finally, into private houses.

The progress

was not very rapid, however; for we find that gas was not introduced into the Mall of St. James's Park until the year 1822. It is difficult to fix the exact date when gas footlights appeared upon the stage. But in the year 1828 an explosion took place in Covent Garden Theatre by which two men lost their lives.

Great alarm was excited. The public were afraid to re-enter the theatre. The management published an address in which it was stated that the gasfittings would be entirely removed from the interior of the house, and safer methods of illumination resorted to. In order to effect the necessary alterations the theatre was closed for a fortnight, during which the Covent Garden company appeared at the English Opera House, or Lyceum Theatre, and an address was issued on behalf of the widows of the men who had been killed by the explosion. In due time, however, the world grew bolder on the subject, and gas reappeared upon the scene. Some theatres, however, (being probably restricted by the conditions of their leases), were very tardy in adopting the new system of lighting. Mr. Benjamin Webster in his speech in the year 1853 upon his resigning the management of the Haymarket Theatre after a tenancy of fifteen years, mentions, among the improvements he had originated during that period, that he had duced gas for the fee of 500l. a-year, and the presentation of the centre chandelier to the proprietors."

"intro

The employment of gas-lights in theatres was strenuously objected to by many people. In the year 1829 a medical gentleman, writing from Bolton Row, and signing himself CHIRO-MEDICUS, addressed to a public journal a remonstrance on the subject.

He

had met with several fatal cases of apoplexy which had occurred in the theatres, or a few hours after leaving them, and he had been led, with some success, as he alleged, to investigate the cause. It appeared to him "that the strong vivid light evolved from the numerous gas-lamps on the stage so powerfully stimulated the brain through the medium of the optic nerves, as to occasion a preternatural determination of blood to the head, capable of producing headache or giddiness; and if the subject should at the time laugh heartily, the additional influx of blood which takes place, may rupture a vessel, the consequence of which will be, from the effusion of blood within the substance of the brain, or, on its surface, fatal apoplexy." From inquiries he had made among his professional brethren who had been many years in practice in the metropolis, it appeared to him that the votaries

of the drama were by no means so subject to apoplexy or nervous headache before the adoption of gas-lights. Some of his medical friends were of opinion that the air of the theatre was very considerably deteriorated by the combustion of gas, and that the consumption of oxygen, and the new products, and the escape of hydrogen, occasioned congestion of the vessels of the head. He thought it probable that this deterioration of the air might act in conjunction with the vivid light in producing either apoplexy or nervous headache. He found, moreover, that the actors were subject not only to headache, but also to weakness of sight and attacks of giddiness, from the action of the powerfully vivid light evolved from the combustion of gas; and he noted that the pupils of the eyes of all actors or actresses, who had been two or three years on the stage, were much dilated, though this, he thought, might be attributable to the injurious pigments they employed to heighten their complexions; common rouge containing either red oxide of lead, or the sulphuret of mercury, and white paint being often composed of carbonate of lead, all of which were capable of acting detrimentally upon the optic nerve.

The statements of CHIRO-MEDICUS may seem somewhat overcharged; yet, after allowance has been made for that exaggerated way of putting the case which seems habitual to "the faculty " when it takes up with a theory, a sufficient residuum of fact remains to justify many of the doctor's remarks. That a headache too often follows hard upon a dramatic entertainment must be tolerably plain to anyone who has ever sat in a theatre. Surely, a better state of things must have existed a century ago, when the grandsires and great grandsires of us Londoners were in the habit of frequenting the theatres night after night, almost as punctually as they ate their dinner or sipped their claret or their punch. To look in at Drury Lane or Covent Garden, if only to witness an act or two of the tragedy or comedy of the evening, was a sort of duty with the town gentlemen, wits, and Templars, a hundred years back, when George III. was king. But gas had not then superseded wax and tallow and oil. No constitution could stand a nightly course of the vitiated atmosphere of the theatres as they exist at present. A visit now and then is all we may permit ourselves; and we may deem ourselves fortunate if the merit of the entertainment on such occasions is sufficient compensation for the almost inevitable headache it entails upon us. Modern managers, indeed, have not been properly heedful to make the ventilation of their houses keep pace with the

