His

London, whose arrival at Paris has been announced by the papers, possesses a fine figure, and appears to be about forty years of age. hair is dark, his features are strongly marked, and he has a physiognomy truly tragic. He understands, and speaks with accuracy, the French language. In company he appears thoughtful and reserved. His manners, however, are very distinguished; and he has in his looks, when addressed, an expression of courtesy, that affords us the best idea of his education. Mr Kemble is well informed, and has the reputation of being a good grammarian. The Comedie Française has received him with all the respect due to the Le Kaim of England; they have already given him a splendid dinner, and mean to invite him to a still more brilliant souper. Talma, to whom he had letters of recommendation, does the honours of Paris; they visit together our finest works, and appear to be already united by the most friendly ties."

On his return to England, he purchased a sixth share in Covent Garden theatre, of which he now became the manager. The destruction of that edifice by fire, in 1808, nearly stripped Kemble of all his property; but, through the kindness of the duke of Northumberland, he was in a great measure indemnified for his losses, and a new theatre was opened on the site of the former one in the course of the ensuing year. The increase of prices on this occasion, of the boxes, from six shillings to seven shillings, and of the pit, from three shillings and sixpence to four shillings, gave rise to the famous O. P. riots. For sixty nights the British public danced rigadoons on the benches of the pit, and behaved with all the well-known turbulence of John Bull when he is incensed. Not a word could be heard from the rise to the fall of the curtain. Every hat was lettered with O. P. Every banner was inscribed with O. P. The dance was O. P. The cry was still O. P. Each managerial heart beat to the truth of Sir Vicary Gibbs' Latin pleasantry, "effodiuntur OPES irritamenta malorum. Mr Kemble appealed to the audience from the stage, in vain. Mr Charles Kemble was hooted for being a brother of Kemble. Mrs Charles Kemble was yelled at, nay, pelted with oranges, for being the wife of the brother of Kemble. Even Mrs Siddons's awful majesty was not a counterpoise to her being of the Kemble blood. At length, however, a compromise was effected; the private boxes were reduced to their number in 1802; the price of admission to the pit was restored to three shillings and sixpence; and the proprietors were allowed the benefit of the advance of a shilling on every admission to the boxes.

"

On the 23d of June, 1817, Mr Kemble took his farewell of the stage, in the character of Coriolanus. He spent the remaining years of his life chiefly on the continent, and died at Lausanne, on the 26th of February, 1823.

"The Hamlet of John Kemble," says an able writer in the London Magazine,' "was, in the vigour of his life, his first, best, and favourite character. In the few latter years, time had furrowed that handsome forehead and face deeper than grief even had worn the countenance of Hamlet. The pensiveness of the character permitted his languor to overcome him; and he played it, not with the mildness of melancholy and meditation, but with somewhat of the tameness and drowsiness of age. There never was that heyday in his blood that could afford to tame. He was a severe and pensive man in his youth,—at least in his

theatrical youth. We have, however, seen him in Hamlet to the very heart! We have yearned for the last flourish of the tippling king's trumpets, for the passing of Mr Murray and Mrs Powell, for the entrance of Mr Claremont and Mr Claremont's other self in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. We have yearned for all these; because then, after a pause, came Hamlet!-There he was! The sweet, the graceful, the gentlemanly Hamlet. The scholar's eye shone in him with learned beauty! The soldier's spirit decorated his person! His mourning dress was in unison with the fine severe sorrow of his face; and wisdom and youth seemed holding gracious parley in his countenance. You could not take your eye from the dark intensity of his : you could not look on any meaner form, while his matchless person stood in princely perfection before you. The very blue ribband, that suspended the picture of his father around his neck, had a courtly grace in its disposal. There he stood! and when he spoke that wise music with which Shakspeare has tuned Prince Hamlet's heart, his voice fell in its fine cadences like an echo upon the ear,—and you were taken by its tones back with Hamlet to his early days, and over all his griefs, until you stood, like him, isolated in the Danish revel court. The beauty of his performance of Hamlet was its retrospective air-its intensity and abstraction. His youth seemed delivered over to sorrow, and memory was, indeed, with him the warder of the brain. Later actors have played the part with more energy,-walked more in the sun,-dashed more at effects,-piqued themselves more on the jerk of a foil-but Kemble's sensible, lonely Hamlet has not been surpassed. Hamlet seems to us to be a character that should be played as if in moonlight. He is a sort of link between the ethereal and the corporeal. He stands between the two fathers, and relieves the too violent transition from the living king, that bruits the heavens with his roaring cups, to the armed spirit that silently walks the forest by the glow-worin's light, and melts away when it "gins to pale its ineffectual fire.' As far as Prince Hamlet could be played, John Kemble played it,—and now that he is gone, we will take care how we enter the theatre to see it mammocked by any meaner hand. Mr Kemble's delineation of Cato was truly magnificent. The hopes of Rome seemed fixed upon him. The fate of Rome seemed to have retired to his tower-like person, as to a fortress, and thence to look down upon the petty struggles of traitors and assassins. He stood in the gorgeous foldings of his robes, proudly preeminent. The stoicism of the Roman wrestled with the feelings of the father, when his son was killed; and the contest was terrifically displayed. That line in the Critic, which always seemed the highest burlesque, was realized and sublimed in him: The father relents, but the governor is fixed.' If Mr Kemble had only stood with his grand person in Cato, he would have satisfied the audience, and have told all that Addison intended throughout five long cast-iron acts. There are those amongst his admirers who eulogized him much in Brutus; nay, preferred him in that character. We thought the Roman part of Brutus was admirably portrayed; but the generous fears,—the manly candour,-the tenderness of heart, which rise up through all the Roman stoicism, rather wanted truth and vividness. The whole character was made too meditative, too unmoved. And yet the relation of Portia's death renders such objections extremely hazardous. In this

