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the scenes are beautiful , but the one which closes the first act is . . . . ( if I were a Beverley of the pen I could paint it , not being one I must leave ^ it to your imagination , so much more pictorial !) The last scene of all is quite new . After the many combinations and inventions of splendour which those " last scenes" have shown us , it is surprising to find anything at once so novel and so beautiful as this . With regard to the Fairy tale itself , the Burlesque element has almost vanished , and the fairy tale alone remains . There is little " fun" in it , although Wright , Bland , and Frank Mathews in the cast would lead one to expect it . Nor are there so many happy Hne 3 as Planche" usually throws in . Some pleasant music , a charming ballet most picturesquely grouped ,
with Kosina Wright as a centre , gratify ears and eyes , and aid in Jtseyeriey s triumph . The cast of the piece is unusually strong—Madame Vestris ( who made her first appearance this season and was welcomed with English heartiness ) , Julia St . George , Wright , Frank Mathews , Bland , Robinson , and Baker .
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NUMBER NIP . The Ai > em > hi also gives up Pantomime ; without , however , taking to Bur . lesque—for which , thanks I Its Christmas piece is a wild , legendary melodrame , interesting as a piece as well as a vehicle for spectacle , ballet , and music . Miss Woolgar is a fascinating German nobleman , ruined in purse but rich in personal charms ; Madame Celeste has a part peculiarly suited to her talents of ballet ( Faction . ) and in a descriptive dance , La Tauromachie , produced the wildest delight in the audience ; Paul Bedford is a comic pirate , not in the least comic—dismally hilarious ; Mrs . Eeeley has more changes of costume than effective scenes . The music is pretty and well selected .
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COLUMBUS . The- Olympic has its Pantomime , and the subject is Columbus . I don ' t know anything of Pantomimes , and my ignorance makes me think Columbus a failure . There are some admirable things in it—such as the costumes , scenery , masks , Columbine , and the dog , who is by far the best actor in the piece . But the Introduction is not funny ; the Harlequin is bad , the Clown bad , the Pantaloon detestable ; nothing but the pretty and elegant Columbine—Miss Wyndham— -and the " talented" dog , rendered the Pantomime endurable . The piece has been got up lavishly and tastefully . The masks are works of art . There is a certain Archbishop of Toledo , whose mask is worth paying the price of admission to see—such fat , sleek , sensual , priestly imbecility and comfort , are written on his features . The Moors , too , are Moorish ; and the Spaniards , Spanish . Vivian .
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A COURSE OP PANTOMIMES . A simultaneous rush at Pantomime has been made by the managers . Every theatre , except two , presents us with this kind of Christmas entertainment ; for the very first time we have heard a Haymarket gallery shrieking for " Hot Codlins ; " and only at the Lyceum does Extravaganza appear , with its musical parodies and its lucid intervals , as usual . We pulled a cracker bon-bon once , and read in faint little type on the scrap of flimsy , with which the sugar was encircled , a couplet , implying a neat puff of the confectioner : something after this style : —
Quand on a dit " je t ' aime , " ct tout va bien , Appellcz Jujubc-tils , et ne craignez ricn . " When faltering lips the secret have confest , —To Chips and Co . we wisely leave the rest . " This pretty and practical sentiment , reflecting a great feature of the age , is enforced throughout the opening of the Dkury-lane pantomime . Appiness , a stout young person in bugles , impresses the fact of her personality on a sceptical and otherwise weak-minded prince , who , after being driven from glittering pillar to dazzling post , is bewildered into acknowledging Appiness as a solid existence , and " wisely leaves the rest" to the stage management . What is done for the delight of the prince our readers must go and see . If they are proper readers , they will like to know that a scene awaits them in the World of Toys , where all the houses are toy-houses , and all the trees are those queer curly evergreens that constitute the timber in a child ' s Paradise .
