and fashionable audience, who confirm his assertion with bravos and clapping of hands,) "I falter-faint-my breath begins to flee." (Wind instruments to suggest his deficiency of breath, and express his want of expression.) With two stilettos in my heart I lie." (Adagio movement in F and G sharp. Florello puts his hand to his heart, and draws two sighs, but not one of the daggers. He rises-falls back against the stump of a tree, and the music expresses that he has torn his inexpressibles. "Unseen:" (Rubadub-dub) “Unheard:" (Tantara-ra) “ Alone"-(Jang-jang-crash) "I die-die--die!" (Diminuendo-Tweedledum! Tweedledum! Tweedledum! twee-wee-ee !!!) And so the music and the hero die away together. As this exquisitely pathetic scene will doubtless be encored, the second symphony is made to imitate the application of galvanism to the unfortunate defunct, who rises in the most natural convulsions, recommences, and comes to his end da capo; and as there is reason to apprehend that the whole of Fop's Alley will be delivered of a wailful whimper and simultaneous snivel, which might endanger the baldheads, of the fiddlers, women will be stationed in the pit with white cambric lachrymatories, to exchange for those which have become saturated with the tender tears of sympathy. Cafarelli said, that if Farinelli had not been de facto the prime minister of Spain, he well deserved it, for his voice was inimitable; and we maintain of our composer, that if he be not created first lord of the admiralty, he richly merits that station, for he is the first of imitative harmonists. Should any of the public fall asleep during the performance of his opera, it will be additional proof of his powers as a composer; and should they do the same while reading this paper, or be tempted to ejaculate "What stuff! what nonsense!" they are respectfully informed that the writer, who is not less loyal than musical, has no wish to realise the assertion of Pope : "That soon, ah soon, rebellion will commence, GRIMM'S GHOST. LETTER XXII. Meeting the same People. COLONEL Nightingale sat in deep meditation in his drawing-room in Albemarle-street, pondering over the Morning Chronicle, and endeavouring to comprehend the merits of the suits and cross-suits Waters v. Ebers, and vice versa, and Benelli v. the same, and vice versa: not to mention a host of Garcia's, De Begnis', and Signor Di Giovanni's similarly circumstanced. "And so it seems," said his lady, who at the same time perused the Morning Post, "that the annual expense of the Opera amounts to between sixty and eighty thousand pounds." dog-cheap too," answered the Colonel. "I should not be surprised," said the lady, "if the Opera were not to open this season." Impossible!" exclaimed the Colonel with an involuntary shudder. "Sad news from St. Petersburg!" said the lady, still perusing the Morning Post. 66 "And "Very sad!" answered the Colonel, still intent upon the Morning Chronicle. "The Neva has risen forty feet," said the lady. "And opera-boxes forty pounds," said the Colonel. "The loss of tallow is incalculable," said the lady. "The central chandelier is lighted by gas," said the Colonel. "And what a loss of lives!" ejaculated the lady. "Poor Naldi!" sighed the Colonel; "he lost his life by poking over a stew-pan." "It seems, the Emperor has been most humanely attentive to the sufferers."-"Yes, but where will he get such another Leporello?" This sentimental colloquy was interrupted by the entrance of a servant, who presented to Mrs. Nightingale, upon a silver waiter, with his thumb cautiously wound up in a napkin, the following document: "Mr. and Mrs. Wendover present their compliments to Colonel and Mrs. Nightingale, and request the honor of their company to dinner on Thursday the 13th instant, at six o'clock. "Russell Square, Monday, 3 January.” "What! at it again!" exclaimed Colonel Nightingale. "Well! those Wendovers are the most persevering people I ever encountered: they never will let us alone: they must have a comfortable notion of their own attractions, to suppose that we can find any delight in bowling all the way from Albemarle-street to Russell-square. I hate Russellsquare, with its erect bronze Duke of Bedford, looking up towards Bloomsbury-square after his recumbent bronzed friend Fox. Poor Charles! only think of making him, at his time of life, sit down on a white marble sofa bare-headed in the open air! The last time I saw him he had a lap full of snow."--" My dear," said Mrs. Nightingale, "the Wendovers are not responsible for what happened to be cast in metal ten years before they entered the square. You know I had no horses at Cheltenham, and Mrs. Wendover's carriage was always at my disposal."-" Ay, there it is," answered her helpmate: "Mrs. Wendover makes a good thing of that carriage: she is always lying in wait, seeking what people of fashion she may devour: no sooner is one's wife caught without one's horses than in trots Mrs. Wendover with her two long-legged seducers. To my certain knowledge she has already currycombed herself into three houses in Berkeley-square, and now she is creeping up Albemarle-street: somebody ought to put a checkstring on such doings-it's a shame thus to prey on the necessities of the great! But I have a still deeper-rooted objection to dining with the Wendovers. One always meets the same people there: I hate the same people company is like fish-good for nothing after the first day." Mrs. Nightingale was a prudent wife. Like the Chain-Pier at Brighton, she made it a rule never to oppose a storm. Look at the consequence that edifice has stood firm during