How

he has now a pretty good stock of scenes. He has also been phet, administering an oath to the people; and then an making an effort to give as much an air of novelty as pos- Egyptian warrior, launching his arrows against the foe— sible to his entertainments, which is a great step gained, all figures that carry you back through the mist of ages, and which, if he perseveres, he will find to redound ma- and place you at the foot of the Pyramids, in the mighty terially to his advantage. The London newspaper called Thebes, or far up the lone banks of the Nile. But, again, the Atlas, in speaking of the Edinburgh Theatre, is the curtain is withdrawn, and behold! we are in another pleased to remark—“ The critics (in that city) call for land;-the fables and the traditions of Greece are restored novelty, probably because they are not acquainted with to us with more thrilling power than when we first read the stuff of which the new pieces are in general made. Sophocles, or wondered over Eschylus. Lo! there is ProMr Murray is commendably cautious in transplanting metheus on the moveless rock, with the vulture preying on the productions which have been forced down the throats his vitals! mark the agony depicted on every muscle of his of the London play-goers." This appears to be sensible, frame, the rigidity of the marble struggling with the but it is not so, because the writer takes it for granted nervous thrill of life! Then, again, Hercules, with his that nothing can be meant by "novelty" but the ephe- club, and his combat with the Nemean Lion! a task even meral stuff written within the month for the Cockneys. for Hercules! But he conquers! that form of indomitable Now, with the exception of about a dozen or eighteen strength could not but conquer! See! he has lifted the pieces, which are Mr Murray's stock-list for this and dying monster on his shoulders, and with a mighty heave every other season, almost any standard play or farce has flung him over the brow of the precipice into the would be a "novelty" here. Thus, "Every one has his ocean! Ha! the statue changes, as if it were not made Fault," performed on Thursday night, was a novelty, and of marble! What have we now? an ancient Lacedemowe are to have two novelties to-night, in the shape of nian, or an athletic Latian, throwing the discus. "A Bold Stroke for a Husband," and "The Sister of much of health, and strength, and happiness, and keen Charity." Ducrow's engagement, too, and classical re- interest in his game, does that exquisite attitude display! presentations, have been a novelty. Let the manager look Another change! The dying gladiator. By heaven! to his receipts when he brings out a respectable novelty, too painful! The big tears are trickling down the cheeks and he will soon see the value of attending to our advice. of the stricken warrior; he has fought many a noble We think he is anxious to do his best, and we therefore fight with many a brave antagonist, and now he dies to wag our tail in token of approbation. Should we disco- swell a Roman triumph. He is a stranger in the land, ver symptoms of lassitude, we shall give a bark and a but "dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos." Ay! that snap at his heels to keep him going on the right road. memory has nerved him yet! he is up at bay in the Ducrow's representations of statues and pictures of the arena! there is danger and death in his brawny arm! Grecian and Italian schools, are the most wonderful and | In vain! in vain! the mists of the grave are in his eyes; delightful thing of the sort we ever saw. We need not he reels, he falls, he is no more!All this is sculpture say of the sort, for they are altogether unique; no man-white unbending marble; but we are to have painting ever attempted any thing like them before, and no man will ever be able to do any thing half so good again. We have had actors and actresses, who acquired celebrity by their talents in melodrama and pantomime, but the very best of them were uncouth, unenlightened, and vulgar, compared with Ducrow,-the man who throws his soul and his body into the mysterious and far-off productions of ancient Egyptian art, into the exquisite forms of Grecian sculpture, and into the most glowing and warmly-coloured pictures of the great masters of Italian painting! The entertainment invented and produced by him, called "Raphael's Dream, or the Mummy and Study of Living Pictures," is full of the most extraordinary, poetical, and magical effects that the fancy of painter or poet could conceive. We used, in common with all the world, to think Ducrow an equestrian miracle-a Centaur worthy of an apotheosis; but his feats on horseback sink into insignificance—it is a bold word to say, but it is true-when contrasted with the splendour of his conceptions, and the perfection of his execution in his vision-well tell us that this is Dr Andrew Thomson, or the `ary representation of the chefs-d'œuvres of ancient and modern art. The piece introduces us to Raphael's studio, and the statues are seen by the painter as in a dream, whilst the pictures are supposed to start into life on the canvass as he paints them. A curtain which can be drawn at pleasure, gives time for the necessary changes of costume. Very beautiful lyric music, by Calcott, accompanies the representations; and so far all is good, and evidently the design of Ducrow himself. The only pity is, that the dialogue and descriptive poetry for Raphael, and one or two attendants, has been written by a blockhead of the name of C. A. Somerset, and is altogether unworthy of the high character of the entertain-feasting, regardless of his agony. They shall die a fear

too, with its rich hues and aerial effects. Behold! Mercury about to take his flight from the silver fountain, in whose dews he has bathed his wings a being made for the air, for his foot seems to disdain the earth! See! he mounts he flies he is away among the sunny clouds. Atlas succeeds, with the earth upon his shoulders; then Apollo, striking his lyre in the temple of the Muses; and thenour blessings on thee, Ducrow! there is our old favourite Pan,

"There he sits with sunburnt face,
And his merry wicked eye,
And his antique wild grimace,

That all painters' art defy!"

