extraordinary success of the Dame Blanche. The latter is indeed a very agreeable little piece. Though considerable praise is due to the author of the words, the composer must claim still higher commendation. M. Boyeldieu has observed the proportions of the Italian Opera Buffa ; for the admired finale in the auction scene, lasts twenty minutes. The music, which frequently exhibits traces of imitation from Rossini, is not of a very powerful character, but is chiefly remarkable for airiness and gaiety.

The melodies are vague, but they never degenerate into triviality. There is an air of coquetry in the orchestral accompaniments, observed the Princess of Bagration, a Russian lady of considerable talent, who resides in Paris. After witnessing the performance of Semiramide, Madame Bagration remarked: I have seen the shade of Ninus, and I have seen the shade of Madame Fodor, but I have not seen the shade of Semiramis. This censure on Rossini has been much talked of.

Coquetry is indeed the chief characteristic of Boyeldieu's music. It has not sufficient power to reach the heart, and is not calculated to satisfy those who require that music shall appeal to the feelings, rather than to the understanding. As the middle classes of the Parisian public are more remarkable for intellectual sentiments, than for musing sensibility, Boyeldieu's talent seems precisely suited to their taste. This composer, who has required a high reputation in St. Petersburgh, as in Paris, has enjoyed an honour, very unusual for a Frenchman, that of having one of his operas translated into Italian, and performed in Italy. Rossini, when director of San Carlos, was, I believe, the person who introduced to his countrymen the music of his future rival. After the first performance of the Dame Blanche, M. Boyeldieu appeared on the stage. He is a handsome man, between forty and forty-five years of age.

Another characteristic of Boyeldieu's music is, that it does not require to be heard twice in order to be understood. This is the contrary of Mozart's music. It may be said that for the profound expression of passion and feeling Mozart is to Rossini, what Rossini is to Boyeldieu.

In Paris there is by turns a rage for every thing, and there now prevails a rage for reading English books. The correspondence of Horace Walpole is much admired here. No French author has written better letters or better memoirs on political intrigues; but will not your dictators of taste, and your aristocracy, revolt at the French taste, when I inform you, that we consider the Memoirs of the Margravine of Anspach are written with the vanity of a chambermaid, particularly when she speaks of the effect produced by her beauty on a spy of Madame Clairon, who was waiting for her at the door of the Hotel de l'Empereur at Anspach, and of the effect of her talent for mimicry, when she performed, at the Margrave's party, the character of the Sultan, in Almenorade?

But I can tell you something even worse than this. We,- that is to say, our men of the world, have been infinitely more pleased with a certain Harriette, the remnant of whose name I cannot venture to add. This is, because the book contains what the French like above all things-de l'esprit, et encore de l'Esprit.

* Prince Samanousky, the father of Madame Bagration, who was Ambassador at Naples in 1789, always spoke in recitative, and obliged his servants to reply to him in the same manner.

NOTES ON THE MONTH.

[OUR intention in articles of this nature, one of which will appear in future every month, is to keep an eye on the current news and paragraphs of the day, and notice them in such a manner as might be expected among persons chatting together in a reading-room or at table. We shall make no extract from books or periodicals that is not worthy of a comment; and no comment (such as it is) that is not our own. We mean by this, that the article will not consist of mere extracts and scissor-work, but have the usual Magazine claims to be placed among the original matter. A subject often strikes a writer, upon which he would fain turn a paragraph, though he could not make an essay. want of a supply of such paragraphs is felt in Magazines in general; and the possession of them often furnishes the most agreeable part of a newspaper, where they run together, like the plums in an ill-concocted pudding, all on one side.]

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THE OLDEST INHABITANT.-It is difficult to take up a country-newspaper at some seasons of the year, without encountering a venerable personage under this title, whose business it is never to remember any thing. He has never seen the like of a drought or a harvest, and every flood is to him a novelty of the first water. He was in a particularly animated state of forgetfulness during the late heats. But his principal talent lies in the non-recollection of hail-storms, thunder and lightning, &c. The tragic is what stirs up his old blood, and gives him a sensation. "Well, of all the sights"-"Well, never in my born days did I see"- Well, I don't believe within the memory of man!"Thus he stands gaping and exclaiming; upon which somebody claps it down in the newspaper, and we are to believe that no such storm was ever heard of, because "the oldest inhabitant" in B. cannot remember any. The reason is obvious;-he has lost his memory. It is not the memory of the oldest inhabitant that settles the matter, but that of the most vigorous and in fullest possession of his faculties. But "God bless his middle-ageish face," he is in a state of indifference. It is your old nerves that are the things for fear and astonishment. clap of thunder, that should have affected our oldest inhabitant at thirty or forty no more than the cracking of a walnut, shall be to him, in his dilapidated state, as the ruin of the globe. Hear this, ye newspaper worthies, and amend your paragraph!