the late gales, where Waterloo-bridge would have gone by the board; and Mrs. Nightingale, on the day which followed the above-recited colloquy, was authorised to write an answer to Mrs. Wendover, undertaking to accept the invitation, in a phraseology similar to that in which it was couched, with the omission of the "compliments," those articles, at that season of the year, being confined to watchmen and parish-beadles in quest of halfcrowns. The Wendover card stood palpable in the chimney-rack, and it was, rather unluckily, printed in huge bulbous characters, insomuch that it caught the Colonel's eye every morning at breakfast. “I heartily wish," said the lord of the mansion, one morning, whilst in the act of spreading butter on a parallelogram of dried toast, "that among all these new joint stock-companies, some patriotic banker or disinterested solicitor would establish a New Grand Dining-out Company, with a capital of a few millions to purchase a gigantic lottery-wheel."-" A gigantic lottery-wheel, my dear! for Heaven's sake, for what purpose?" "Why to shake London dinner-company in, that one might avoid the chance of meeting the same people twice. I am confident it would answer. I should have no objection to be 'standing-counsel' to the concern. I flatter myself I could give them some profitable hints.""I doubt whether it would always answer," said Mrs. Nightingale: "shuffle them as you will, dinner-people, like hands at whist, sometimes come together again in a most unaccountable way. You observed last night at Lady Lumley's, I held the knave, ten, and four of diamonds. Before the next deal Sir Samuel Spadille shuffled the cards extremely well, and afterwards stuck them in, heads and feet, in a complete higgledy-piggledy style. Notwithstanding which I held the very same knave, ten, and four at the very next round."-"That I don't object to," resumed the husband: "that's all chance: I myself entered the pit of the Opera, three successive nights, and found Lindley screwing the same peg of his violincello. But inviting one to meet the same people is malice prepense."-"They may now and then have casually dropped in," said the lady.-" Phu!" ejaculated the Colonel, "nobody, now a-days, drops casually in to a gentleman's dining-room, unless it be a stray sweep that has mistaken his chimney." On the appointed day, Colonel and Mrs. Nightingale set off from Albemarle-street towards Russell-square. "It's a long way for the same pair," said the Colonel: "would it not be better to change horses in Tottenham-court Road? It's all very well (a phrase uniformly adopted by the Colonel when he meant that any event was in every particular decidedly bad)—“It's all very well: but another time you won't catch me dining out so far North: these kind of expeditions ought to be left to Captain Parry."—"True," answered his helpmate, endeavouring to combat his sentiments by burlesquing them: "I confess they do live a lamentable long way North. I should not be surprised if we met a parcel of Esquimaux, and were obliged to touch noses."-"I hope we shall," said the Colonel: "that, at all events, will not be meeting the same people. Your mention of the Esquimaux," said the husband, as the carriage crossed Bedford-square, "reminds me of an anecdote of the late Lord Erskine. A lady was listening to that nobleman's account of the people at the North Pole, and when he had mentioned that the natives clothe themselves in the skins of the seals and eat their flesh-'What, live upon the seals?' exclaimed the lady with a look of horror. Yes, Madam,' answered Lord Erskine, and devilish good living too, if one could but keep them."" The Colonel's monolaugh at his own facetiousness had barely subsided, when the carriage stopped at a mansion in Russell-square. "Really I don't think this is the house," said Mrs. Nightingale, as they entered the drawing-room; "the Wendovers' drawing-room furniture is blue."-"They may have changed it to crimson," said the Colonel: "it would be too much always to meet the same furniture with the same people."-Nobody happened to be in the room except a pretty dark-eyed little girl, of about eight years of age, who sat upon the sofa in a diagonal position, with her legs coiled under her, reading Sandford and Merton. "Am I right, my dear," said Mrs. Nightingale, addressing the child: "what is your name?""Caroline, Ma'am."- "And what besides?"-" Stanfield."-"Is this your papa's house?"--" Yes."—" There," cried the lady, turning to her husband, “I thought we were wrong." At this moment Mrs. Stanfield entered the room. Suitable apologies were made and accepted: and Mrs. Stanfield informed the intruders that the Wendovers lived next door; adding, with a smile, "They are strangers to us; but we have both dinner-parties to-day, and I suppose our servants took it for granted that you were some of our guests." "Ah, my dear Julia," said the mortified Colonel, as they ascended the real genuine unadulterated staircase of Mr. and Mrs. Wendover, "what an opening have I let slip of passing a pleasant evening! one never thinks of things until it is too late. What a beautiful opportunity have I suffered to evaporate!"-" An opportunity for what?" inquired the anxious Mrs. Nightingale. "For what!" ejaculated the Colonel : "Oh, Heavens! I might have said to Mrs. Stanfield, Let Mrs. Nightingale and myself stay where we are; and do you, Madam, order the first married couple that drives up, to take our place at the Wendover dinner-table. You don't visit in the same circles: they will thus, as well as we, be able to escape the calamity of meeting the same people, and you will make two virtuous couples happy.' APPROACHING DOWNFALL OF THE GOLDEN CALF. "The lowness of interest, in all other countries a sign of wealth, is with us a proof of misery. Hence the dearness of necessaries of life: hence our increase of building in this city, because workmen have nothing to do but to employ one another, and one half of them are infallibly undone."