would be dangerous to say how many generations. In either case there seems to be an intimate connection between the music and the spirit of the public for which it is provided. The peasant of the Campagna and of the Latian, Alban and Sabine hills takes his pleasure, even that of the dance, as an impertinent Frenchman said of us Anglo-Saxons, _moult tristement_. That indescribable air of sadness which, as so many observers have concurred in noting, broods over the district which they inhabit seems to have communicated itself to the inmost nature and character of the populations. They are a stern, sad, sombre and silent race, for what I have said above of a tendency to noisiness and vociferation must be understood to apply to the town-populations only. Their dance is generally much slower than that of the city-folk. In these latter days increased communication has taught some of them to assimilate their dancing with more or less successful imitation to the waltz, but in many cases these parties of peasants may still be seen practicing the old dances, now wholly unknown in the city. But whether they are keeping to their old figures and methods or endeavoring to follow new ones, the difference in their bearing is equally striking. The dancing of peasants must necessarily be for the most part heavy and awkward, but despite this the men of the Campagna and the hills are frequently not without a certain dignity of bearing, and the women often, though perhaps not quite so frequently, far from devoid of grace. Especially may the former quality be observed if, as is likely, the dancers belong to the class of mounted herdsmen, who pass their lives on horseback, and whose exclusive duty it is to tend the herds of half-wild cattle that roam over the plains around Rome. These are the “butteri” of whom I wrote on a former occasion in these pages–the aristocracy of the Campagna. And it is likely that dancers on the Piazza Navona on a Befana night should belong to this class, for the Campagna shepherd is probably too poor, too abject and too little civilized to indulge in any such pastime.
Little of either grace or dignity will be observed in the Terpsichorean efforts of the Roman _plebs_ of the present day. Lightness, _brio_, enjoyment and an infinite amount of “go” may be seen, and plenty of laughter heard, and “lazzi”–sallies more or less imbued with wit, or at least fun, and more or less repeatable to ears polite. But there is a continual tendency in the dancing to pass into horse-play and romping which would not be observed among the peasantry. In a word, there is a touch of blackguardism in the city circles, which phase could not with any justice or propriety be applied to the country parties.
But it is time to go home. The moon is waning: _suadentque cadentia sidera somnum_, if only there were any hope of being able to be persuaded by their reasonable suggestions. But truly the town seems to afford little hope of it. We make our way out of the crowd with some difficulty and more patience, and are sensible of a colder nip in the January night-air as we emerge from it into the neighboring streets. But even there, though the racket gradually becomes less as we leave the piazza behind us, there is in every street the braying of those abominable tin trumpets, and we shall probably turn wearily in our beds at three or four in the morning and thank Heaven that the Befana visits us but once a year.
T.A.T.
ERNESTO ROSSI.
The stage of Paris has long been conceded to be the first in the world. In France the player is not only born–he must be made. Before the embryo performer achieves the honors of a public debut he has been trained in the classes of the Conservatoire to declaim the verse of Racine and to lend due point and piquancy to the prose of Moliere. He is taught to tread in the well-beaten path of French dramatic art, fenced in and hedged around with sacred traditions. If he attempts to embody any one of the characters of the classic drama, every tone, every gesture, every peculiarity of make-up, every shade and style in his costume, is prescribed to him beforehand. Originality of treatment and of conception is above all things to be avoided. So spoke Moliere, so looked Lekain, so stepped Talma; therefore all the succeeding generations of players must so speak and look and walk. Let us imagine the process transferred to our English stage–the shades of Burbage and Betterton prescribing how Hamlet and Richard III. should be played–the manners of the seventeenth century forcibly transferred to our modern stage. The process would be intolerable. Worse still, it would have the effect on our comparatively undramatic race of crushing out every spark of originality and of wholly hindering the development of histrionic talent. With the French such results are happily, to a certain extent, impossible. There is scarcely any French man or woman of ordinary intelligence who does not possess sufficient capacity for acting to be capable of being trained into a very fair performer. The preponderance of beautiful women on the French stage above those to be found in other stations of life may be accounted for on the ground that any young girl of the lower classes possessing extraordinary beauty and ordinary intelligence can readily, from the bent of her national characteristics, be trained into an actress. But while the high-comedy theatres and those of the melodrama flourish, there can be no doubt but that the highest type of acting finds no chance for development in France. The actor who possesses one spark of genius soon escapes from the galling fetters of classicism and tradition, and takes refuge in comedy or in melodrama. Thus did Frederic Lemaitre in his prime, and thus, too, in later days, did the accomplished and brilliant Lafontaine.