Hark to the jocund music, as the laughing satyr—the silvan king-dances about over the ivy-mantled rocks, and under the forest boughs, whose darkling shadows sport fantastically with the summer light. You may as

Khan of Tartary, as the gentleman who rides at the
amphitheatre in Nicolson Street. Don't we know old
Pan, ever since we read Moschus or Virgil? Will you
tell us that is not the identical merry demigod who was
falsely declared to be dead in the reign of Tiberius, by a
great voice heard near the Echinades, in the Ionian sea?
You may tell us so, if you please; but we say to you, as
Canning said to Brougham" It is false !" But he has
passed away into the depths of the wood, and lo! we are
again in another land, and with another people; we are
in the Temple with Samson, the strongest of the sons
of men. But his enemies ha
have put out his eyes, and are

ful death; revenge is burning in his heart; he seizes the mighty pillars of that gorgeous temple, and they shake beneath his strength, like trees rocking in the tempest. Ha! the foundations and the roof give way! Down tumbles the edifice with an earthquake crash, and the strong man and his foes are buried in the ruin-lost in the desolation !-Where are we? Is this the TheatreRoyal in Shakspeare Square? Is it only one man who

has been doing all this? We shall not forget him till the day of our death.

For nowhere is the earth so green,—the sky so bright and blue,

As where, upon a mother's neck, we wept our first adieu.

Has change pass'd o'er the holy spot, where dropp'd our
parting tear;
Or have the hearts forgotten us, whose friendship erst
was dear?

Some o'er the earth are scatter'd now,-yea, Death has
been abroad,

And lips that once glow'd warm, lie blanch'd beneath the freezing sod.

O'er bosoms that beat gladly to a measure with our own, The midnight tempest waileth with a harsh and sullen tone;

Miss Jarman takes her benefit this evening. We have always spoken highly of this young lady, but we have sometimes felt that we have scarcely done her justice from never having devoted an article exclusively to an examination of the peculiar beauties of her style, and an analysis of some of her happiest performances. We shall probably take an opportunity of doing this soon after she❘ returns to us, which will be in less than three weeks. Meanwhile it is needless to remind our readers that we do not know a single piece of merit which could have been rendered very interesting, this season, without Miss Jarman, and that with her every piece, however inferior, acquired an importance which did not intrinsically belong to it. One great reason of this is, that in addition to the personal and mental qualifications she possesses, she never performs any thing without putting her heart into it, and giving herself up to all the feelings of her author, whose And fancy leaves the scenes of home to sigh amidst its ideas she embodies with a nice and quick perception. She is to be assisted this evening by her sister, Miss Louisa Jarman, who is to perform Miss Noel's part in ""Twas I," and sing a song or two. We have heard that Miss L. Jarman possesses histrionic abilities of no mean kind; and we know that she has a sweet and flexible voice, which, as was to be expected from a pupil of Crevelli, she manages with great taste.

Old Cerberus.

O'er hands we grasp'd, o'er lips we pledged, the silent nettle waves,

graves.

Now by the brae where sings the Tweed, the beach where shouts the sea,

The wanderers there at gloamin' hour are strangers all
to me;

Or could I in a lonely few remember'd features trace,
I should but read how care had chased young gladness
from their face.

CHIT-CHAT FROM GLASGOW.-There is no party-work here yet, in any sense of the term; for every body, even the high tories, and the less respectable lukewarm whigs, and the coquetting liberals, are for REFORM-a word which," one little month" ago, would have frighted all the oil in their composition " from its propriety;" and, as for party-work in a non-political sense, no one has time here at present to think of quadrilles and jellies, much less give them. An elegant party was, however, got up on Monday evening by Lady Sandford, to patronise the benefit of your accomplished and gentlemanly Jones. who had a most fashionable, as well as a delighted auditory. He played Vapid and Lord Ogleby-the former, even to the most minute part of costume, was the perfect representation of the good-hearted, flighty, clever author or playwright. But the latter was a finished cabinet picture, elaborated with the nicest taste in all its details, but still pervaded with a fine, general, and broad conception of the character as a whole, which, we humbly think, outdid Farren's dotty

Of which Mr Wordsworth has expressed the highest opinion. study of it, to use an easel phrase. Jones, if less exuberant now, is

Christmas Day.

"Here's Monsieur Tonson come again!"