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THE GALLANT BUTCHER.-In the Bristol market, a lady, laying her hand upon a joint of veal, said—" I think, Mr. F., this veal is not quite so white as usual." "Put on your glove, madam," replied the dealer, "and you will think differently." It may be needless to remark, that the veal was ordered home without another word of objection. Sterne tells us of a beggar in Paris, whom he observed to accost none but elderly females, and invariably with success. He resolved to get at his secret, and found that it consisted in paying them a compliment on their beauty. A fair exchange, and the humanest of barters! Ladies ought to think themselves handsome as long as they can; and if they are generous, they stand the best chance of remaining so. We will not swear, that from long tenderness of intercourse and the habit of success, the beggar did not believe in his flatteries.

AN HONEST MAN.-General Foy, whose death has made such a sen

sation at Paris, and for whose family subscriptions are pouring in on all sides, was educated for the bar; but on the breaking out of the revolution entered the artillery, in which he was rapidly promoted. From the first campaigns of the revolution to the battle of Waterloo, he was in incessant action, and frequently distinguished himself. He was wounded in Moreau's retreat, in the battle of Orthes, and at Waterloo. His activity in Spain was well known to many officers of our army. It is to his credit, that though his fate was bound up with the military profession, he refused, previously to the expedition to Egypt, the appointment of aide-de-camp to Bonaparte, whose views he seems to have suspected, and that he opposed the elevation of the same man to the supreme-power. He first entered the Chamber of Deputies in 1819; since that time his eloquence has given him a reputation as a patriot and an orator, in which he has still fewer competitors than in his military fame. Another paper informs us, that when asked to drink the health of the Emperor Napoleon on some occasion, he declined. They pressed him. Ile cut the matter short by saying, "I am not thirsty." He admired injustice and the sacrifice of liberty in no shape, however illustrious. General Foy appears to have died of an over-excited temperament. His heart was found bathed in its honest blood, as though it had burst with anxiety for the cause of freedom. He has left several children, and a wife whom he designated on his death-bed as his "best friend." Such men have great pleasures in life, though they have great pains. Love is sure to meet with love; as the close heart, sooner or later, is left to itself.

SHERIDAN AND LORD ROCHESTER.-Sheridan is said to have embodied his graver commentaries on the correspondence of the Whig Lords in 1811, in the following jeu-d'esprit; "the effect of which," it is added, “in a certain quarter may be easily imagined."

An Address to the Prince.

In all humility we crave

Our Regent may become our slave;
And being so, we trust that he

Will thank us for our loyalty.

Then if he'll help us to pull down

His father's dignity and crown,

We'll make him, in some time to come,

The greatest Prince in Christendom.

Whether Sheridan really addressed these lines to the Prince Regent, we cannot say; but if he addressed them to him as original ones, he presented his Royal Highness with a great libel upon his reading. The jeu-d'esprit is all but a transcript from some well-known lines of Lord. Rochester, and a bungling one. Compare, in particular, the fourth line. The Commons' Petition to King Charles II.

In all humanity we crave

Our sovereign may be our slave;
And humbly beg that he will be

Betray'd by us most loyally:

And if he please once to lay dowu
His sceptre, dignity, and crown,

We'll make him, for the time to come,

The greatest Prince in Christendom.

The King's Answer.

Charles at this time having no need,

Thanks you as much as if he did.

Speaking of the King and Sheridan, we ought not to omit the mention of a fact which has just transpired. The Prince Regent, it appears, offered to procure Sheridan a seat in Parliament, for which purpose he lodged 4000/. in the hands of a solicitor. This was not long before the death of Sheridan. Though the offer was declined, the Prince did not resume the money, but directed that Sheridan might have it for his private purposes, to which end the sum was actually appropriated.

