travaganzas, the chief trouble of which was taken off his hands by his friends Mr. Stephen Tucker, Rouge Croix, and Mr. Dillon Croker; and his "Cyclopædia of Costume." The work last named, which is at once a dictionary and a general history of costume in Europe, is his magnum opus, a book which no other writer could have written. Its value is attested, not only by the verdicts pronounced in the organs of critical opinion, but by its incessant employment by the student, and by the fact that to its pages, in the case of theatrical revivals and other like matters, constant reference is made. A mere chronicle of his contributions to general literature would fill more pages than are at my disposal, and I abstain from the attempt to supply particulars which will be found in all subsequent works of biographical reference. To his French descent, for he came of Huguenot parentage, Planché owed probably his vivacity and the animal spirits that kept him in a green old age a cherished companion of youth. In literary and social circles the spare form, which only in very late years became bowed, and the white venerable head were familiar, and his stories and jokes and memories were welcome in all companies. For him proverbial lore seemed reversed. None found tedious the "old man fallen into the tales of his youth," and none in his presence was disposed to enquire, "What doth gravity out of his bed at midnight?" During the last year or two Mr. Planché withdrew from his familiar haunts, and last autumn he entirely disappeared from society. At the time of his death he was in his eighty-fifth year.

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POINT with which science might well concern itself is the use of small birds in farm and garden. In spite of all that is said by scientists, and in spite of the proof which is afforded that in countries in which, as in France, small birds are all but destroyed, new and mysterious forms of insect plagues develop themselves; farmers and gardeners persist in regarding the ordinary species of birds as enemies. If you live in the country and possess a gardener who takes an interest in his garden, he will treat as sickly sentimentality all you say about small birds, and when you forbid him to use a gun, he will find less evident but not less effective means of destruction. Take him to task, and he will point to trees and vegetables out of which the birds fly in swarms, and will show you the insects untouched upon leaf and twig, while the pod or the shell is ransacked. There are, of course, thousands of us to whom the robbery of a little fruit is wholly inconsiderable, and who find in the song of the bird a payment far more than

commensurate with its depredations. Such of us will doubtless say with Burns:

I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,

And never miss 't.

This, however, is not sufficient if we wish to preserve the few remaining species of small birds which human industry of destruction has left us. What is necessary is to furnish an unanswerable proof that birds do more good than harm. Gardeners are not seldom Scotchmen, and as such are as accessible to the logic of facts as they are inaccessible to the appeals of sentiment.

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MONGST the new material in the lately published volume of

State Papers for 1653-54 (Domestic Series) I find some curious and interesting details of the troubles of those who had served the Commonwealth faithfully, but had great difficulty in procuring even the necessaries of life immediately before and after the assumption of power by Cromwell as Lord Protector. Early in July 1653, the bailiffs of Ipswich, Southwold, and other places, where sick and wounded seamen were quartered, complained bitterly of non-payment for the quarters of the men, so that the inhabitants "begin to weary of them." The Prize Commissioners would do nothing, and General Monk, who was riding near Southwold, being appealed to, was obliged to pledge his personal credit for payment of the money due for looking after the sick in that town, the bailiffs having spent £200 of their own money, and being unable to advance more. From Harwich, Major Bourne wrote on July 6 that, having taken up £400 or £500 on bills of exchange which remained unpaid, he could not carry on affairs without money. On the 31st, he renewed his request, having had to take up £200 from the Assessment Commissioners on his own engagement; and he begged that money might be raised on the sale of prize goods, some of which were perishing. The case of a navy officer, thrown into prison in the Poultry Compter for debts which he was unable to discharge for want of pay, was a pitiable one. He declared that he had only had one bit of victuals in three weeks, and that his friends mocked him by saying, "What have you gotten by serving the State?" Col. Simon Rugeley pleaded that he lost an estate of £800, and his mansion worth £3,500, by the Royalists; and that, though he had been compelled to sell land worth £500 a year (a considerable sum in those days), his discontented family was still "within the jaws of ruin." The State owed him an immense sum, viz., £11,280. 125., for which he had vainly petitioned Parliament, and £4,454. 175. 11d.

3

was due to him for service. This sum, however, he was ordered to be paid out of concealments of Crown lands to be discovered by him. The authorities, in fact, being in terrible pecuniary straits at this juncture, could only suggest one plan for the supply of additional funds, viz., that of countenancing discoveries to be made by private individuals, either of fresh means of raising moneys, on promise of reward, which were not unfrequent, though apparently futile, or of mines, or concealed Crown, bishops', deans and chapters', or delinquents', property; the allowance to the discoverer being one-fourth or one-fifth of what was realised on his discovery, or more if the State was already indebted to him; and Parliament appointed a special committee on the business of discoveries. The Protector himself was so impressed by this condition of general bankruptcy, that one of his first remedial measures was the nomination of a new

committee to inspect the treasuries. He further appointed five

members of his Council as a committee to consider the fittest and quickest way for raising and bringing in money, and the most exact method of managing the public treasury, exhorting them (as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in more recent times, has been exhorted) "to be very careful of this important matter."

