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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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S ^^ Sm " ^ w racs fflgrss " who see nothing in lay © but pleasure , an amusement , or a necessity , thej ^ bunl DumL ^ as drawn the material of all his works from the society frtLes Wme 7 iaS , % nd the frivolous ami vicious young men who regard tn < SuSrtier Breda and the Bois de Boulogne as the proper theatres for humar ambition Hitherto , he has shown very remarkable talent in his pictures ; ? htnfc what you wffl of the painter and the painter ' s moral feeling , you cannot but marvel at his power . In Le Roman tTune Femme the tone remains is offensive as ever , and the talent is quite mediocre . The book is eohnrionplace in its incidents ( except in the main incident , which is repulsive and untttiej and more than commonplace in its characters . Perhaps no parts of the work are more amusing than those which attempt the portrayal of sentiment . The French are an affectionate people , and as fond of their parents as others are ; but to judge from their plays and novels one would suppose that they had no sincere love for their mothers , so ludicrously factitious is their employment of ma mere . This is very striking in young Dumas . He tries to make the mother " a religion "—but it is the religion of a gant jaune . It happens to many men to lose their mothers early in life . Ihe loss is serious enough to dispense with affectation . But who makes of that loss a vasse de douleuts f Who grows pale mourning the loss of a mother ho never knew ? In Le Roman cPune Femme the hero lost his mother when he was a twelvemonth old . The heroine , looking at her portrait , asks whose portrait it is ; of course , a pathetic scene ensues . She asks him if he had never known his mother . "' No , Mademoiselle : There was m that simple phrase a -whole life of sadness . " This pathetic fact at once establishes a sympathy between the young gentleman and the lady , for " she had sur ^ prised in that one word— It it my mother '—such an accent of sadness and regret , that she said to herself : ' The man who regrets and suffers thus must have a noble heart : And she did her utmost to make him forget the sadness which , like a cloud , from time to time darkened his brow . " This is a specimen of la religion de la mere ! After that , we are not surprised to hear a young marquis ( who by the way has not previously mentidned his mother ) exclaim in the exaltation of self-sacrifice : " Marie , is there any means to make you happy ? For you I will give my life , my Mood , my soul ! To save you / would insult the name of my mother . Nor are we surprised when the same Marie , about to elope from her husband , tells her lover that for him she is " to quit all , my father , the room in which my mother died , my husband , my child . " This may be very pretty sentiment at the Maison Dor £ e , but elsewhere it is more odious than cynicism . |
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THE WIZARD AT THE LYCEUM . "Professor" Anderson , the Wizard of the North , &c , &c , &c , has quite taken the * hine out of the G . V . B . achievements of Mr . E . T . Smith , by his eleetrie light over the portico of the Lyceum : and his preliminary announcements , conceived in the highest style of New England eloquence , surpass the wildest nights of the great discoverer of Tom Thumb and Washington ' s Nurse . For weeks past the portrait of " the Professor ^ ' has stared at every tavern and gin-shop window in London , at every railway station within twenty miles of town , at almost every turn where the most passing glance could possibly be extorted from the eye of business or leisure . Nothing ha * been omitted that could lend significance and solemnity to the inauguration of his new Temple of Magic by the Professor , who has astonished the weak rninds of all the Potentates of Europe , and ( we have no sort of dpubt of the fact ) who did once lend H . I . M . Napoleon the Third twenty pounds , although his Imperial Majesty has taken the trouble to inform Europe , through the columns of the Moniteur , that the trifling accommodation alluded to never took place , and was a mere hallucination of " Dr . Andubson ' s . " Let us say at once that we have no desire to cavil at the lavish abundance of the Professor ' s " posters . " It ia only when the real G . V . B . falls short of the capital letters m the bills that a slight caveat is permissible . In the Professor ' s case , his fame has been so wel l and justly acquired , and his entertainment is really so capital in quality , that if his bills do not " repay perusal" to busy people , at all events an evening at the Lyceum repays the anticipations excited by auch a prodigious flourish of trumpets . The Professor has fitted up the Lyceum mosfc effectively . There is something really sumptuous about the decorations of the ! stage whereon the Professor , monarch of all he surveys , practises his magic arts . It has the look of a temple , of a laboratory , of a furniture establishment . Across the centre of the pit , and all ro ^ r td the house on a level with the dress circle , a communication * ; has been established , by means of a tramway and a platform , enabling the Professor to bring a largo and influential portion of the audience into a more direct and personal relation to his experiments ' . Indeed , in one instance , the Professor conducts an oxperimMtj jdn'der th , e auspices of the ladies and gentlemen in the gallery , in th o ' very mi ( ibt of whom a table " raps" and a boll rings at his call and biding . This participation of tho audience in the business of the stage give *; ty Very , pjooaant . " . at homo" character to the entertainment , and creates a sort of compound interest out of doora which makoa up for the one great
