arrived within the week; very few French, but German counts and barons innumerable."

She proceeds to tell us-" That the manners of the German princes are unaffected and agreeable; but their dress is so ridiculously stiff, that the first time I saw them altogether, they put me in mind of King Pharaoh's court in a puppet-show. The variety of dress in the company here, makes the first coup-d'œil on the walks of the Geronsterre very amusing; priests and hussars, beaux and hermits, nuns and fine ladies, stars and crosses, cowls and ribbons, all blended together in the most lively and picturesque manner imaginable. The streets are all day long crowded with people, without any bustle or noise; all the company is very peaceable and quiet, and there seem to be none of those fashionable pests of society, the bucks and 'choice spirits' among us; and I thought I felt a little foolish at hearing one of my foreign friends observe, most maliciously, that it would not be known that there were any of our country at Spa, if a footman did not now and then run through the streets screaming in English after a stray 'dog.'

The volumes are agreeably diversified with letters from great people and from little ones. Some of them from Garrick, who, perhaps, was to be called both great and little. In 1973, the actor and his wife had set out for a tour of the Continent. We give a fragment of his letter to Colman from Paris. It is gaily clever, and cleverly gay:

"You cannot imagine, my dear Colman, what honours I have received from all kinds of people here. The nobles and the literati have made so much of me, that I am quite ashamed of opening my heart even to you. Marmontel has written to me the most flattering letter upon our supping together; I was in spirits, and so was the Clairon,' who supped with us at Mr Neville's. She got up to set me a-going, and spoke something in Racine's Athalie most charmingly; upon which I gave them the dagger scene' in Macbeth, the curse Lear, and the falling asleep' in Sir John Brute; the consequence of which is, that I am now stared at in the playhouse, and talked of by gentle and simple as the most wonderful wonder

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of wonders. The first person I find going to England, shall bring you Marmontel's letter. D'Alembert was one of the company, and sings my praises to all the authors of The Encyclopedie."

Garrick had left his brother George to take care of the theatre, as acting manager. George was a character. He was much attached to his celebrated brother, and perhaps a little in awe of him; for David could be imperious where the theatre was concerned. One part of George's occupation was curious enough-it was, to walk behind the scenes while his brother was playing; and, when any of the loungers there began to speak, to silence them by "Husb, hush". as David, while performing, was extremely ner. vous about noise of this order.

Some one happening to observe that George's salary was considerable, asked for what purpose it was given? Charles Bannister pleasantly replied " It was HUSH money."

Nightly, on George's coming to the theatre, his first enquiry was-" Has David wanted me?" On his death, which happened soon after that of the great actor, the players said, "David wanted him."

Johnson was remarkable for speaking contemptuously of Garrick, as "little Davy," but for never suffering any one else to speak even carelessly of him. Sir Joshua Reynolds, timid as he was, ventured to write a little dialogue touching on this peculiarity. It stole into print under the auspices of his niece the Marchioness of Thomond, in 1816, when the Ursa Major was long gone where critics growl no more. The dialogue was supposed to be between Gibbon and the Doctor :

"Gibbon.-You must allow, Dr Johnson, that Garrick was too much a slave to fame, or rather to the mean ambition of living with the great; and terribly afraid of making himself cheap, even with them, by which he debarred himself of much pleasant society. Employing so much attention, and so much management, upon such little things, implies, I think, a little mind. It was observed by his friend Colman, that he never went into company but with a plot how to get out of it; he was every minute called out, and went off or returned, as there was or was not a probability of his shining.

"Johnson.-Sir, in regard to his

all, but recovered, with no damage but his fears, and the mortification of beholding some contusions on his cross. The Romans are much chagrined at the circumstance, and say that it affords matter of great satisfaction to the heretics."

would either refuse to sing altogether, or sang so languidly, as to exhibit her contempt for the audience. This custom, at last, became so well known, that when any particular display of her talents was required, as for the presence of a prince or a crowned head, the manager was compelled to engage the presence of the lover in the box, as much as that of the heroine on the stage. Her talents had made her a great favourite at Vienna, in those days the first stage of all the great Italian performers on crossing the mountains. But her insolence at last drove her from Vienna, and she made the triumphal tour of Europe, with the exception of England. She had conceived such an idea of our John Bullism, and of our little respect for the violences of a showy termagant, that she declared herself afraid to venture among us.

