that it is executed unexceptionably well. But these views of the committe are still applicable as principles. The allowance of 4000/ for house expenses was strongly adverted to for discontinuance, in the end of 1807, by Mr. Perceval, in his correspondence with the bank at that time. The same reasons exist now; and indeed, the authority of that very acute and able man is sufficient to those who know, that if his leisure from the multifarious calls of state had permitted him to turn a full attention to the affairs of the bank, he would have insisted on a thorough sifting and revision of their bargains. The allowance for the debt purchased of the South Sea Company, is one which ought to cease instantly, on the plain ground, that all management on it has ceased since 1722. 2dly, The deposits of public money lying at the bank are just so many millions of capital taken from the productive labour and productive capital of the country, where they might at least be useful, and lodged with a great corporation whose trade is money, and to whom they must be of the highest value. It is to them so much added to their ordinary capital, without much of the risk or responsibility to which their floating obligations subject them. For every thousand of this money in their hands, they are enabled to discount so many more bills, or issue so many more notes. The public service ought instantly to be benefitted by them, if the usury laws are repealed, to an amount according to what may be the average rate of interest for money throughout the country. 3dly, Mr. Grenfell recommends that parliament should interfere to make a new arrangement for the public; assigning as a reason, that the influence "which, though all powerful, irresistible in Downing Street, would be impotent and unavailing within the walls of the House." "Is not," says he, with the same animation which we spoke of before,—“ İs not your whole financial history, during the last twenty years, filled with proofs of this influence? It is then in this house, and through the medium of this house only, that the interests and rights of the public can be secured in all negociations of this nature with the bank; and I repeat it, if the house of commons will interfere, my conviction is, that the bank will not resist. If, however, I should be disappointed in this expectation,-and if the bank, unmindful of what it owes to the public,-forgetting that it has duties to perform towards the public, as well as within the limited circle of its own proprietors,-I will go farther, and, as a proprietor of bank stock myself, add, that if the bank, taking a narrow, contracted, selfish, and therefore mistaken view of its own real permanent interests, should resist regulations founded in fairness, equity, and justice,-in such a state of things, sir, I say it must be a consolation to us to know, and I assert it confidently, that we have a remedy within our own reach." p. 60. As to the profits accruing from the paper circulation of the bank, of which we hope the country will continue to enjoy the advantages, under due modifications,*

*We hope to be able to announce very soon, from the pen of one of the ablest economists of our time, an essay, showing that a large coinage of gold would be

Mr. Ricardo is of opinion, that paper money affords a seignorage equal to its exchangeable value; and he also believes that the nation might gain two millions yearly, if it were the sole issuer of paper money. He wisely adds, that this would only be safe under the guidance of "commissioners responsible to parliament only." Mr. Grenfell's recommendation of parliamentary interference is good. That is, indeed, the truly constitutional mode. Every exertion of the kind is so much gained towards ensuring a considerate use of the public treasure, and a strict control over it in future, as matter of duty and honest emulation, on the part of those who have been recognised, since the revolution, as its guardians.

We have now gone over the principal matters of these questions. For the rest we refer to Mr. Grenfell, who has invested the subject with attractions of manner to which we cannot aspire. To his interference in the business this country is indebted for a saving of 180,000l. yearly, a thing of greater importance than those who are occupied with the taking out doubtful schemes of a more extended patriotism could be easily led to acknowledge. Nice calculations of political arithmetic, however, and even the most refined enquiries of political economy, come now, with direct force, to the ordinary business and interests of all those who have, in common parlance, a stake in the country; and we might even add, to those also who have nothing but life and liberty to care for, and whose interest in the cause of good government is the ultimate and the

extreme.

