If we what country-girl ever was there that, some time or other, did not? A Fairy Tale is what the world would be, if all had their wishes or their deserts -if our power and our passions were equal. We cannot be at a loss for a thousand bad translations of the story of Cinderella, if we look around us in the boxes. But the real imitation is on the stage. could always see the flowers open in the spring, or hear soft music, or see Cinderella dance, or dream we did, life itself would be a Fairy Tale. Miss Eliza Dennett is much improved, combines a little cluster of graces in her own person, and "in herself sums all delight." She has learned to add precision to ease, and firmness of movement to the utmost harmony of form. In the scene where Cinderella is introduced at court, and is led out to dance by the enamoured prince, she bows as if she had a diadem on her head, moves as if she had just burst from fetters of roses, folds her arms as the vine curls its tendrils, and hurries from the scene, after the loss of her faithless slipper, as if she had to run a race with the winds. We had only one thing to desire, that she and her lover, instead of the new ballet, had danced the Minuet de la cour with the Gavot, as they do in the Dansomanie; that we might have called the Minuet de la cour divine, and the Gavot heavenly, and exclaimed once more, with more than artificial rapture We "Such were the joys of our dancing days!" do not despair of seeing this alteration adopted, as our recommendations are sometimes attended to: and in that case we shall feel- -But the mechanical anticipation of an involuntary burst of sentiment in supposed circumstances is in vile taste. VULGARITY IN CRITICISM; JANUS WEATHER COCK; KNOWLES' VIRGI- THE Drama is a subject of which we could give a very entertaining account once a month, if there were no plays acted all the year. But, as some artists have said of nature, "the Theatres put us out." The only article we have written on this matter that has given us entire satisfaction (we answer, be it observed, for nobody but ourselves)— is the one we wrote in the winter, when, in consequence of two great public calamities, the theatres were closed for some weeks together. We seized that lucky opportunity to take a peep into the rareeshow of our own fancies,—the moods of our own minds, and a very pretty little kaleidoscope it made! -Our readers, we are sure, remember the description. Our head is stuffed full of recollections on the subject of the Drama, some of older, some of later date, but all treasured up with more or less * 1820. fondness; we, in short, love it, and what we love we can talk of for ever. We love it as well as Mr. Weathercock loves maccaroni. But we love it best at a distance. We like to be a hundred miles off from the acted drama in London, and to get a friend (who may be depended on) to give an account of it for us, which we read, at our leisure, under the shade of a clump of lime-trees. What is the use indeed of coming to town, merely to discover that Mr. Elliston is "fat, fair, and forty," and becomes silk hose worse than fleecy hosiery? Odious, in satin! "Twould a saint provoke ! We had rather stay where we are, and think how young, how genteel, how sprightly Lewis was at seventy! Garrick, too, was fat and pursy; but who ever perceived it through that airy soul of his, that life of mind, that bore him up "like little wanton boys that swim on bladders?" Or why should we take coach to prevent our friend and coadjutor of the whimsical name,-that Bucolical Juvenile,* the Sir Piercie Shafton of the London Magazine,-from carrying off his Mysie Happer, the bewitching Miss Brunton, from our critical advances, and forestalling our praises of the grey twinkling eyes, the large white teeth, and querulous catechising voice of this * Janus Weathercock (Mr. Wainwright.) accomplished little rustic? We shall leave him in full possession of his prize;-she shall be his Protection, and he shall be her Audacity: but we cannot consent to give up to his agreeable importunity our right and interest in the Miss Dennetts—the fair, the "inexpressive three." We will not erase their names from our pages, but twine them in cypher, as they are "written in our heart's tables,"-though they do not dance at the Opera! We have not this gentleman's exquisitely happy knack in the geography of criticism: nor do we carry a map of London in our pockets to make out an exact scale of merit and virtù; nor judge of black eyes, a white cheek, and so forth, by the bills of mortality. We do not hate pathos because it is found in the Borough; our taste (such as it is) can cross the water, by any of the four bridges, in search of spirit and nature; we can make up our minds to beauty even at Whitechapel! Our friend and correspondent, Janus, grieves and wonders at this. He asks us why we express his sentiments instead of our own? answer, "It is because we are not you." away from vulgar places and people, as from the plague; swoons at the mention of the Royal Coburg; mimics his barber's pronunciation of Ashley's; and is afraid to trust himself at Sadler's Wells, lest his clothes should be covered with gingerbread, and do not and we He runs |