trifling expense. Alas! for Grub Street! It ought to be called Ichabod Street, for the glory of its houses hath departed. I made a pilgrimage the other day to that ancient and honoured shrine of the muses, and was sorry to discover the decay that has crept upon that remote neighbourhood. Literary improvement is, as every body knows, upon the march, and seems to have quite waddled away from this once celebrated vicinity. Finsbury Square remains, but Lackington's is shut up, and I looked in vain to the garrets of the ancient wooden houses in Grub Street, to discover some trace of the distinguished occupation with which tradition tells us they were honoured. God be with the days, and may they never return, in which poverty dwelt with authorship in that exalted region of the house, which a facetious Hibernian friend of mine calls "the first floor down the chimney." If, how ever, authors have left Grub Street, their old companion, Poverty, has remained behind, trying her various shifts to eke out an existence. Here one may see a board spread with the basest remnants of decayed housekeeping-mended crockery ware, old candlesticks, and rusty keys. There, sand and matches, and cabbages of last week's growth, seek purchasers. On this side, the fancier of second-hand gloves may choose a bargain. On the other, an assortment of second-foot shoes, put forth their claims to notice. Here, a red board, covered with yellow letters, of which no two are of a size, informs the public that "comfortable shaving may be had within on reasonable terms;" while another shop, with bolder flourish, announces "Tea at threepence the pint, and coffee at twopence." Such is the Grub Street of the present day. The publishing season is pretty well over, and Mr Colburn has ceased for the present to bring out his three new novels a-week. I hope this absurd system of bringing out every sort of trash that presents itself in the shape of a sketch of fashionable life, will cease to pay, for this is the only consideration which will put a stop to it. It is degrading to literature, and injurious to the class of persons among whom these books circulate. The people who support these things, by taking them from the circulating libraries, are well enough inclined, God knows, to a silly affectation of habits and manners, which do not belong to them, without this new-invented fashion for getting their heads filled with the babble of waiting maids. I suppose novel-writing, now, is almost as profitable as the cast-off gowns in a great house. Poets sing of the "golden age," the "silver age," and the "iron age," but were they to celebrate this, I think they should call it the flimsy age, for every thing seems made to suit a temporary purpose, without any regard to the sound and substantial. From printed calico to printed books, from Kean's acting to Nash's architecture, all is made to catch the eye, to gratify the appetite for novelty, without regard to real and substantial excellence. At a time when all sorts of people venture to become authors, it is not much to be wondered at, that a bookseller should have ventured upon an effort so nearly connected with his trade, as that of writing a book. John Ebers has put forth a tome respecting the opera, and a very nice book it is for a summer's day. Handsome covers, "couleur de rose," lithographed prints of all the pretty women that have sung at the King's Theatre for some years, and a deal of amusing chitchat detailed in a style of great frankness and good-humour. Mr Ebers, it appears, went on, sea-. son after season, taking infinite pains to please the public, and regularly losing several thousand pounds a-year. Why he continued to do so it is not very easy to conjecture, unless there be something very pleasing in the office of manager, which he most stoutly avers there is not, but, on the contrary, that an opera manager is of all men the most miserable. I am inclined to think, however, that there must be some fascination about it, of which, notwithstanding all his candour, Mr Ebers has not informed us, else why should so many have undertaken it with the experience of their predecessors before their eyes; and why is it, that though all who have undertaken it have lost their money, yet still the numerous competitors for the lease raises the rent to an enormous sum? Even Mr Ebers himself did not give it up, until it gave up him. But all this is beside my present purpose, which is to speak of the book, which, along with its operatic history, interesting to all opera-going people,-and who does not go to the opera?-abounds in certain touches of philosophy, and criticism, which are quite gems in a book with covers "couleur de rose." Only listen how prettily he speaks of the trashy things which they dress up into the shape of Italian operas, and call them by the Italianized names of Shakspeare's plays. "Perhaps, however, we have no reason to complain, that as Shakspeare borrowed the rubbish of Italian stories as the groundwork of his beautiful structures, the original owners should reclaim their property, and decompose the splendid materiel into its original dross." Bating the little bit of confusion of metaphors, this is ingenious enough. The following description of Pasta's performance is not to be sneezed at. He could not praise her more than she deserves. 