present unhealthy state is less owing to climate than to those canebrakes, cypress-swamps, alluvial bottoms-to those dense forests and undrained wilds, which nothing but an increasing and industrious population can remedy. When it is added that a water-communication may, at no ruinous expense, be opened between every part of the Valley, and with the Atlantic Ocean, it is not difficult to foresee that, in the long succession of ages, it will rank among the most important possessions of the globe. Population is said to be rapidly gaining on the eastern side of the Mississippi; so that a native Indian is scarcely to be found there, with the exception of a few Cherokees on its banks, who possess negro slaves, and live by agriculture! while, according to Major Long, the settlements on the banks of the Missouri and the Arkansas, will only be stopped at the very borders of the sterile desert, which (to use his words) 'is well calculated to serve as a barrier to prevent too great an extension of population westward.' Some of the American statesmen, however, lose all patience at the mention of a 'barrier.' 'Gentlemen,' (said one of them in the House of Representatives,) 'gentlemen are talking of natural boundaries. Sir, our natural boundary is the Pacific Ocean. The swelling tide of our population must and will roll on until that mighty ocean interposes its waters, and limits our territorial empire. Then, with two oceans washing our shores, the commercial wealth of the world is ours, and imagination can hardly conceive the greatness, grandeur and the power that awaits us! We have no wish to disturb these pleasant day-dreams; but we venture to hint that, whenever our territorial empire' shall have reached the limit of the orator's imagination,' its affairs, whether political or commercial, will not be administered at Washington.

ART. II.-1. Attila, Tragédie en cinq actes. Par Hyppolite Bis. 2. Regulus, Tragédie en cinq actes. Par M. Arnault, fils. 3. Maccabees, Tragédie en cinq actes. Par Alexandre Giroux. 4. Saul, Tragédie en cinq actes; Clytemnestre, Tragédie en cinq actes. Par Alexandre Soumet.

THE

HE most important and the most extensive department of French literature, that on which the nation founds its highest pretensions to celebrity, is the Drama. A late critic indeed, whose dreadful fame as a legislator is more likely to give him immortality than his renown as a man of letters, M. J. Chenier, the juridical murderer of his brother, asserts that tragedy and comedy have been richer in genius, than all the other walks of French poetry taken together. Corneille,' he says 'est un génie sublime; il sût créer; il est grand. Racine eut un talent admi

rable;

rable; il sût embellir; il est parfait. Voltaire eut un esprit supérieur; il étendit les routes de l'art; il est vaste.' After these -classical names come Crebillon, Thomas Corneille, Lafosse, Guymond de la Touche, Lefranc, Lemierre, du Belloi, La Harpe, &c. with others of inferior note.

More than forty years have elapsed, since a translation of Hamlet opened the career of fame to a dramatic poet, who has since risen to a high reputation, in the same walk of tragedy, Ducis. Romeo and Juliet, Lear, Macbeth and Othello were translated by the same author; who produced, as original works, Edipus, and an Arabian tragedy, called Abufar. M. Arnault in the beginning of the revolution brought out his Marius à Minturnes,' which obtained the most brilliant success; and shortly afterwards Lucrece, with Cincinnatus, Oscar, and the most successful of all, les Vénitiens. He was followed by Legouvé, author of La Mort d'Abel, of Epichares et Néron, Etéocle et Polynice, et la Mort d'Henri IV; by Lemercier, author, at a very early age, of le Lévite d'Ephraim, Agamemnon, and other tragedies, which gave a promise of talent that he has not fulfilled. At a more advanced period of the revolution, appeared les Templiers by Raynouard, Abdelasis by M. de Murville, Joseph by M. Baove Lormian, Artaxerce by Delrieu, &c. The most meritorious tragedies of this epocha, says the critic above mentioned, are remarkable for simplicity of action for having banished all useless personages, such as confidants, &c.; and all insipid episodes of unmeaning love, which custom had, in some shape, made indispensable; and which are frequent even in Racine and Crebillon. Tragedy, he continues, took a more philosophical turn since Voltaire; and subjects taken from modern history began to occupy the stage. But modern history, in his opinion, is not so well adapted for dramatic composition, as ancient history; not merely because manners (les mœurs) are now less poetical, but because a graver religion than polytheism is unfit for theatrical representation. Five centuries, therefore, of modern history, during which the wars of priesthood raged, must be excluded; for what does tragedy paint?-des passions:-quelles passions? celles des hommes qui furent à la tête des états. Que -resulte-t-il de ces passions?-des crimes et des malheurs. De là découlent la terreur et la pitié; hors de là, point de tragédie. Elle fut telle chez les Grecs, telle parmi nous, telle en Angleterre! Thus then, by a stroke of the pen, the French critic annihilates about nine-tenths of what we thought our best tragedies; and sends us to our cabinet councils to supply the deficiency.