Here , however , a great eifect is missed . The people in this scene ought certainly to have been figures from a Noah ' s ark , and as tall as the bouses . One or two of these buildings might also , with great propriety , have been discovered on their beam-ends . But what is done , is done well ; the peg-tops are ingeniously human ; and the King ' s troops arc stuck on the scissor-like contrivance , which alternately expands and contracts the phalanx . Tom Matthews was the clown ; and we arc almost inclined to think , though we know popular opinion will be with us , that his is the correct style after all . If neat tumbling , such as Auriorfl , is to take the place of clownishness , then let us have the fanciful dress of the fool , without tho bismuth and vermillion . T . M . is , however , the Clown for the gallery . That faction has 6 ct its face against all gymnastic displays requiring the introduction of a carpet ; and really , of tho two things , we believe the " drawing-room entertainments" of professors in salmon-coloured tights are lower in point of taste than " Hot Codlins" and " Tippity-witchet . " But tho Briny-lane manager has supplied posture-making for those who like it , by the engagement of a certain Ethair family , whoso dislocations accompany the conventional fun .
JLittte Silver Hair and the Three Hears , at the Haymakkut , are as good as they are in tho original tale ; so that the pantomimic fun and splendour may be counted bo much in addition . Tlic opening scones are creditable to the author as well as tho decoratist . Very little has been added to the story , except to make it a fairy title . The change from a ruined abbey to a scene of fairy brightness wag as artistically effected as it would have been at the Lyceum . The harlequinade was us full of bustlo as it should bo , nnd . the Columbine ' was u Miss Mary Brown . Did anyone over hear of a Columbine among tho Browns ? It seems hardly possible that her success can bo regarded as a triumph by the family .
Tho opening scones in I lie . Miller and hi . * Men , which i . s the pantomime at the PiuncksbX arnnzo indeed the very faculties of eyes and ears . They are by turns exquisitely beautiful and wildly grotesque . Over all reigns Art . Tho fierce movements of tho daneera in tho second scene of King Salamander ' s Court , the wild gestures of the crowd , tho change of four terrible objects into one human face , far more terrible in its humanity and fleshiness , are all truly indescribable . But is this a pantomime- for little children ? In tho course of
the harlequinade there are scenes quite as ingeniously contrived , and m " * to the purpose of childish amusement . For instance , there is a startr * trick , by which Harlequin contrives to furnish an empty room . ^ tall women , in the dress of Watteau's shepherdesses , come in and stand in demure row . In an instant they are furniture ; four chairs , their le « f from any drapery , a French clock , and an elegantly furnished toilette taW stand in the places of the Watteaii pastourelles . The trick itself is amazC but when the chairs are used as real chairs , by the pantomimists , the spectator ' are almost induced , to believe that there has been no life in the matter , till t ^ f chairs use their arms in self-defence upon the Clown , when applause for tht first time greets the device . Cormack is the Harlequin here , and the beat anywhere . We may almost say the same of Miss Desborough , as Columbinp bat cannot forget the name in the Olympic bills . Mr . Huline , the Clown is * " new light , " and aims at grace in his posturing . It is fair to say that he succeeds always , and is the best translation of Auriol on the English stage . Of Sadler ' s Weixs we hear excellent accounts , but are unable to speak of Harlequin Tom Thumb this week . 0
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BARKER'S PICTURE OF NELSON ON THE QUARTER-DECK 0 * THE SAN JOSEF . . It is not difficult to trace , in the picture now on view at Messrs . Legggatt , Hayward , and Leggatt ' s , in Cornhill , the hand of a painter accustomed conscientiously to master his subject . Mr . T . J " . Barker is rapidly gaining a reputation as an illustrator of British despatches , and may yet stand in the position of a Horace Vernet to our United Service ; there being no formidable competition for the post . The picture of | ' Nelson on the Quarter-deck of the Spanish Admiral's ship , San _ Josef , " is intended as a companion to the " Meeting of Wellington and Blucher at La Belle Alliance , " a work noticed by us some considerable time since . Nelson , a commodore at the time ,
has , with a seventy-four , beaten a Spanish eighty-gun ship , and has led his boarding party across her deck to take , in turn , the San Josef , a first-rate , with the Admiral ' s pendant . On the quarter-deck he is receiving the swords of the Spanish officers . His bargeman , standing coolly by , puts the swords under his arm as he receives them from the Commodore . Round Nelson are grouped his companions in the exploit ; Captain Berry and Lieutenant Pierson , of the 69 th , being prominent portraits . The uniforms vary so is to produce a pleasant effect . The artist ' s great anxiety to compile a good likeness of Nelson , from Flaxman ' s bust and the most authentic pictures ,