From these causes, or from others of a kindred nature, the French tragic stage has within our generation possessed no actor of commanding genius. One actress indeed adorned it for a few brief years–the great Rachel. But she, strange and unnatural production of unnatural art, was a phenomenon, and one not likely to be soon reproduced. The art of the Comedie Francaise is to-day inimitable. Like Thalberg’s playing, it is the very apotheosis of the mechanical. There talent is trained and cut and trimmed into one set fashion, till the very magnitude of the work becomes imposing, as the gardens of Le Notre in their grand extent almost console the spectator for the absence of virgin forests and of free-gushing streams. But could the forest be brought side by side with the parterre, could Niagara pour its emerald floods or Trenton its amber cascades side by side with the Fountain of Latona or the Great Basin of Neptune, Nature, terrible in her grandeur, would rule supreme. Such has been the comparison afforded by the appearance of Ernesto Rossi on the Parisian stage. It was Shakespeare and genius coming into direct competition with perfectly-trained talent and with Racine.
Early last October a modest announcement was made that Signor Rossi would give two performances at the Salle Ventadour, one of them to be for the benefit of the sufferers by the Southern inundations. _Othello_ was the play selected for both occasions. The first night arrived. The unlucky opera-house, shorn of its ancient popularity, was not half filled. Public curiosity was not specially aroused. Nobody cared particularly to see an Italian actor perform in a translation of a play by an English dramatist. Of the scanty audience present, fully one-half were Italians, and the rest were mostly English, lured thither by the desire of comparing the new actor with his great rival, Salvini. There was a sprinkling of Americans and a scanty representation of the Parisian public.
When Othello came upon the stage the foreign actor received but a cool and unenthusiastic greeting. His appearance was a disappointment to those familiar with the majestic bearing and picturesque garb of Salvini. His dress was unbecoming, and the dusky tint of his stage complexion accorded ill with his blue eyes. Then, too, his conception of the character jarred on the ideas of those who had seen the other great Italian actor. It was hard to dethrone the majestic and princely Moor, the stately general of Salvini’s conception, to give place to the frank, free-hearted soldier, intoxicated with the gladness of successful wooing, that Rossi brings before us. Certain melodramatic points, also, in the earlier acts, such as the “Ha!” wherewith Rossi with upraised arms starts from Desdemona when Brabantio reminds him
“She has deceived her father, and may thee,”
seemed exaggerated and out of place. In the scenes with Iago he equaled Salvini, yet did not in any one point surpass him. Nor did he in any way imitate him. The fury of the two Othellos is widely different. Salvini is the fiercer, for Rossi’s rage has a background of intensest suffering. One is an enraged tiger, the other a wounded lion. Both are maddened–the one with wrath, the other with pain. But in the last act, with the unutterable anguish of its closing scenes–the swift remorse, the unavailing agony of that noble nature, too late undeceived, the wild, pathetic tenderness wherewith Othello clasped the dead Desdemona to his heart, smoothing back her loosened tresses with an inarticulate cry of almost superhuman love and woe–the horror of the catastrophe was all swallowed up in a sympathy whose pain was wellnigh too great to be aroused by mimic despair. The fall of the curtain was greeted with a tempest of applause. Men sprang to their feet and wildly waved their hats in the air. Shouts of “Bravo, Rossi!” and “Vive Rossi!” arose on all sides. Ladies stood up in the boxes waving their handkerchiefs, and every hand and throat joined in the universal uproar. Before noon the next day every seat in the house was engaged for the second representation. The great actors of the French stage came to study the acting of this new genius who had so suddenly made his appearance in their midst. To this sudden success succeeded the announcement of a prolonged engagement, the failing health of the younger Rossi having decided his father to relinquish all immediate idea of an American tour.