N°
No to

parallel to the advance which has been made during recent years in histrionic art is afforded in modern experience. Ten years ago the stage in England was in such evil odour that no form of entertainment was able to lure into a theatre the intellectual portion of the public. With a rapidity that seems scarcely explicable, a complete change of front has been brought about, and theatrical representations are now a favourite form of entertainment with the most cultivated sections of society. Here and there an individual of the hyper-æsthetic school can be found who affects to deride all modern effort that does not run down the grooves with which he is familiar. The reading of the barometer of public feeling is, however, conclusive, and the drama is once more installed in the position it held in the reign of Elizabeth or of Anne. It is just that this should be so, since there has never been a time in the history of art when any European capital, or any centre of intelligence, has exhibited so much admirable acting as may now be seen in London. It might seem invidious to

select from many competent performances by English actors one or two impersonations as worthy of exceptional praise. Dismissing, then, for the present, all consideration of English acting, there is a display of foreign art such as London has not witnessed even during

the two memorable visits of the Comédie Française. While France has sent us Mdlle. Sarah Bernhardt, one of the most spoiled and petted, but also one of the most brilliant, products of what is supposed to be the finest school of acting in existence, America has furnished a rival actress in Madame Modjeska, an artist of altogether exceptional powers and endowments. An entire company, meanwhile, from Rotterdam has appeared in our midst; and, besides disclosing in Mdlle. Beersman, its "leading lady," an artist in no sense inferior to either of those previously named, or indeed to any woman on the stage, has evinced a general excellence that must make the Comédie Française look to its laurels. It is, of course, natural that a centre of commerce and civilisation like London should attract from the four corners of the world whatever is most worthy of cognisance in art, and the fact that it does so is in itself scarcely worth chronicling. What, however, is worthy of note is, in an art which seemed almost lost, so sudden a bound has been made into excellence that, a decade after a period of all but total collapse, the favourable verdict of London is the most coveted of artistic distinctions.

ATM

T a period when the revival of which I have spoken set in, proof of renewed interest in the drama was furnished by the manner in which an audience "damned" a piece of the late John Oxenford, at that time the dramatic critic of the Times. Such an explosion of popular wrath had not for many years been heard. "How they hissed!" exclaimed subsequently the author, who from a private box contemplated the proceedings; "it was like the revival of a lost art." Hissing appears to have been at one period a lost accomplishment, if not a lost art. Horace, in a well-known passage, shows that the practice must have been current in Athens, since he makes the Athenian miser exclaim

Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo

Ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in arcâ

lines which Sir Theodore Martin not too happily translates

Like that rich knave who met the jeers

Of the Athenian mob with this:

"The people hoot at me and hiss,

But I at home applaud myself

When in my chest I view my pelf."

Cicero and Terence both state that unsuccessful pieces were hissed. It is told that Æschines the orator, who was also an actor, was hissed off the stage by the spectators; and it is gathered from a statement

in Athenæus that, in addition to such uncomfortable but harmless demonstrations, stones were sometimes employed as a means of chasing an incompetent performer from the theatre. Shakespeare, in Julius Cæsar, makes Casca, speaking of Cæsar, declare, “If the tag-rag people did not clap him and hiss him according as he pleased and displeased them, as they used to do the players in the theatre, I am no true man." Be this as it may, the practice seems at least to have fallen into disuse. A manuscript of I. N. du Tralage, a friend of Molière, which, after long search, was found in recent years, and has been this summer published by Bibliophile Jacob, speaks of "Aspar," a piece by M. de Fontenelle, the nephew of M. de Corneille, as being the first piece ever hissed in France. "C'est-là," says he, "l'origine des sifflets. Avant ce temps, on bâilloit et on s'ennuyoit quelquefois aux pièces de Pradon et d'autres poètes à la glace." The Pradon of whom he speaks is, of course, the poet whom the Hôtel de Bouillon set up as a rival of Racine.

N admirable piece of satire by Mr. Hollingshead in his recently

amusing evidence as to the truth of the views concerning the revival of a taste for things dramatic which I have put forth. Describing, at the commencement of his "Tale of Two Chimneys," the amenities in practice at Edendale, the seat of his action, a town which stands in two central and manufacturing counties of Kickingshire and Gougingshire, Mr. Hollingshead declares: "Its population was rough and its amusements were coarse and revolting. The latter consisted of dog. fighting, cock-fighting, and occasional bull-baiting six days a week, and prize-fighting on the top of the moors on Sunday. Fighting in those parts meant kicking, biting, and gouging, as well as pummelling, and few working men in Edendale were without physical traces of these encounters. The bishop of the diocese, the clergy of the district, and the parochial magnates of the town, all knew of these brutalities, but, instead of stopping them, they formed a society for the Reform of the Stage and the Elevation of the Drama in London."

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FEW of Mr. Hollingshead's "explanations" deserve a place in a new Philosophical Dictionary. Among such are "Dry wine-physic in a convivial bottle"; "History-one side of a question"; "Education—a little rowing and less Greek"; "Dyspepsiathe punishment of prosperity;" "Workhouse-a terminus for thirdclass passengers." The whole series of definitions is full of humour.