i difficulty in these delassements magigues—the difficulty , we mean , of sustaining I the feeling of astonishment . We need not here relate in detail the various ? wonders accomplished by the Professor . Few of the tricks are new , many » of them are familiar , but even those which we have long since found out excite the old wonder and the old delight from the ease and dexterity with which they are performed . We had small sympathy with a sententious $ Scotch gentleman who sat behind us in the stalls , and who kept up a runi ning fire of nil admirari commentary on the performance . We found his ! explanations far more difficult than the tricks . Perhaps we too know that [ the lady ' s handkerchief is not the one we see torn up , nor her bonnet burnt , nor her ring conjured into an egg . Perhaps we know how the little boy , is extinguished , and can discourse acutely on the apparatus which supports him in the air during the mesmeric process , when he is as wide awake as you and I are ; perhaps we know the interior economy of the magic bottle , and how the Professor changes it . Still , with all our wonderful acuteness , the dexterity of the sleight of hand is a great deal more marvellous , and the natural propensity of our fellow-creatures to deception and amazement is a delightful study . There is one part of the entertainment in which the Wizard ( who puts down an unruly gentleman in the pit with all the courtly grace of a "Van Amburgh , and whose manner seems to be made up of a profound contempt for his fellow-creatures and an imposing familiarity ) strikes into the attitude and the tone of an eminent tragedian , and that is when he very legitimately and forcibly denounces the ravages of the Spirit-rapping imposture . He says that he put two thousand dollars on a table in the Metropolitan Hall , New York , as a prize to any Sp iritual Medium who would make the table " rap" without his leave . And not a single Medium offered . He found the churches and chapels deserted , and the lunatic asylums filled with the victims of an imposture he felt it to be a solemn duty to expose . And he did expose it most triumphantly by a practical application of his formula— " No rapping without an apparatus ! " We only wonder the Professor escaped unlynched the wrath of the Sp irits who have been driven across the Atlantic to find fresh believers in the aristocratic homes of England . Many of our readers will not forget the part the Leader took in exposing the delusion when all the world of London believed in it : still we are happy to give Professor Anderson full credit for his visible and complete turning of the tables upon their inventors . At the Lyceum , the Professor makes a table on the tramroad in the centre of the pit , a bell suspended from the ceiling , and an automaton on the stage " rap" answers to his questions by an application , we believe , of the magnetic telegraph . In order to be critical , as well as descriptive and discursive , let us confess that Professor Anderson has not the quiet finesse of Robert Houdin , nor the distingue grace of the Chevalier Bosco in the manner of delivering his experiments . He is a little stagey , a little too much addicted to gesticulation . On the other hand , perhaps he is a better judge than we can be of the public taste : and , after all , these things are only the signboard , not the man . In conclusion , we can heartily commend the entertainment to the attention of our readers : all grown-up London will go to see it till the Christmas holidays come , and then what delighted audiences of " the young people !"
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Human Longevity . —It ia positively surprising in the present day , when the principles of longevity are reduced to so simple an expression as tho observance 01 the Natural laws , to find what erroneous opinions our forefathers entortained upon so important a subject . It was especially nn erroneous belief that the loss hy po - piration abbreviated life . I ^ ord Bacon , who distinguished , philosophically / " ° "* ; three intentions for the prolongation of life—retardation of consumption , ana j , ^ reparation and renovation of what begins to grow old—was yet so for zn " * , / fuoncCB idea of the relation of what ho calls predatory influences nnd , »^ { , % | iii , g in as to believe that tho ambient air could bo rendered less P ™ / £ " ^ fl- from tho cold climates , in caves , mountains , and anchorites' cells ; or do ' nta wjtHOut body by a dense skin , tho feathers of birds , or ttause of oils ana * d Umt tho aromatics . Upon tho flame inbtuken principle MttU I n r n "is ™ C U < £ , that treow lived body should bo covered with pitch . And Garden ^™ %£ g ™ longer than animals because they took no exorcise \—jX 6 WM »™< y
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At the Haymarklet , The Man of Many Friends , a three-act comedy from the fruitful pen of Mr . Stirling Coyne , has been produced with a degree of success , justified by the smartness and dexterity of the writing , and by the lively acting . Mr . Buckstonb is the hero of the piece . La Perea Nkna has reappeared . At the Adelphi , Victorine , the drame so celebrated in the days of Yates , has been revived with an entirely new cast , but with great effect . The acting of Mrs . Leigh Murray as the heroine is both delicate and forcible , and the general distribution of the parts is as good as the present stage can afford , which , after all , in spite 6 f old stagers , is not a bad compliment . Drury Lane continues English opera with merited favour , and Mr . James Anderson , with Mrs . J . W . Waliack , Mr . Stuart , and others , has been specially engaged to do tho heavy business in the old-fashioned lyric dramas which our fathers have heard . The Slave is a sort of novelty to tho young generation ; but it is a consolation to find that the threatened revival of Macbeth with the whole of Locke's music has been abandoned by the general council of the directors as inconsistent with their operatic programme . There is no knowing what wo m ay expect after the operatic season ! Sadler ' s Wells reopens for the regular season to-night .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 8, 1855, page 873, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2105/page/21/
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