The second character that Rossi assumed was Hamlet, and in this he achieved the greatest success of his Parisian engagement. The opera of Thomas had rendered the public familiar with the personage of the hero, and the magnates of the Grand Opera came to the Salle Ventadour to study this new and forcible presentment of the baritone prince, who wails and warbles through the operatic travesty of Shakespeare’s masterpiece. That the impersonation will prove wholly acceptable to all Shakespearian critics in England or America is extremely doubtful. For the Hamlet of Rossi is mad–undeniably, unmistakably mad–from the moment of his interview with the Ghost. But once accept that view, and the characterization stands unrivaled upon our modern stage. Nothing can be imagined at once more powerful or more pathetic than that picture of a “noble mind o’erthrown,” alternating between crushed, hopeless misery and wild excitement–thirsting for the rest and peace that only death can bestow, yet shrinking from the fearful leap into the dim unknown beyond the grave. The scene with the Queen is inimitably grand. One feels that the entrance of the Ghost comes only in time to stay the frenzied hand, and then follows the swift revulsion when Hamlet, melting into tenderest pathos, kneels at his mother’s feet to beseech her to repent–a mood that changes anew to frenzy when his wild wandering thoughts are turned toward the King. It is only in the last scene of the play that the approach of death scatters the clouds that have so long obscured the grief-tortured brain. Nothing can be imagined finer or more picturesque than this closing scene. On the raised dais in the centre of the stage, and on the throne from which the King has been hurled, the dying prince, conqueror and sovereign in this last supreme moment, dominates the scene of death and carnage, triumphant over all, even in the clutches of his own relentless doom.
As the Hamlet of Rossi is unmistakably mad, so his Macbeth is an undeniable craven and criminal. I can compare this personation to nothing so much as to that of a man haunted by a fiend. For the steps of Macbeth are dogged ever by an unseen devil–namely, his own evil yet coward nature. He is wicked and he is afraid. The whole physique of Rossi in the scene in the first act where the king heaps favors and commendations on his valiant warrior was eloquent of conscious guilt: the constrained attitude, the shifting, uneasy glance, told, louder than words, of a wicked purpose and a stinging conscience. From the moment of the murder the wretched thane lives in a perpetual atmosphere of fear. He is afraid of everything–first of his own unwashed hands, and next of the dead king; then of Banquo and of Banquo’s ghost; and finally he is afraid of all the world. It is only at the last that the mere physical courage of the soldier reasserts itself, and Macbeth, driven to bay by Fate, fights with the fierce energy of despair.
As to Rossi’s Lear, it is not to be criticised. Words fail when the heartstrings are thrilled to trembling and to tears. The pathos of Lear’s recognition of Cordelia was past the power of words to describe. He stands at first gazing in vague bewilderment at the face of his child, then into the darkened and troubled gaze steals anew the light of reason and of recognition: unutterable sorrow, inexpressible remorse, sweep across the quivering features, and with an inarticulate sob Lear would fain sink on his knees at his wronged daughter’s feet to pray for pardon. That people rose and left the house in a very passion of tears is the fittest criticism that can be bestowed upon this personation.
The list of the Shakesperian characters closed with Romeo. Rossi was the divinest of lovers, in spite of his forty years and his stalwart proportions, and the balcony scene was an exquisite love-duet that needed not the aid of music to lend it sweetness. But in the Italian version the play was so cut and garbled that there could be little pleasure in listening to it for any one familiar with the original.