'Nothing indeed can be more free from trick or affectation than Pasta's performance; there is no perceptible effort to resemble the character she plays. On the contrary, she enters the stage the character itself; transposed into the situation, excited by the hopes and the fears, breathing the life and the spirit of the being she represents." The following description of Bro card's first appearance is true, and curious on account of the managerial climax which crowns the whole. "Her dancing was exquisitely graceful, her pantomime exceedingly good, her attitudes perfectly classical, her figure faultless-her salary was eleven hundred and fifty pounds!" By and by, Mr Ebers becomes absolutely poetical on our hands, when describing a scene in "Teobaldo and Isolina," and Velluti's performance therein. Here is a touch of the sublime and beautiful for you, in theatrical description. Listen to this, ye newspaper critics, and hide your diminished heads. "While this scene is displayed, which seems to paint the silence of night even to the eye, the full orchestral accompaniment is hushed-the flute and the harp alone are heard to prelude the mournful air that breaks from the lips of the melancholy warrior. If ever the attention of an audience was enchained, enthralled, bound as it were by a spell, it was when Velluti sang the Notte Tremenda. The stillness of the scene was communicated to the house, not a word was spoken, not a breath heard: -was this wonderful? when not to the eye and ear only, but to the heart and soul, every thing conveyed but one impression, that of pathos, so deep, so touching, so true, that it wanted but one added shade to become too deep for enjoyment." Well done, Mr Ebers. The accounts of the Theatre and the salaries of the performers are published; and I have no doubt the sums paid, particularly to the first-rate dancers, will astonish the provincials:L.1500 salary for a season of seven months, and about half an hour's exhibition on the stage twice, or at most three times, in each week during that time, does seem rather enormous for a single danseur or danseuse. Some of the circumstances related respecting the female singers are very creditable to their industry and perseverance. Pasta was here in 1817, and was quite unnoticed in the company of Camporese and Ronzi de Begnis; her salary then was but L.400. She left this, determined to improve by study; and after several years of the severest application to her studies in Italy, she came forth a perfect mistress of her profession. No other living actress comes near Pasta in serious opera, and she is now eagerly engaged at five and twenty hundred pounds for the season, and a benefit. So long ago as 1826, Mr Ebers was very anxious to engage Mlle. Sontag, who was then in Paris, and made her the most tempting offers if she would.come over. Copies of two of her letters are given; and as one expects-I know not how-to find something charming in every thing connected with Sontag, I was much pleased to find in these letters just that union of frankness and politeness which one would expect in Sontag's correspondence, even in a matter of mere business. After telling Mr Ebers, that she was much flattered by his proposal, but that her engagements would not allow of her visiting London earlier than the last two months of the season of 1828, she concludes, "vous voyez cette epoque est encore bien eloignée, et je ne puis que regretter de n'être pas à même à présent de vous temoigner verbalement les assurances de la haute considération avec laquelle j'ai l'honneur d'être, "Monsieur, "Votre très humble servante, "HENRIETTE SONTAG, Cantatrice." The next letter is from Berlin, respecting the impossibility of her coming to London earlier than she had before stated; and she concludes with a pretty compliment to our far-famed metropolis:-"Si à cette epoque vous agréez que je vienne chanter une certaine quantité des rôles à Londres, je serais ravie d'avoir le plaisir de faire votre connoissance, et de voir la plus belle ville de l'Europe." This young lady's farewell appearance in London was very flattering to her-late as it was in the season, I never saw the opera more crowded. Tancredi was performed, and Pasta, as usual, played the hero of the story. Both performers appeared to exert themselves to the utmost, particularly Pasta; and it is impossible to conceive any thing more perfect in musical science, or more delightful in natural power of voice, than the concerted pieces between these two famous cantatrici. In the solos, Pasta had decidedly the advantage. The airs she has to sing, are more delightful than those allotted to the part of Amenaide; and she is so perfectly at home in the music and the acting of the character, that nothing was left to be wished for. The applause that followed the "Tu che accendi questo core," was quite enthusiastic. But there were some scenes from a German opera perform ed afterwards, in which Sontag played very charmingly, and carried off all hearts. She has a very sweet speaking voice, and seemed to take pleasure in reciting her own German tongue, which I must confess to me sounded a little uncouth, after those "Syllables that breathe of the sweet south," to which the previous opera had attuned my ears; but her