seems to have found its way into the herb ' s face . It is , to say the truth , the least pleasing part of the work . In general respects Mr . Barker has produced a telling scene . Without compression of time , there is much incidental action going on , such as the striking the Spanish flag , and the hoisting the Union Jack . The linear perspective of the foreground and the truthful distance ^ are evidences of no common power . We have heard the technical accuracy of ropes , spars , blocks , and the smallest matters of detail spoken of with unqualified praise by excellent naval authority . fy
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PHOTOGRAPHY . [ fourth article . ] In leaving the daguerreotype , to enter on the different paper processes , our subject widens very considerably . Sir John Herschel ' s experiments , for instance , have all been subordinate to a grand inquiry into the nature of the prismatic spectrum . He saw in heliography not " an insulated and anomalous affection of certain salts of silver and gold , but one which , doubtless , in a greater or less degree , pervades all nature . " He saw m nature " nothing that doth fade ; " but continual decomposition and recombination ; and he referred to the same great law which governs organic certain
growth and decay this curious pictorial result from the deoxidation ot inorganic compounds . A similar result was obtained by Herscliel with a great variety of substances ; notably with the juice of flowers , as we have seen in the case of a semi-cultivated variety of red poppy ( papaver rheum ) His experiments are no longer , if they have ever been , of much practical utility to the amateur , who seeks only the means of obtaining good pictures in the shortest time . We may , however , qualify even this detraction from the value of Herschel ' s labours in heliography : he was the first , we believe , to use glass plates , and the introduction of this practice was certainly a most important step . Still , the many beautiful processes discomani pulation
vered by Ilerschel are , though generally simple and easy of , imperfect in their results ; that is , of course , taking the merely practical view . In some , the sensibility to actinism is too tardy ; in others , CU *' and complex changes occur , which it has been found impossible to arrest , s that the pictures are worthless . Of this unstable kind is the ferro-cyanotype ; a process , however , of sucli exceeding beauty , that we cannot reiiai from giving a brief description of it . ^ j n The cyanotype is the name given to an endless series of processe which cyanogen is employed . The particular process we arc now £ £ with is one in which iron enters and is" tho main cause of the curi
changes already alluded to . This process formed one of the i * irat 1 re . 1 j 1 g able examples of the deoxidation of a non-argentine compound , in ^ practice of heliography ; and it occurred to Ilerschel in his oXlim { n j tn j c the ferrosesquicyanuret of potassium , a salt abundantly formed by v 0 ^ action on the common or yellow ferrocyanuret . In Ilersehers comm cation to the Koyal Society , he gave tho following descrip tion oi process : — . > . ot " Paper simply washed with a solution of this salt is highly sensitive to tho _ * " *!"" of light . Prussian blue is deposited ( tho baao being necessarily supplied by tho < ie » ir ^ one portion of tho acid , and the acid by decomposition of another ) . After Jialt « " ^^ an hour ' B exposure to sunshine , a very beautiful negative p hotograph ia th 0 ^~~\ ' < liswhich , till that ia ncccuHiiry i » to soak it in water in which a little sulphate ot ««< - » n solved , to ensure tho fixity of tho Prussiun blue deposited . While dry "I 0 | m LCCIiiahdovo-colour or lavender blue , which has a curious and striking effect on trio b ' i r )( i yellow ground of tho paper , produced by tho saline solution . After washing , If t < , Jong colour disappears , and the photograph bocomea bright blue on u white ground . ¦» w ] , jc | i , exposed , it gets ' over sunned , ' and tho tint lias n brownish or yellowish tenaen-y , ^ ^ however , is removed in fixing ; but no increase of intensity beyond » certain p taiucd by continuance of exposure . . , j then <* "If paper bo wanhfid with a solution of ammonio-citrftto of iron , and dnca . j () r | na . wash passed over it of tho yellow ferrooyannrot of potaaoium , thcro ia no unuiou
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1268 THE LEADER . [ SATUR gAY ^
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 31, 1853, page 1268, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2019/page/20/
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