Outside of his Shakespearian repertoire, Rossi has appeared in only two plays–the _Kean_ of the elder Dumas, and _Nero_, a tragedy by Signer Cosso, The first, originally written for Lemaitre, is an ill-constructed, improbable melodrama. But it contains one grand scene–namely, that where Kean, whilst playing Hamlet, goes mad upon the stage; and this scene Rossi renders superbly. As to Nero, it is marvelous to witness the complete eclipse of the refined, accomplished gentleman and intellectual actor behind the brutal physiognomy of the wicked emperor. It is Hamlet transformed into a prize-fighter.
In person, Signor Rossi is less strikingly handsome than is his rival, Salvini, but he possesses a singularly attractive and pleasing countenance. He is a Piedmontese, blue-eyed and fair-complexioned, with chestnut hair, the abundant locks of which are just touched with gray. He is tall and finely proportioned, with the chest of a Hercules and the hands and feet of a duchess. Off the stage he is peculiarly pleasing in manner, and is said to be a noble-hearted and generous gentleman, as well as an amiable and genial companion, singularly free from conceit and delighting in his art.
L.H.H.
BISHOP THIRLWALL’S PRECOCITY.
We do not remember to have seen in the various notices relative to the late Bishop Connop Thirlwall, the well-known historian, any mention of his precocity, which must have been almost without a parallel. Thirlwall came of a long line of clergymen. His father was chaplain to Dr. Percy (_Percy’s Reliques_), bishop of Dromore, and in 1809 he published some specimens of the early genius of his son under the title of “_Primitiae; or, Essays and Poems on Various Subjects, Religious, Moral and Entertaining._ By Connop Thirlwall, eleven years of age. Dedicated by permission to the Bishop of Dromore.” In the preface it is stated that at three years old Connop read English so well that he was taught Latin, and at four read Greek with an ease and fluency that astonished all who heard him. An accidental circumstance revealed his talent for composition when he was seven. Mrs. Thirlwall told her elder son, in her husband’s absence, to write out his thoughts on a certain subject. Connop asked leave to do the same, and produced to her astonishment the following: “How uncertain is life! for no man can tell in what hour he shall leave the world. What numbers are snatched away in the bloom of youth, and turn the fine expectation of parents into sorrow! All the promising pleasures of this life will fade, and we shall be buried in the dust. God takes away a good prince from his subjects only to transplant him into everlasting joy in heaven. A good man is not dispirited by death, for it only takes him away that he may feel the pleasures of a better world. Death comes unawares, but never takes virtue with it. Edward VI. died in his minority, and disappointed his subjects, to whom he had promised a happy reign.” These reflections were probably suggested by some sermon the boy had heard, but the composition is an extraordinary piece of work at such an age.
His effusions are on various themes, and comprise quite a pretty little poem, written when he was eleven, on Tintern Abbey. But perhaps the most remarkable circumstance of all is that this youthful prodigy lived to amply fulfill the promise of his youth, and proved as sagacious and moderate in the use of knowledge as he was marvelous in his powers of acquiring it. There is a remarkable tribute to these powers in John Stuart Mill’s _Autobiography_, where he says: “The speaker with whom I was most struck, though I dissented from nearly every word he said, was Thirlwall, the historian, since bishop of St. David’s, then a chancery barrister, unknown except by a high reputation for eloquence acquired at the Cambridge Union. His speech was in answer to one of mine. Before he had uttered ten sentences I set him down as the best speaker I had ever heard, and I have never since heard any one whom I placed above him.”
FREAKS OF KLEPTOMANIA.