We know, from the very best authority, that lord Grenville, much to the credit of his sense and candour, has recently taken blame to himself for not looking narrowly enough into the affairs of the bank in 1806-7, when he was at the head of the treasury, and Mr. Vansittart secretary under him. The truth is, we believe, that ministers only overlooked this subject during the occupation of mind so naturally produced by the vast concerns of the war. The author of these discussions, to whom all the merit is due, and who might be excused for any partialities to his own inquiries, or ardour in the pursuit of their objects, shows exemplary moderation. He has taken them up without violence or faction, but with the urbanity and decision of an English gentleman. He has not overestimated their importance; and his statements are remarkable for perspicuity and plainness, without the least shade of laboured comment or ostentatious deduction. He deals not in splendid generalizations, nor in well-turned invectives ad captandum vulgus. We entreat the early attention of our readers to the speech itself, and to the appendix, in which they will find a variety of essential a fixation of capital, and therefore hurtful to the state. For the happiest idea that ever was conceived, of a currency liable to no variations except such as affect the standard itself, we refer to the novel, solid, and ingenious reasons urged in Mr. Ricardo's proposals. There also the reader will find the practical development of this fortunate conception made out with uncommon closeness, clearness, and simplicity.

statement and explanation, for which we could not possibly make

room.

Mr. Grenfell was a member of the bullion committee, and enjoyed the friendship of Mr. Horner. In a letter written lately to a correspondent in this place, he says, "the sanction of his great authority, and his unvaried countenance and approbation of my humble exertions in this cause, inspired me with a confidence as to the correctness of my own views, which has been most essential to me." We knew, ourselves, enough of that most excellent person, to perceive that this is a great deal for any man to say. The privileges and advantages which it implies can only be equalled by intercourse with one of the most original and inventive writers on political economy since the time of Adam Smith;* whose speculations on the great subjects of human interest with which that science is especially connected, have much of the strictness and severity of mathematical demonstration; and who bids fair to give to its most practical deductions more shape and certainty than they have received from any writer of his day.

ART. X.-Curiosities of Literature, vol. 3.—by Mr. D'Israeli.

OF

THE PANTOMIMICAL CHARACTERS.

F the mimi and the pantomimi of the Romans, the following notices enter into our present researches:

The mimi were an impudent race of buffoons, who excelled in mimicry, and, like our domestic fools, admitted into convivial. parties, to entertain the guests; from them we derive the term, mimetic art. Their powers enabled them to perform a more extraordinary office, for they appear to have been introduced into funerals, to mimic the person, and even the language of the deceased. Suetonius describes an archimimus accompanying the funeral of Vespasian. This archmime performed his part admirably, not only representing the person, but imitating, according to custom, ut est mos, the manners and language of the living emperor. He contrived a happy stroke at the prevailing foible of Vespasian, when he inquired the cost of all this funeral pomp? "Ten millions of sesterces!' On this he observed, that, if they would give him but a hundred thousand, they might throw his body into the Tiber.

The pantomimi were of a different class. They were tragic actors, usually mute; they combined with the arts of gesture, music and dances of the most impressive character. Their silent language has often drawn tears, by the pathetic emotions they excited: 'Their very nod speaks, their hands talk, and their fingers have a voice,' says one of their admirers. Seneca, the father, grave as was his profession, confessed his taste for pantomimes

* Mr. Ricardo, who is the friend of Mr. Grenfell, seconded his resolutions proposed to the court of proprietors at the bank, 23d May 1816, and speaks with respect of his exertions for the public. See proposals for an economical and secure currency, p. 42.

had become a passion; and by the decree of the senate that the Roman knights should not attend the pantomimic players in the streets,' it is evident that the performers were greatly honoured. Lucian has composed a curious treatise on pantomimes.

These pantomimics seem to have been held in great honour; many were children of the graces and the virtues! The tragic and the common masks were among the ornaments of the sepulchral monuments of an archmime and a pantomime. Montfaucon conjectures that they formed a select fraternity.

The parti-coloured hero, with every part of his dress, has been drawn out of the greatest wardrobe of antiquity; he was a Roman mimi: Harlequin is described with his shaven head, rasis capitibus; his sooty face, fuligine faciem obducti; his flat unshod feet, planipedes: and his patched coat of many colours; mimi centunculo. Even Pullicinella, whom we familiarly call Punch, may receive, like other personages of no greater importance, all his dignity from antiquity; one of his Roman ancestors having appeared to an antiquary's visionary eye in a bronze statue: more than one erudite dissertation authenticates the family likeness; the nose long, prominent, and hooked; the staring goggle eyes; the hump ́at his back and at his breast; in a word, all the character which so strongly marks the Punch-race, as distinctly as whole dynasties have been featured by the Austrian lip and the Bourbon

nose.