Corneille, the creator of tragedy, left also a model of the best species of French comedy, Le Menteur; but Molière, who

according

according to M. Chenier has no superior among philosophers, no equal among comic poets, carried every branch of this art to perfection. After him, but at an immense distance, followed the ingenious and brilliant gaiety of Regnard; the finesse originale' of Dufresny; the skill of Destouches; and the vis comica of Lesage, who in Turcaret, his masterpiece, was almost equal to Molière. Then came Piron and Gresset, who supported the comic muse in her usual splendour; but she soon afterwards became melancholy with Lachaussée, and affected with Marivaux; defects which were still further heightened by their successors, and soon became the fashion of the day. Cailhava, in his Menechmes Grecs, was an exception, as was Loujon in the Amoureux de Quinze Ans, and the Couvent. When M. Laya produced l'Ami des Loix, anarchy and popular tyranny were beginning in the republic, and his comedy could not succeed against such opponents; and M. François de Neufchateau, who since has played many parts, drew down upon himself an honourable persecution, for having diffused sound and philosophical ideas in his Pamela. About the same time appeared three comic poets, Fabre d'Eglantine, (who, by the by, was the principal composer of another work, not less comic, the Republican Calendar, which substituted cabbages, parsnips, turnips, and other esculent plants, in the room of the saints which formerly presided over the days of the year,) author of the Philinte de Molière, the Convalescent de Qualité, the Intrigue épistolaire, the Précepteurs; Colin d'Harleville, who wrote l'Inconstant, l'Optimiste, les Chateaux en Espagne, le Vieux Célibataire, les Moeurs du Jour; and Andrieux, author of Anaximandre, les Etourdis, le Souper d'Auteuil, le Trésor, &c. The most prolific poet of the times in this walk of the drama is M. Picard, who produced twenty-five comedies before he was forty years of age; and all of them at least amusing. His best, in verse, are Médiocre et Rampant, le Mari ambitieux, les Amis de Collège; and in prose, le Contrat d'Union, la Petite Ville, les Marionettes; to which may be added les Ricochets, and M. Musard. M. Picard was formerly an actor of merit, in his own plays. To these must be added la belle Fermière, by Madame Candeille, an actress; le Réveil d'Epimenide, and la Jeune Hôtesse, by Flins; le Tartuffe des Mours, by Cheron, copied from the School for Scandal, but much inferior: les Héritiers, les Projets de Mariage; la Jeunesse d'Henri V., le Tyran domestique by Duvalle Tableau and l'Avocat by Roger; Pinto, by Lemercier; l'Assemblée de Famille by Ribouté, &c.

Some other branches equally prolific are the Drame, or serious comedy; and the lyric theatres, as the great opera, and lighter comedy, interspersed with song. To the former belong Sidney

by

by Gresset; Nanine, l'Enfant prodigue, l'Ecossaise by Voltaire, le Père de Famille by Diderot; le Philosophe sans le savoir by Sedaine; Melanie by la Harpe; la Mère Coupable by Beaumarchais, a sequel to his admirable comedies le Barbier de Seville, and Figaro, with many which decidedly belong to the only genre which Voltaire calls bad, the genre ennuyeux.' The list of great operas is very long; and that of the minor productions would be interminable.

