to hope for from posterity; and in Hook's case scarcely a record has been kept of any one of those performances which used at once to delight and astonish the circles in which he moved. "Mrs. Muggins's Visit to the Queen," stanzas written in the John Bull as a satire upon the Brandenburgh House Drawing-room, is described in the "Quarterly Review," as also by Mr. Dalton Barham, as most approaching what Hook used to improvise on a festive evening, and as conveying to a person who had never witnessed that marvellous performance, a tolerably accurate notion of what it was.

Have you

been to Brandenburgh-heigh, ma'am ; ho, ma'am ?
Have you been to Brandenburgh, ho?

—Oh, yes; I have been, maʼam,

To visit the Queen, ma'am,

With the rest of the gallanty show-show,

With the rest of the gallanty show.

And who were your company-heigh, ma'am; ho, ma'am?

And who were your company, ho?

-We happened to drop in

With gemmen from Wapping,

And ladies from Blowbladder-row- Row,

And ladies from Blowbladder-row.

Mr. Barham records very little of Hook's doings on the stage, whither his constitutional predilections and his early associations led him for awhile; but a more faithful, yet at the same time a more ludicrous picture of the miseries and mortifications incident to a play-actor, was never penned