DEATH OF THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER.-This prince, who has unexpectedly ceased to exist, was a weak man, of naturally good intentions, who while he took himself for an arbiter equally firm and mild, was a dupe to his self-love, and a tool in the hands of others. Where the interests of the latter did not interfere, or could not well intrude themselves, he was allowed to do as much good to his country, as a despot can well manage; and he did it; though in liberating the serfs, and converting them into soldiers, he got himself into the double dilemma of offending the lords of the soil, and increasing the natural ardour of his subjects for war, especially against Turkey. But he never forgot the instincts, or imagined himself to have gone beyond the pale of the safest and most absolute power; and it was to his common weakness on that score, that his brethren of the Holy Alliance never failed to make successful application. On every other point, he would take a colour from the popular interests of the day: on this he became inflexible and royal,-as purple as Francis or Ferdinand could desire. Educated by a French philosopher, who had renounced a part of his new creed, he found himself encouraged in a congenial union of liberality and timidity; which he took for an exquisite reason. Bonaparte shook and astonished him into admiration; and then he took the military colour, and wished to be a great general. Bonaparte fell, and then he fancied himself a settler of destinies, and thought he was fulfilling prophecies in Isaiah. Reformers came about him, and flattered him into a notion that he was to make all good things prosper, monarchy not excepted. Then he took to quakers, and abolitionists, and education-schools, and was to make good little boys of all man, kind, himself remaining perpetual autocrat and schoolmaster. The monarchs frightened him out of his love of reform by inspiring him with a sense of their common danger; and then he turned his face upon liberals, and astonished the Cortes, and cut the popular connexion, and with it the cause of the Greeks: for he may be said to have cut it under all the circumstances, the Russians who are of the Greek Church, having a natural desire to fall in with it, and being understood to have manifested great symptoms of impatience at his not having done so. If Alexander perished unfairly (and a ministerial paper has not scrupled to give particulars of his assassination), it is perhaps to this circumstance, united with the equivocal aspect of the Emperor's intentions towards his brother Constantine, that his death is to be attributed. Constantine was educated in the hope of his reigning over Greece, and dipped and christened in the lustre of that expecJan.-VOL. XVI. NO. LXI.

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tation. On the other hand, Alexander turned out to have no children, and Constantine is said to have turned out a ferocious and unbrotherly character. Now at the period of Alexander's decease, it was noticed as an extraordinary circumstance in the Prussian Almanack, that Nicholas, next brother to Constantine, was mentioned as heir to the crown, so that Constantine appeared to have been set aside. Constantine has nevertheless succeeded; and there is doubtless a great mystery of some sort, though pains are already taken to hush it up. The reader knows how these things are done in despotic countries. There is no appeal against despotism, but in the bow-string or the handkerchief; and when a quarrel ensues, whether the appellants are right or wrong, this sovereign remedy is applied. Alexander's father died by it; his grandfather died by it; and the same fate has often been anticipated for himself.-Alexander was in his forty-ninth year, and was a tall, stout-looking, though we believe not very healthy person. He had a Tartar face, with small eyes and high cheek-bones; and affected serene and philosophic manners. It is recorded of him nevertheless, that upon a footman's appearing before him, instead of a lord, with a cup of coffee on a salver, he "started as if he had trod on a snake." This was his royalty taken by surprise. In disposition and natural manners he appears to have resembled his mother, who is said to have been an amiable woman. Constantine has some of the most remarkable features of the countenance of his father Paul, and these are no slight evidence of the half-mad stories related of him. We may look for some actions suitable to them, now that he is Emperor; but the Greeks will most probably benefit, whether he behaves with method or eccentricity.

EARTHQUAKE IN THE MONEY MARKET.--Money is an interminable subject, and we are not going to enter into it, for three very good reasons: first, that every body else has discussed it already; second, that it is interminable, as aforesaid; and third, (which might have stood first) that finance is a part of politics, which we do not profess. It is easy to see, that the late distresses were owing, in the first instance, to a glut of confidence, and an intoxicated speculation. They have now subsided, with great additional confidence in some, a reasonable diminution with regard to others, and not without a salutary warning to the whole monied world on the danger of confounding its entire sum of hopes and respectability with pecuniary gain. Readers in general will not wish us to say more on this subject. The bowers of literature are places to take refuge and repose in, after the ordinary business of life; and we confess we would as soon offer our readers our ledger instead of our magazine to read, or serve them a plate of halfpence instead of cherries, as displace a single paragraph of the least wit, imagination, or amusement, with the subject of banks and funds. We feel confident they agree with us on this point, or they are not the persons we take them for. If any one is disappointed, and desires to add to his newspaper stock, and the pleasing interchange of arithmetic, we refer him to the first meditative-looking person he meets, with a face not actually given to meditation; always provided that it is a proper anxious time of day, and the theatres are not open.

SECURITY OF PRINCES.-The new king of Bavaria has been generous enough, and wise enough, to abolish the censorship of the press. Con