The genealogy of the whole family is confirmed by the general term, which includes them all; for our Zany, in Italian Zanni, comes direct from Sannio, a buffoon; and a passage in Cicero, de oratore, paints harlequin and his brother-gesticulators after the life; the perpetual trembling motion of their limbs, their ludicrous and flexible gestures, and all the mimicry of their faces. Quid enim potest tam ridiculum quam Sannio esse? Qui ore, vultu, imitandis motibus, voce, denique corpore ridetur ipso.' Lib. II. § 51. For what has more of the ludicrous than Sannio? who, with his mouth, his face, imitating every motion, with his voice, and, indeed, with all his body, provokes laughter.

The harlequin in the Italian theatre has passed through all the vicissitudes of fortune. At first he was a true representative of the ancient Mime, but during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries he degenerated into a booby and a gourmand, the perpetual butt for a sharp-witted fellow, his companion, called Brighella, the knife and the whetstone. Harlequin, under the reforming hand of Goldoni, became a child of nature, the delight of his country; and he has commemorated the historical character of the great Harlequin Sacchi.

AUDLEY THE USURER.

A person whose history will serve as a canvas to exhibit some scenes of the arts of the money-trader, was one AUDLEY, a lawyer, and a great practical philosopher, who concentrated his vigorous faculties in the science of the relative value of money. He flou

rished through the reigns of James I, Charles I, and held a lucrative office in the court of wards,' till that singular court was abolished at the time of the restoration. In his own times he was called 'the great Audley,' an epithet so often abused, and here applied to the creation of enormous wealth. But there are minds of great capacity, concealed by the nature of their pursuits; and the wealth of Audley may be considered as the cloudy medium through which a bright genius shone, who, had it been thrown into a nobler sphere of action, the 'greatness' would have been less ambiguous.

This genius of thirty per cent. first had proved the decided vigour of his mind, by his enthusiastic devotion to his law-studies; deprived of his leisure for study through his busy day, he stole the hours from his late nights and his early mornings; and without the means to procure a law-library, he invented a method to possess one without the cost; as fast as he learned, he taught; and, by publishing some useful tracts on temporary occasions, he was enabled to purchase a library. He appears never to have read a book without its furnishing him with some new practical design, and he probably studied too much for his own particular advantage. Such devoted studies was the way to become a lord chancellor; but the science of the law was here subordinate to that of a money-trader.

When yet but a clerk to the clerk in the counter, frequent opportunities occurred, which Audley knew how to improve. He became a money-trader as he had become a law-writer, and the fears and follies of mankind were to furnish him with a trading capital. The fertility of his genius appeared in expedients and in quick contrivances. He was sure to be the friend of all men falling out. He took a deep concern in the affairs of his master's clients, and often much more than they were aware of. No man so ready at procuring bail or compounding debts. This was a considerable traffic then, as now. They hired themselves out for bail, swore what was required, and contrived to give false addresses. It seems they dressed themselves out for the occasion: a great seal-ring flamed on the finger, which, however, was pure copper, gilt, and often assumed the name of some person of good credit. Savings, and small presents for gratuitous opinions, often afterwards discovered to be very fallacious ones, enabled him to purchase annuities of easy landholders, with their treble amount seeured on their estates. The improvident owners, or the careless heirs, were entangled in the usurer's nets; and after the receipt of a few years, the annuity, by some latent quibble, or some irregularity in the payments, usually ended in Audley's obtaining the treble forfeiture. He could at all times out-knave a knave. One of these incidents has been preserved. A draper, of no honest repuation, being arrested by a merchant for a debt of 2001., Audley bought the debt at forty pounds, for which the draper immediately offered him fifty. But Audley would not consent,