illumination; and this has, of late years, been excessive-not merely on the stage, but more inexcusably and unnecessarily in what it seems the fashion to call the "auditorium portion of the theatre. CHIRO-MEDICUS did not succeed in his efforts made more than fiveand-thirty years ago to "turn off the gas." But if apoplexy was imminent in those days of comparative darkness, what must it be now when great flare and glitter, and gas-flooded spectacles seem to be indispensable to the stage, and when, moreover, in lieu of the old-fashioned chandeliers diffusing the light, "sun-burners" from above shoot down concentrated rays of fierce light upon the devoted heads of the audience? Reform is very necessary in this matter. Apoplectic seizures may not threaten the spectators so certainly as has been stated, but aching brows and distressed eyes, unavoidable under the existing system, are sufficient afflictions to warrant a demand for improvement. Cannot we come to some compromise with the managers? Let them make their stages as bright as they list if they will but leave the "auditorium" in twilight, and make that twilight as temperate, without draughtiness, as may be.

Beyond increasing the quantity of light, stage management has done little since Garrick's introduction of foot-lights, or "floats," as they are technically termed, in the way of satisfactorily adjusting the illumination of the stage. The light still comes from the wrong place: from below instead of, naturally, from above. In 1863, Mr. Fechter, at the Lyceum, sunk the floats below the surface of the stage, so that they should not intercept the view of the spectator; and his example has been followed by other managers; and of late years, owing to accidents having occurred to the dresses of the dancers when they approached too near to the foot-lights, these have been carefully fenced and guarded with wire screens and metal bars. But the obvious improvement required still remains to be effected.

George Colman the younger, in his "Random Records," describes an amateur dramatic performance in the year 1780, at Wynnstay, in North Wales, the seat of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn. The theatre had formerly been the kitchen of the mansion; a large, long, rather low-pitched room. One advantage of these characteristics, according to Mr. Colman, was the fact that the foot-lights or float, could be dispensed with, and the stage was lighted by a row of lamps affixed to a large beam or arch above the heads of the performers,-" on that side of the arch nearest to the stage, so that the audience did not see the lamps, which cast a strong vertical light upon the actors.

This," says Mr. Colman, "is as we receive light from nature; whereas the operation of the float is exactly upon a reversed principle, and throws all the shades of the actor's countenance the wrong way." This defect appeared to our author to be irremediable; for, as he argues, "if a beam to hold lamps as at Wynnstay was placed over the proscenium at Drury Lane or Covent Garden Theatre, the goddesses in the upper tiers of boxes, and the two and one shilling gods in the galleries, would be completely intercepted from a view of the stage.' Still, Mr. Colman was not without hope that "in this age of improvement, while theatres are springing up like mushrooms, some ingenious architect may hit upon a remedy; at all events," he concludes, "it is a grand desideratum."

Mr. Colman was writing in the year 1830. It is rather curious to find him describing theatres as "springing up like mushrooms,' when it is considered that notwithstanding the enormous extension of London, and the vast increase of its population, but one or two theatres have been added to it during the last thirty years. Meanwhile, the "ingenious architect," to whom he looks hopefully, to amend the lighting of the stage, is not yet come. But then one does not meet ingenious architects every day. DUTTON COOK.

NURSERY TALES AND TOY BOOKS.

IF there were any doubt that the present is an age of colour, a stroll along the streets of the Metropolis as the new year comes upon us, affords a startling proof of the fact. Every bookseller's shop is a grand posy of colour; the old, old stories that we were familiar with as soon as we knew anything are there again, bran new, and more glorious than ever by the aid of another sense. Who says that a love of gorgeous colouring is peculiar to savages? There are half a dozen little ones at home, who tell me I must buy them "Jack the Giant Killer," and "Blue Beard," all in beautiful colours, which they have just been gloating over, with noses flattened against the window pane; and I am sure they are not savages! But there are some people who don't believe in anything that is natural, and would reduce all things to sober grey colour, physically and morally.