part he dared much for the sake of correct costume; and we are quite sure that if any other performer had been as utterly Roman in his dress as Mr Kemble was, that he would have endangered the severity of the tragedy. Coriolanus was a Roman of quite another nature; and we rather think Mr Kemble was more universally liked in this part than in any other. The contempt of inferiors suited the haughty tone of his voice; and the fierce impetuosity of the great fighting young Roman was admirably seconded by the muscular beauty of person in the actor. When he came on in the first scene, the crowd of mob-Romans fell back as though they had run against a wild bull, and he dashed in amongst them in scarlet pride, and looked, even in the eyes of the audience, sufficient to beat forty of them.' Poor Simmons used to peer about for Kemble's wounds like a flimsy connoisseur examining a statue of some mighty Roman. The latter asking to be consul,-his quarrel with the tribunes,-his appearance under the statue of Mars in the hall of Aufidius, and his taunt of the Volscian just before his death, were specimens of earnest and noble acting that ought never to be lost out of the cabinets of our memories. In Macbeth this great performer was grandly effective; particularly in the murder scene. Perhaps he fell off in the very concluding scenes; but at the banquet, he was kingly indeed! The thought of the witches always seemed to be upon him, weighing him down with supernatural fear. In Richard the Third he was something too collected, too weighty with the consideration of crime, too slow of apprehension. In this part Mr Kean certainly has surpassed all others, and we never saw quick intellect so splendidly displayed as in this brilliant little man. In King John, although the character is in itself tedious, Mr Kemble was greatly elaborate and successful. His scenes with Hubert, and his death, were as powerful as genius could make them. His death chilled the heart, as the touch of marble chills the hand; and it almost seemed that a monument was struggling with fate! The voice had a horror, a hollowness, supernatural; and it still sounds through our memories, big with death In characters of vehemence and passion, such as Hotspur, Pierre, Octavian, he so contrived to husband his powers, as to give the most astounding effects in the most prominent scenes in which those characters appeared. And in the melancholy pride and rooted sentiments of such parts as Wolsey, Zanga, the Stranger, and Penruddock, he had no equal. In the latter character, indeed, with apparently the slightest materials, he worked up a part of the most thrilling interest. He showed love, not in its dancing youth and revel of the blood, but in its suffering, its patience, its silent wasting intensity. Mr Kemble dressed the part in the humblest modern dress, and still he looked some superior creature. Philosophy seemed determined to hold her own. The draperied room was shamed by his severe presence. His boots and hose bore a charmed life! Love hung its banner out in his countenance, and it had all the interest of some worn record of a longpast contest and victory. We have seen Mr Kemble in Lord Townley, in Biron, Sir Giles Overreach, and various other characters; but we preferred him in the parts upon which we have principally remarked. Although he was filled with the spirit of Massinger in Overreach, and bore the ancient drama sternly up, Sir Giles is highly poetical, and cannot be realized by a natural actor. His very vices relish of the schools."

Charles Hutton.

BORN A. D. 1737.—died a. d. 1823.

DR CHARLES HUTTON was the youngest son of a Newcastle miner, and was born in that town on the 14th of August, 1737. He early evinced great aptitude and fondness for the science of numbers and the mathematics, and commenced his career in life as a teacher of these branches of education, at the village of Jesmond, in the neighbourhood of Newcastle.