-SWIFT. "WHEN the Christians of Alexandria received the penal edicts of the Emperor Theodosius against the sacrifice and worship of the Pagan superstition, they immediately proceeded with a fanatical fury to carry the sentence into execution by demolishing the great Temple of Serapis. It was constructed with great strength and massy materials, and the doors being of solid brass, resisted for a very long time the fury of the assailants in the end, however, they were burst open, and the colossal statue of Serapis discovered to view. It was an extraordinary achievement of art; and the magnitude of the figure, and the majesty of his aspect, for a moment overawed his assailants. He was seated on a throne, and seemed to fill the whole temple; in his left hand he held a sceptre; in his right a symbolic monster. It was believed by many in the crowd, that if any impious hand dared to insult the god, the heavens and the earth would instantly return to their original chaos. This, with the sublime greatness of the statue, and the awful obscurity in which he was throned within the spacious building, had for some time the effect of restraining their impetuosity. But a zealous soldier at last ventured into the sanctuary, armed with a weighty battle-axe; a profound silence ensued, as if every one expected some terrific event. The soldier, however, was undaunted, and struck the statue on the cheek with so much vigour, that the plate of metal of which it consisted started off, and fell to the ground with a clang that echoed throughout the building. The multitude shouted; the victorious soldier repeated his blows; he had soon companions in the work; and in the course of a few minutes the huge idol was overthrown." The above interesting extract from "The Wandering Jew" affords another proof that in the round-robin of human events the same circumstances are perpetually recurring, and that the present, with a few variations, is but a copy of the past, and an anticipation of the future. Virtually, if not literally, the great Serapis of England, the Dagon, the Golden Calf, the huge unholy Mammon to which every knee was bent, is at this very moment undergoing an assault not less deadly and destructive than that which was inflicted upon his glittering ancestor by the fanatics of Alexandria. In the present instance it is the worshippers of the Baal who are the assailants; but the sword of Brutus was not the less fatal because he was the friend of Cæsar, and the fall of the modern Mammon is only rendered the more certain when he becomes his own victim, and finds that his limbs are gradually lopped off by his adorers. Every body knows that his polypean power was in his faculty of reproduction, or, in other words, that the value and efficacy of money consisted in the high rate of interest which it afforded. Nothing ever constituted a more extraordinary sight, in the social system, than the deification enjoyed by a fundholder, lolling in luxurious idleness, while the pampered goose saw all his countrymen sweating with their brows and brains, and taxed in every direction to support the splendour of his apotheosis. He was the very child and champion of Mammon,--a living illustration of the old Sibylline story that a golden bough opens the gates of Elysium. But alack! insatiable capitalists have increased the stock of wealth faster than the labouring classes can use and absorb it ;-manure is of little value where there are no lands to cultivate;― and the dung and dross of the gold mine, like any other commodity of which there is an over-supply, has become depreciated in proportion to the glut. The interest being generally lowered, Government was enabled to set the dangerous precedent of reducing the funds. This was worse than the blow of the battle-axe which struck the gilded plate from off the cheek of Serapis; it was assaulting the Gog of the goldworshippers in the vital members of his strength; and as money at the present rate of interest does not possess more than half its former power, it may truly be stated that the monster's right arm has been fairly severed from his body. The first blow has been struck, and heaven and earth have not yet returned to their original chaos, but human beings have at all events approximated somewhat nearer to their intrinsic value; and the impecuniary classes may well set up a shout of triumph, that many a purse-proud and bloated man of wealth, who "bestrode the narrow earth like a Colossus," has been brought nearer to their own level. Every day is still further lowering the financial stature of these gilt giants, and raising the height of those whose worth is in themselves. At the actual reduced value of money, every one who derives an income of fifteen hundred a year from his talents, has as good a revenue as a capitalist of fifty thousand pounds. A doctor in decent practice, or a thriving barrister, would be entitled, if they were equally ignorant, to be as arrogant and swaggering as an alderman with his plum; a favourite author may draw as largely upon his brains as many a wealthy cit upon his banker; and as for the Great Unknown, if he could but get rid of his talents, he might without disparagement be compared to |