But what lucky little fellows the children of this generation are! When we were boys, fairy tales were coloured only by the mind'seye: those who possessed this mental paintbrush no doubt wanted no other; but poor dull children, what could they make out of the ugly woodcuts presented to them? We

declare it is positively distracting to little ones to look into the booksellers' windows just at the present moment. But there are one or two questions about nursery rhymes and fairy tales that bother us exceedingly. Where did they all come from? when did they come? and how is it that they have ceased to come? and why do we feel pretty certain that they never will come again whilst we are upon this earth? Every year children are solicited by writers who fancy they can attract the juvenile mind, but their tales and stories come and go like the summer wind. We question if even the fairy tales of Hans Andersen will survive the present generation.

It seems to us that the old nursery rhyme owes its universal circulation and persistence to the fact that it is transmitted orally by the unlettered nurse. There is nothing of class about it; it is equally the property of the clown and the prince. Every child in the three kingdoms knows "The House that Jack built" and "Little Bo-Peep," and we should say that, not to know "Dickory, dickory, dock" would give a young street Arab an unanswerable claim to admission in a "home" for friendless boys. But to say that the nursery rhyme is indestructible, because it is passed on from generation to generation by the nurse, is not sufficient; there must be some other reason why the old rhymes never die out from among us; and that reason is to be found, we humbly suggest, in the fact that there is something in the rhyme that has a particular aptitude to stick in the memory, just as a bur has a particular aptitude to stick upon our clothes. Let us, for one moment, repeat over to ourselves, "This is the house that Jack built," and we at once see, when the intricacy of the structure of the story is once mastered, how difficult it is to forget it, even if we would. Each ascending "worry," if we may so speak, sticks in the memory, and works its way further in, just as an ear of barley or "creeping grass works its way up the boy's sleeve. "Dickory, dickory, dock," again, can no more slip out of the mind than a nutmeg grater could slip at its work. "Little Tommy Tucker" possesses the same quality of "sticking;" in fact, there is not a nursery rhyme that does not depend upon its structural roughness, as well as upon its picturesque and grotesque character, for its wonderful vitality.

Nursery rhymes proper are evidently of Teutonic origin, if they be not Anglo-Saxon. There is a matter-of-factness about them, and a sturdy roughness, a giving and taking of blows, which bespeaks the national mind, and which, moreover, addresses itself to one phase of child nature-the love of destruction. Something comes to grief in all the nursery rhymes:

either it is Pussy put into the well, or it is Jack tumbling down and breaking his crown, or the maid in the garden having her nose snipped off, or cock-robin slain, or the babes in the wood perished under the blackberry bushes, or Humpty-Dumpty come to a smash; and it will be observed that the destructive passages seem to excite the curlyheaded little darlings more than the sentimental ones. What a pleasant, creepy horror comes over the best-intentioned little maid, when the nasty old wolf gobbles up the grandmother! and what part of " Jack in the Bean-stalk" comes up to the final catastrophe, when Jack cuts away below, and the giant's castle and all comes tumbling about his ears? We must not overlook this destructive tendency in children, if we would write stories to please them. We once saw a little fellow coming out of a house, laying about him with a stick, saying, "I don't care where I goes, nor what I does, nor who I hits;" and he was the type of a boy in sound health, at the unreflective age when it is pleasant to do something, even if that something is the most wanton mischief.

There is a sense of justice and fair play in all the home-grown nursery tales, that contrasts strongly with those of known Eastern origin. In the latter we often find a treacherous cruelty that revolts even the youthful mind pouring the boiling oil upon the Forty Thieves, for instance, always seemed to us the act of a sneak; and even Blue Beard's cupboard is a horror that would not have suggested itself to an English mind.

We confess, however, to one great want in the literature under notice; we possess no good ghost or goblin stories. Now, as there is no feeling so universal as the ghostly feeling in the child nature, the fact is rather remarkable. We have naturalised a good old fairy in Cinderella, but with this exception we know no nursery tale of universal acceptance and of old renown, that deals with the supernatural. Is it that the native mind cannot rise above a turnip ghost? Whether this be so or not, the fact remains that our nursery rhymes, as a rule, are dovoid of the fairies and goblins that gamble and frolic, and are the prime movers in the German nursery lore. We have "Goblin Feasts" and such dainty modern work, but these are clearly exotics intended for a class, and we do not admit that any nursery rhyme can pretend to that name if it belongs to any particular class at all. Puck was not invented for the upper ten thousand; if he had been, we should have cared nothing about him. The nursery rhyme springs from the earth pure and simple like the water spring, and, like that element,

is destined to refresh us all, without distinction of rank. Without doubt the Prince of Wales' little sons are taught "Ding Dong, Bell," as faithfully as the child of meanest hind, and it is this universality which gives half the interest to these rhymes.