In 1764 he published an excellent manual of arithmetic and bookkeeping, which is still used by many eminent teachers. Soon after this he commenced publishing by subscription, and in monthly parts, a Treatise on Mensuration,' which has passed through several editions, and is still highly esteemed. In 1773 he was appointed professor of mathematics in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, and soon afterwards elected a fellow of the Royal society, of which he became one of the secretaries in 1779. His contributions to the publications of that learned body are amongst the most valuable of the mathematical papers. In 1798 he published his Course of Mathematics,' a work which has gone through several editions and obtained a very wide circulation. In 1807 he resigned his professorship, but continued to employ himself long and usefully in the compilation of a variety of useful works in his favourite sciences, by the sale of which he at once realized a very handsome fortune and increased his scientific reputation throughout Europe. He died on the 27th of January, 1823.

"Dr Hutton," says his friend and biographer, Dr Olinthus Gregory, "had that fondness for retirement which is natural to a man of studious habits; nevertheless, no literary or scientific individual with whom I have ever met, was uniformly so easy of access; a circumstance which I unhesitatingly impute to his desire to be useful to others,-a desire which he steadily evinced through life. No sooner, indeed, had he been removed by Providence into a sphere of extensive influence by his official appointment in the Royal Military Academy, than he felt it his duty to do all in his power to promote the welfare and interest of men of science, and especially those who were devoted to mathematical tuition. Of such he continued for fifty years, truly and eminently the patron. He kept up a most extensive correspondence with mathematicians in every part of Europe, but especially in the United Kingdom. Appreciating correctly and candidly the talents and acquirements of his correspondents, and taking care by various means to ascertain their situations in life, he was ever watchful in seizing opportunities to advance their interests, and provide honourable appointments for them. To this amiable and enviable propensity the late General (then Lieutenant) Mudge owed his recommendation to the duke of Richmond, as duly qualified to be associated with Major Edward Williams in conducting the trigonometrical survey of England and Wales: to this also, my able predecessor, Professor Bonny castle, owed his appointment at Woolwich, in 1782: and to this again, I cannot omit to ascribe the honour of my invitation to the Royal Military Academy in the year 1802. To many others now living, I refer the pleasure of

testifying their own obligations. The satisfaction which the doctor himself derived from these acts of kindness is expressed in many parts of his journal. Even so lately as 1821, there occur two or three examples of this kind. In one of them, after describing how he had been the principal means of obtaining appointments for two very respectable mathematicians, he adds-Thus I have much pleasure in a double degree, viz. both in serving and encouraging very able and worthy persons, and in supplying useful institutions with good and proper teachers.' I must not omit to add, that Dr Hutton was a cordial friend to the education of the poor; contributing liberally to Lancasterian and other schools, for their instruction; often expatiating on the advantages, moral and political, which would necessarily accrue from the diffusion of knowledge amongst them; and successfully exposing the folly of expecting, on the one hand, that if men were left ignorant and without principles they would abstain from crimes, yet of fearing, on the other, that if they obtained knowledge and imbibed good principles, they would in consequence go the more astray! Nor, lastly, would it be just to omit, that my venerable friend was a man of genuine, but unassuming benevolence. Never, during our long and close intimacy, did I know him turn a deaf ear to a case of real distress. On paying him one of my periodical visits, about five years ago, I found him reading a letter, the tears trickling down his cheeks. 'Read this,' said he, putting the letter into my hand. It was from the wife of a country schoolmaster, describing how, by a series of misfortunes, he had been reduced to penury, and had just been hurried off to jail, while the sheriff's officers had seized his furniture, leaving her and her children without a shilling. Can you rely upon this statement?' I asked. Yes,' said he: I have information from another quarter which confirms its truth. Then what do you mean to do?' -'I mean,' replied the doctor, smiling, to demand a guinea from you, and the same sum from every friend who calls upon me to-day; then to make up the amount twenty guineas, and send it off by this night's post.' He knew nothing of this family, but that, though they were unfortunate, they were honest and industrious, and therefore deserved relief. I could detail many similar examples; but it is unnecessary. Ex uno disce omnes."

Dr Hutton was exceedingly cheerful in his conversation and manner, and deliberate in expressing himself. His voice was agreeably clear and firm, with a slight northern accent. He seems to have displayed in every thing his taste for his favourite study. Showing some one a bust of himself by Gahagan, not long before his decease, he said: "There, Sir, is a bust of me by Gahagan,-my friends tell me it is like me, but that it is too grave for me, though gravity is a part of my character. For the likeness and expression I cannot myself be the judge; but I can vouch for the accuracy, for I have measured it in every point with the callipers." Upon the same person taking leave, the doctor insisted he would accompany him to the door in the street of Bedford-row; and on his remarking to him that the place was broad, light, and very airy, he stepped two or three paces on, and pointing to the end of the street, said, "Yes, it is a very agreeable place to walk in. From the chair in my study to that post at the corner is just forty yards; and from that post to the post at the other end of the row is exactly the