THE writing that speaks to the feelings and the affections, is the writing for CHRISTMAS DAY. It is the day when they who are at home gather their friends around them, and they who are absent live over again in memory their old associations, and the dear companionship of the past. We are all at this moment more or less under these heart-awakening influences. The spirit of sympathy is abroad over the whole of merry England, and in every ancient city and remote village of our own loved Scotland. It is a delightful thing to know that everybody is thinking as we are,-that one pulse is beating in the bosom of a nation,-that one large family inhabits this beautiful island,-alike in faith, in mind, and in moral sentiment.

all the Saturdays in our year, there is none on which we come before our readers with so much confidence and joy as on this. We know that they will look to our pages, expecting to find in them some transcript of their own emotions; and though we were to reflect but dimly a few of the images passing through their own soul, though we were to touch but one chord that vibrated to the heart, they would love us better; for they would feel, that at a time hallowed by a thousand reminiscences, our spirits were in unison with theirs. But we shall do more than merely call forth one note of music, and then fall back into silence. We have waved our wand, and lo! a bright and varied congregation of flowers has sprung up before us! each with its own hue and fragrance, but each calculated to take the sense with pleasure.

It is itself a consolation-a sufficient recompense for all the toils and cares of authorship, to know that this our CHRISTMAS NUMBER,-that these very words which we are now writing, will lie on the breakfast-table of hundreds, ay thousands, of the beautiful and the virtuous of the land, and that the smile will play upon the lip, or the tear glisten in the eye, as the different masters of the melody, who fill up our literary concert, touch a gayer or a sadder key. This to-day is the height of our ambition -to be acknowledged as having done some service in the cause of that old religion of the heart, which has descended to us from the grey fathers of an earlier day, and which many of our friends, blessed with the blessing of genius, have assisted us in doing reverence to.

To the "fair women and brave men" who will peruse our pages, we dedicate them with all earnestness. For our individual reward, we ask only that they will believe us ever anxious to maintain all the national, time-honoured, and touching customs, observances, and ceremonials of "rocky Caledon." They serve to link us more closely together, and they give to intellectual exertion, and the honourable ambition of the literary arena, that redeeming softness of tone, without which every species of belles lettres is bare, and cold, and vulgar, and uninspired. We have at times skirmished hotly enough,-with all the determined positiveness of self-complacent critics, who

Two Sheets, Price (with Portrait) 18.

fight in their own closets, with no one to auswer them; and we have dealt out our dogmas, now and then perbaus rather pragmatically. But we deny that we ever gave publicity to a sentiment which we were not sincere in entertaining; and that we have secured for ourselves a fair proportion of elbow-room amidst the crowds that are jostling each other on the same road, is sufficiently attested by the favour in which this our JouRNAL stands, and the position of more than ordinary respectability which it has been enabled to maintain. We hesitate not to say, that it has taken a hold of the people of Scotland-a bold which could not now be shaken by the jealousy or the enmity of any other periodical whatever.

We are everanxious to assert that this success is mainly to be attributed to the friends who have rallied round us, and who have stuck by us from first to last. The Literary Journal is read, we may safely say, by all the literary population of Scotland; and by a great number of the most respectable part of that population, articles have been contributed to it. Men of established eminence have stood by us, and men of talent, before unknown, have gathered around our banner. From England, too, and from green Erin, the hand of fellowship has been extended to us. We mention these things, not boastfully, but with gratitude. We must not particularize

our contributors, lest we be thought tedious; but we beg of them to believe, that we love to reflect on each in rotation, and that they all have our thanks and good wishes.

Enough of our own concerns. Readers! May your Christmas be merry, and your New-Year's-Day happy! May all those you love be near you! May your memories of the past, though sad, be sweet; and may your hopes of the future be bright as your blazing fire, and cheerful as your smiling board! Catch the hour as it flies, and make it yours for ever, by rendering it worthy of being locked up in the store-house of remembrance. How few such hours there are in life's long catalogue of days and weeks! If a Christmas season does not present them to you, we know not when you are to seek for them. Why should not a holyday be made a holyday indeed?-a day when we forget our animosities, and petty cares, and unworthy jealousies,-a day when the scorpions of the bosom are at rest, and loves, and friend. ships, and good deeds, and holy thoughts, and lofty aspirations, come in their place? We may not-we cannot spend the present Christmas as we spent the last, and we assuredly shall not spend the next as we do this,-for change is the doom of mortality. Yet, though there are many roads through life, we are all tending to the same goal, we must all meet at last, and the more joyous will that meeting be the more we have done to multiply the number of our friends as we passed along-the more we have studied the amenities and the social delights of human intercourse. Listen to the words of one now dead :—

"Some I remember, and will ne'er forget,
My early friends, friends of my chequer'd day;
Friends in my mirth, friends in my misery too;
Friends given by God in mercy and in love,