The knowledge that for ages we begin life by singing the same doggrel verses, gives them a might that moves us beyond the finest poetry in the language. Imagine a traveller in the interior of Australia suddenly hearing a mother singing "Little Tommy Tucker" to her child, would it not touch the very depths of his nature deeper than the finest thing in Milton, or even Shakspere himself?

We have been enticed into this little burst of enthusiasm about toy-books and nursery rhymes, by the inspection of a bright little pile of them on our table. Whilst we assert, without fear of contradiction, that we cannot have any more of them, that for some occult reason the age for their production is passed, yet we must admit that they may come to us in a new dress, which gives them an additional interest. The little folk that only appeared to us bright in our imagination, now come forth in all the glory and bravery of colour, not daubs such as we were once foisted off with, but really artistic colour.

There are two firms which appear to have made the desires and applause of children their study in this matter, and we must confess they have succeeded. Messrs. Warne and Messrs. Routledge have striven who shall bring the whole mythology of the nursery once more upon the child's theatre, with the best dresses and appointments. Their toy books and nursery rhymes are the earliest fruit of that new art which is producing such wonderful effects. We allude to colour printing by steam machinery. Without this invention what a multitude of small eyes would not have opened half so wide this Christmas! And when we remember that every picture has to be printed over a dozen times at least with the utmost precision, in order to give all the tints it contains, the price at which these books are produced is truly marvellous. There are, however, two toy-books which have especially attracted our attention as veritable works of art.

Messrs. Warne's "John Gilpin" is the perfection of a child's book. The drawing brings before us to the life the individuals in that notable little drama, especially the scene from the balcony of the inn, where Mrs. Gilpin watches the unhappy linendraper flying past. This picture almost deserves to be mounted as a separate drawing, so excellent is the colouring and design. There is another admirable example of both colour and design published

by this firm-the "Nursery Songs," otherwise the gingle verses which form one of the shilling series of "Aunt Louisa's London Toy-books." The method of printing upon a black back-ground throws out the colours with great force; each rhyme has its own charming illustration.

The story of "Cinderella" seems to have drawn out the powers of the artists of both these publishing firms. Messrs. Routledge give us the tale in a mediæval light: the costume is "of the period," whenever that may have been, and the effect is very striking. We might be looking at a design by Leighton, or any of the young artists of genius, who have of late years given us peeps into life as it existed in ages past, so well are the pictures of this fascinating story executed in this shilling toy-book. We do not know that it is necessary that children should care much how the heroes of their tales are dressed, but they cannot suffer harm in any case by finding them correctly habited in the picturesque costumes of old. Messrs. Warne have also produced a "Cinderella," which in an art point of view is almost too good for children. There is one scene, where the young prince and his attendants are walking along a gallery, busy with hawks and hounds, where the tapestry is managed so exquisitely that it forms a picture worthy of Hunt.

Let us notice, last but not least, Messrs. Routledge's "Our Farm Yard," a little volume in which the rural scenes are depicted with all the delicacy of drawing of Birket Foster, and are coloured with a pencil worthy of the drawings.

But there are scores of these books, full of fancy and feeling, that we have not time to mention. Grown people will feel jealous if the little ones are made familiar with art designs that are superior to those they are themselves accustomed to meet with. We must not conclude this paper without referring to one very remarkable child's book, published by Messrs. Warne, which has made more children laugh than any other of modern date-we allude to a "Book of Nonsense," by Edwin Lear. These sketches are drawn as a child would draw upon a slate. This may appear an easy thing to do; but let the reader who thinks so try it, and we will be bound to say that the first child will detect the imposture. Never was a book published that so exactly hit the child's mind as this one; and the fine artist that produced it, is without doubt prouder of the joy these sketches and nonsense rhymes have given to a million of children, than of the powerful pictures with which he has delighted the artistic world.

A. W.