The revolution, whose agency upon the minds of Frenchmen has shown itself in such multiplied forms, has maintained the pre-eminency which the theatre formerly claimed over every other species of poetry: and the success of about two hundred dramatic pieces, thirty of which at least were tragedies, could not be paralleled in any other branch of French literature, during the same epocha. But never perhaps was this ascendancy so remarkable as since the restoration of the Bourbons; for in almost every other literary or scientific pursuit, a kind of languor has succeeded to the feverish activity which prevailed in the reigns of anarchy and usurpation, while the stage bas swarmed with successful productions.

The species of literary composition which is the most analogous to the French character, is certainly the dramatic. Natio comoda est.' The French have a peculiar talent for playing any part they please. They can assume any humours, and counterfeit any manners. They never are themselves; every boudoir, every saloon is a theatre where every individual is at once an actor and a spectator; and society is a vast stage where every man and every woman ceases to be natural, unless indeed personation be nature. The province of every Frenchman when produced before the world is to differ from himself, when before himself alone: and his politeness consists in simulation and dissimulation.

The region which a people, so volatile, so little domestic, so much made up for show, so insensible to comfort, so eager for pleasure, so indifferent to happiness, delights in, must be that which shows them counterfeit in action. A public theatre unites all that can fascinate a Frenchman. It offers him something like occupation in the shape of amusement; an appearance of study in a diversified and lively assembly; and takes, from the one, its application, from the other, its solitude. It displays a living active picture of human beings; and gratifies curiosity by letting him into the secrets of their lives, and the recesses of their hearts. It brings with it all the splendour which ambition can covet, and all the illusions which fancy can delight in. It is a magical fairy ground which can be trodden without effort; and equally en

chanting,

chanting, whether we admire the author, the actor, or the audience. It contains, whether in pit, boxes, gallery or stage, the most bewitching seductions of society, united with the richest charms of literature. There, the poet does not apply to every plodding reader, one by one, that cons his verses, and turns over and over, twenty times, each dog-eared leaf; he collects his clients, night after night, into one common hall, and rushes, dauntless, into their presence. He does not wait till the slow approbation of his divided admirers is instilled, drop by drop, into his ears, from all the dark and lazy corners of the metropolis; he receives his recompense in thunders, shouts and clamours, all at once, in the face of patent lamps-perhaps of gas lights—and drinks large torrents of intoxicating plaudits. For persons who derive more satisfaction from such hasty and noisy applause as that bestowed in a theatre, than from the slow approbation conferred upon other branches of literature, the stage, in all its departments, has peculiar attractions; and it is there that literary ambition will always endeavour to find its vent in France.

But ambition alone is not sufficient to ensure success; and either there must have been a considerable fund of genius in that country, to succeed, as it appears by theatrical registers that French poets have succeeded; or else the walk itself must not have been encumbered by any of the ponderous difficulties, which are removable, by such minds only, as nature delights to form at long intervals, and, as it were, to give the world occasional assurance of her power. Some general strictures upon the French stage, and the principles which govern it, will put this in a clearer light; and also help us to ground an opinion upon some of the dramatic pieces which have succeeded, of late, in the metropolis of France.

The French theatre is the purest and most legitimate descendant of the Greek stage, that is now extant. With a timid respect for the general practices of the Athenians, the French have not ventured to enlarge upon them; and the most material difference they have introduced, and which at best is a negative improvement, relating merely to the form, is the abolition of the chorus. But the Greek stage was itself an infant production of the vast dramatic art. It rose at a time when the human soul scarcely knew itself, or had scanned the faculties which it possessed. This may appear a hazardous assertion, when made concerning men who were the children of those to whom Homer had sung. But a moment's reflexion will strip it of its apparent temerity; for surely none will assert that, since the days of Sophocles, the whole state of man and of society has not been progressive; and that, the domain even of our senses, the first of all

the