A few months ago England, more especially the part thereof contiguous to royal Windsor, was thrown into consternation by the report that a box had been discovered, sunk just below water-mark in the Thames, attached by a string to a tree, and containing a number of keys, which were believed to belong to doors leading to the royal jewel-coffers. The nine days’ wonder which this intelligence, naturally enough, produced, has since had a curious explanation. They were not keys of the royal apartments at all, but Eton keys, the fruits of the kleptic propensities of an unfortunate Eton boy, who–like a very distinguished and noble member of Mr. Disraeli’s cabinet, who is said even now not to be able to resist the temptation offered at cabinet councils by “Dizzy’s” green kid gloves–had already paid the penalty for similar offences by being sent away. A most extraordinary instance of this propensity occurred a few years ago at a very wealthy nobleman’s house in the north of England. During a visit there a lady’s diamonds disappeared. There was great and general consternation, and the detective police were summoned from London. The jewels were subsequently discovered in a closet attached to the noble host’s dressing-room.
LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
Round my House: Notes of Rural Life in France in Peace and War. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
The time has at last come when Englishmen and Americans seem disposed to study the character of the French people with some care and to judge it with impartiality. The overthrow of its military power did less to lower the nation in the eyes of foreigners than its subsequent course has done to raise it; and now that it is fairly entering on a new career in a mood and under auspices that cannot but awaken the strongest hopes, we have probably seen the last of the typical Frenchman of the Anglo-Saxon imagination–a being capable of the most frantic actions and incapable of a serious thought, a compound of frivolity and ferocity, the fit subject and facile instrument of a despotism that knew how to gratify his vanity while restraining his mad ebullitions. Among the excuses that might be offered for such misconceptions is the dearth of information in the literature of France itself in regard to the life and habits of the general mass of the population. In these days it is to novels that we chiefly go for pictures of character and manners, and French novels are almost exclusively devoted to pictures of Parisian manners. Balzac, it is true, has given us delineations of provincial life; but the delineations of Balzac are often more enigmatical than the problems of real life, and even if we could always accept the portraitures they give us as undistorted, they generally presuppose a knowledge on the part of the reader on those points on which the foreigner is most apt to be ignorant. In any case, we shall be best instructed by a writer who both understands our lack and is able to supply it, and these qualifications, with others scarcely less essential, Mr. Hamerton has brought to his task. He has thoroughly familiarized himself with French usages, but he has not lost his sense of the difference between them and those of his own land, and of the consequent necessity for explaining as well as describing, and of tracing peculiarities to their source. If he is free from the common prejudices of the foreign observer, he has not adopted the passions or the partialities of the native. He can write with fairness of different classes and factions, and can discriminate between ordinary impulses and actions and those that have their origin in strong excitement. Finally, he neither overloads us with facts and statistics nor seeks to amuse us with fancies or caricatures. He is always sober and always agreeable.
The matter of this volume was collected during a fixed residence of several years in one of the central provinces of France. No doubt Mr. Hamerton had a previous acquaintance with the country and with its language far exceeding that of the mere tourist, and his wife, it appears, is a Frenchwoman, the daughter of an ex-prefet. But he makes few allusions to any former experiences, and draws no comparisons between the conditions of life or the characteristics of the people in different provinces. This is perhaps to be considered a defect in the book, though it might not have possessed the same attractiveness had its scope been wider. It is an advantage, too, that the locality was not one which excites curiosity by its strongly marked features or abnormal types. Travelers often seem to imagine that they have only to tell us about Brittany or Gascony to win our interest, whereas it is precisely such regions that have the least novelty for us, just as the scenery of the Scottish Highlands has been made more familiar to Americans than that of almost any other part of Britain. Mr. Hamerton’s house, as he gives us clearly to understand, though he suppresses names, was in the neighborhood of Autun. The situation was a strictly rural one, but with easy access to the town and the feasibility of reaching Paris, Lyons