acting was very captivating. She represented the daughter of an old man; and the filial and affectionate tenderness with which she appeared to address him, the daughter-like simplicity with which she threw her arms about his neck, and resting her cheek on his shoulder, looked up in his face, and exclaimed, "Mein vater!" made one at once esteem the actress, and admire the acting. At the end of this performance, the audience testified their approbation after the foreign fashion, by throwing of flowers and roses, and so forth, on the stage. No doubt this sort of thing appears foolish enough to downright English people; but it is quite appropriate to this theatre, which is altogether a luxury borrowed from foreign habits. They say that the small English theatres in the Haymarket and the Strand, are getting on very well. I don't happen to know any one who goes to them; but I am sure that with such excellent actors as Farren, and Cooper, and Reeve, and some others, they must play comedies at the Haymarket excellently well; and the size of the house will allow of their performance being properly seen and appreciated, by those who can sit in a small house in the dog-days. It is a great pity that we have not a good English theatre of moderate size open in the winter. I made a silent vow when I began, to write you a long letter; but really London is so stupid a place just now, that one catches the infection, and the pen labours heavily along; besides, if it were not so, what have I to tell you? Do you care to know, that wheat is getting up a little, and the funds down a little, in consequence of the showery weather; that a man is busy every day sitting in a cradle that runs upon little wheels, and is suspended by ropes, mending holes in the outside of the dome of St Paul's; that the people at Vauxhall pray for fine evenings, and that their prayers are not heard; that the annual ministerial fish dinner passed off with great eclat; and that the French child, with the marks on its eyes, which the owners of the show say, compose the words "Napoleon, Empereur," is to be exhibited in a few days; that dry weather and sunshine would be great and seasonable blessings; and that I shall leave town tomorrow? Yours, X. THE BACHELOR'S BEAT. No. IV. A Day at the Sea-side. A BACHELOR, as is well known, and proverbially asserted, is the creature of habit; and habit, when originating spontaneously, and governed by no motive save inclination, is, I presume, only another name for instinct. Be this as it may, the salmon of our own waters, or the land crabs of tropical regions, are not more periodically and unerringly impelled towards the sea than myself; at that precise period of the season when the heat of vernal mid-day begins to render the thought of a fresh breeze delightful, and when the light curl on the distant waves makes them smile in the sunbeam, like the fast-fleeting, but as quickly renovated, hopes of youth. Is there, can there be, to the mind or eye of man, a more glorious prospect than is yonder unfolded-when the gaze first rests on that shoreless expanse of proudly girdling oceanupon which the beacon islet, with its seemingly baseless tower, shows like a pillar of some erl-king's submarine palace and the homeward bark, deepfreighted with the weal and woe of thousands, like a flitting carrier-dove upon the far horizon! "Ocean exhibits, fathomless and broad, Much of the power and majesty of God!" says Cowper, and never did poet's remark find a more universal echo in the human breast. Yet who has not experienced in the end, a sense of monotony and humiliation in that very illimitable breadth and depth, which mock alike the puny vision, the scanty knowledge, and bounded faculties of man? The Creator alone, methinks, is qualified to contemplate, without satiety, that ocean, whose abys ses His glance can fathom, and whose waters (to borrow the only adequate language on the subject) have been "meted in the hollow of His hand!" To man it must ever be a relief, when the fantastic tracery of clouds, that strive, though in vain, to bound and define the pathless wilderness of waters, give place, as I now see them do before me, to the realities of a smi ling and peopled shore-where Plenty pours her treasures into the lap of Commerce-where waving woods exhibit the promise at least of future navies, and where a line of friendly havens speaks to the sea-worn mariner of safety, welcome, and repose! Methinks those mighty waves, whose giant strength refuses not to heave beneath the moon's mysterious influence, once more have yielded to the soft attraction of the smiling banks which form this noble estuary-so gently do they kiss the fertile shores, and seem to leave their storms and billows beyond the lofty portal of yon rival capes. 'Tis lovely to mark, as the swift lights and shadows follow the sportive track of summer clouds over the face of heaven,-the distant promontory, with its ruined castle,-the graceful bay, with its oddly clustering fishing village,-the stern basaltic rock, its inaccessible sides alive with countless sea-birds, alike emerging from the shortlived gloom, into the quickly alternating sunshine-while the thousand barks, shooting athwart the watery mirror, seem but a larger species of the happy living things, whose wheeling pinions, and unearthly tones, lend animation to the sounding shore. I turn me, and the prospect grows lovelier still! The lessening Frith has become a noble river, now stretching sister promontories, in friendly rivalship, across its narrowing channel, now seeming to resume its pristine character by swelling into deep bays, and mimic lakes,-till, as if finally reclaimed from all its truant wanderings, by flowery chains on either side, it bathes in tranquil majesty the proud feet of Scotland's capital, and hides its diminished, though still beautiful head, beneath a gorgeous canopy of western clouds, behind the antique towers of princely Striveling! This is, in truth, a glorious, though, to me, a daily prospect and one for which I fail not to pine with unconscious yearnings, whenever rare absence excludes me from its hourly enjoyment. There is something in 66 even the distant prospect of the sea, for which neither stately groves nor princely palaces can compensate. The mountaineer, transported to rich plains, does not more emphatically miss the hill that lifts him to the storm," than the recluse dweller within view of the sea, does the glancing billow and flitting sail, that diversify his still-life existence with ever-refreshing vicissitudes. But, as I remarked,-ere the charms of my native river extorted this unwonted digression-it is not, at this season, the distant panorama that will content me-and an instinct I never dream of questioning, turns my horse's head towards the beach the first spring day, when the unchecked melody of birds, and the untired industry of bees, and a certain balmy softness in the air, against which (like the downy shield impervious to the keenest weapon) winter's icy arrows must surely fall powerless-seem to warrant a belief that spring has fairly set in. The first indication of the approaching goal of my marine pilgrimage, is the sudden replacement, at a certain latitude, of the grateful fragrance of the newly upturned earth, by the still more invigorating perfume of the sparkling waves-that delightful smell of the sea, gladdening, no less than its sight, to the heart of a son of Britain. My very pony snuffs it with complacency, and quickens his pace under its influence-a few minutes suffice to clear the smooth expanse of intervening downs, and (less to his advantage than his rider's) they are exchanged for the rude bulwark of rocks, on which is inscribed in characters of adamant the decree-" Here shall thy proud waves be stayed." In pity to Dumple, and indulgence to myself, I dismount, and, leaving him to the novel luxury of the short salt herbage peeping from among the crags, I ramble in happy forgetfulness along the sunny sands, now lifting an eye of shuddering wonder to the beetling cliffs and overhanging caves, (to whose perilous shelter, fear of death could alone have reconciled mortality) -now stooping with almost infantine delight, to pick up each shining pebble at my feet, as if I thought its glittering texture a radiant specimen of that elder world, whose triturated relics form my noiseless path. Seated upon a jutting rock, I watch the restless sea-birds, skimming like giant swallows upon the watery plain, and ever and anon the dark unwieldy porpoises heaving, like inky bubbles, on the glassy wave. I love to gaze upon the slow receding of the ebbing tide, and muse upon its counterpart in human fortunes,-when, their fickle stream withdrawn, many a gay rainbow-tinted mollusca lies stranded in unseemly reptile-reality on the desert shore. But amid all the magnificence of nature, amid even the animated sparkling charms of ocean, man will after all be not only, according to the didactic poet, "the proper study," but the irresistible magnet, of his fellowmortals. I no sooner, while pursuing the ramble to which I have been al luding, along the beach, caught, from a projecting rock, a peep of the snug little harbour of X, thronged with boats, and exhibiting an unusual appearance of bustle and activity,-than I felt impelled, by sudden interest in the scene, to recollect the propriety, nay, even necessity, of a long-intend ed visit to its worthy pastor, Mr Menteith, of whom I gave a sketch some months ago, which, if the reader has forgotten, the fault must have been in the execution, not the subject. I found, on calling at the Manselying between me and the village, in a little sheltered cove, which nothing ruder than the "sweet south" could ever visit-that the worthy minister was from home; nor did a garrulous old nurse (the only member of the family unwillingly remaining on the premises) fail to make me acquainted with the reason. "The town's a' asteer the day, sir,' said she;" and ye canna wonder at it. There's four-and-twenty as gude men and lads to sail this tide for Greenland, as ever tried the cauld uncanny trade; and there's sair hearts enow nae doubt, amang wives and mothers; and the minister, ye're sure, couldna bide awa' at sic a time, when the women 'll need comfort, and the lads counsel. Yestreen was our Greenland preachings, as we ca' them, and weel I wot,if an honest man's prayers can bring a blessing, they werena spared for them that go down to the sea in ships.' But will ye step in, sir, and rest ye?" added my garrulous informant, " or shall I send the herd laddie down |