or Geneva in a night’s journey by rail. It had, he writes, “one very valuable characteristic in great perfection–namely, variety. There was nothing in it very striking at first sight, but we had a little of everything.” It was in an elevated plain about fifteen miles in diameter and nearly circular, girt by a circus of hills rising fifteen hundred feet above the general level. A trout stream ran through the property. There were pretty estates around of about two hundred acres each, with houses in general of modest dimensions and architecture, though occasionally aspiring to the dignity of chateaux. Roman and mediaeval remains, with architecture of different periods, were to be found in the city, as well as a public library and art-gallery, cafes and the inevitable _cercle_. The flora, owing to the diversities of elevation, was varied, and while vineyards clothed the foot of the slopes and gigantic old chestnuts looked down on them from above, the vegetation of the hill-tops was that of Lancashire or Scotland. It follows, of course, that the pursuits and habits of the population were correspondingly various, and there was ample opportunity for studying the different classes of society, from the noblesse to the peasants. The results of this study are presented, not in the form of labored analyses, but in easy and flowing sketches, sometimes in the form of narrative, always full of illustrative details, and winning without much discussion or argument a ready assent to the author’s conclusions. Many statements in the book will, of course, not be new to generally well-informed readers, but it is not often that they come with the same force and freshness from direct observation, and still more rarely is their relation to each other or their bearing on the subject to which they relate so clearly and correctly indicated. Among the points on which Mr. Hamerton has thus thrown a stronger light are the characteristics and position of French ladies, divided, “in this part of the world,” he writes, “into two distinct classes: the home women and the visiting women–_les femmes d’interieur_, and _les femmes du monde_; the exact theory of the _mariage de convenance_, which is popularly but wrongly considered as based on mere mercenary motives; and the mental condition of the peasant, with his natural quickness of intellect and his stupendous ignorance, his adherence to tradition and ingrained superstitiousness, and his suspicion of the nobles and tendency to emancipate himself from clerical influence. It is France in a state of transition that Mr. Hamerton paints, and his anticipations have already to some extent been justified by events. “My hope for France is,” he says, “that a system of regularly-working representative government may be the final result of the long and eventful revolution, and that this form of government may give the country certain measures which it very greatly needs. A thorough system of national education is one of them, a real religious equality is another. These would never be conceded by a French monarchy of any type with which past experience has made the country familiar…. The only chance of real representation lies in the Republic.”
_BOOKS RECEIVED_.
Improved Diary, or Marginal Index-Book of Daily Record: a Diary provided with Marginal Indices so arranged that any day of the year may be referred to at once, and the various subject-matters recorded in it may be arranged for ready reference, together with Calendars, Interest Table, etc. Devised and arranged by M.N. Lovell. Published exclusively by the Erie Publishing Co., Erie, Pa.
The Review of Gen. Sherman’s Memoirs. Examined Chiefly in the light of its own Evidence. By C.W. Moulton. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co.
The Chevalier Casse-Cou: The Search for Ancestors. Translated from the French original. By Thomas Picton. New York: R.M. De Witt.
Proceedings of American Association for the Cure of Inebriates, held at Hartford, Conn., Sept. 28, 1875. Baltimore: Wm. K. Boyle & Sons.
Brief Biographies. Vol. II. English Radical Leaders. By R.J. Hinton. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
Foot Notes; or, Walking as a Fine Art. By Alfred Barren. Wallingford, Conn.: Wallingford Printing Co.
Circulars of Information of the Bureau of Education. No. 7. Washington: Government Printing-office.
In Doors and Out; or, Views from the Chimney-corner. By Oliver Optic. Boston: Lee & Shepard.
Among my Books. (Second Series.) By Jas. Russell Lowell. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.
The Reading Club and Handy Speaker, No. 3. By George M. Baker. Boston: Lee & Shepard.
Her Dearest Foe. (Leisure-Hour Series.) By Mrs Alexander. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Pebbles from Old Pathways. By Minnie Ward Patterson. Chicago: C.J. Burroughs & Co.
Bridge and Tunnel Centres. By John B. McMaster. New York: D. Van Nostrand.
Safety Valves. By Richard H. Buel, C.E. New York: D. Van Nostrand.
Guido and Lita. By the Marquis of Lorne. New York: Macmillan & Co.
The Asbury Twins. By Sophie May. Boston: Lee & Shepard.
Sea-Weed and Sand: Poems. By Ben Wood Davis.