"For," said she, "were I to take it into my head not to sing, I am told that the people there would mob me, and perhaps break my bones. Now, I like to sleep in a sound skin, even if it were in a prison."

But though Garrick, like other travellers, is all-enraptured with a few fine days in December, all is not sunshine, even in "Bella Italia" itself. A letter from Rome in the height of the summer, gives an account of the weather, than which, England, open as it is to all the clouds of the Atlantic, could have furnished nothing more disastrous.

"About three days ago, the Pope, his life-guards, and other attendants, made a grand procession to St Peter's, but unfortunately on their return, such a storm of wind, rain, thunder and lightning arose, that it put the Pope's guards in a fright. They who were on horseback, rode away as fast as they could, and they who had no horses, ran for it as fast as their legs could carry them. The Pope had six horses to his carriage, the postilions cut the harness of the first four, and joined the rest of the party; leaving, like most undutiful children, their most holy father with no other attendants than the coachman, and two horses to draw the carriage, which was larger than our king's coach. rider on horseback, who supported the fine golden cross before the Pope, endeavouring to make a precipitate retreat, was thrown down, horse and

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Lord Bath continued his attentions to Colman, notwithstanding his truantry in abandoning the law-which the earl had expressly chosen for himand adopting the stage, the very last pursuit which could have satisfied the great senator. Still he had continued his kindness to this precipitate relative, and his last instance of regard was to leave him an annuity, which, according to the newspapers, was nine hundred guineas a-year; a sum, however, extremely inadequate to the expectations of Colman, who seems to have looked to the succession to his estate, the earl having lost his only son some time before, and being on bad terms with his brother, General Pulteney. It yet seems sufficiently natural, that if the heirship had ever been intended for him, his giddy change of profession, and his utter heedlessness of advice, might have altered the disposal of this great property. Pulteney died worth upwards of a million of money.

Lady Harvey, the widow of John Lord Harvey, thus speaks of Pulteney's decease:

"I am really sorry for the death of poor Lord Bath, who, though of a great age, might have lived much longer. He had his understanding as much as ever, enjoying company, and partly contributing to its enjoyment. He threw away his life by a needless

piece of complaisance, in drinking tea out of doors, after being heated by a great deal of meat, a great deal of company, and a good deal of mirth at dinner. His was not an age, nor is ours a climate, for those al frescos. It was thoughtless in those who proposed it, and weakly complaisant in him who complied with it. From various circumstances, I have seen him but seldom for many years past; but whenever we did meet he was always the same, and ever cheerful and good company. He was to me like a sum in a bank, of which, though I made but little immediate use, I could always be sure of having my draft answered."

In a subsequent letter, this shrewd and evidently rather sarcastic lady, thus finishes the sketch:-" Lord Bath's leaving me no little bauble, in token of remembrance, did not surprise, and consequently did not vex me. He was a most agreeable companion, and a very good-humoured man; but I, who have known him above forty years, knew that he never thought of any one when he did not see them, nor ever cared a great deal for those he did see. He has left an immense fortune to a brother he never cared for, and always with reason despised, and a great deal to a man he once liked, but lately had great reason to think ill of, (perhaps Colman.) I am sorry he is dead; he was very agreeable and entertaining, and, whenever I was well enough to go down stairs and give him a good dinner, he was always ready to come and give me his good company in return. I was satisfied with that. One must take people as they are; perhaps hardly any are, in every respect, what they ought to be."

We have given those fragments relative to Pulteney, from the interest which belongs to one of the most celebrated senatorial names of England. He was confessedly the first speaker in a parliament which numbered Walpole, Windham, Bolingbroke, Harley, and a crowd of able men. His public career was in Opposition; but his antagonist, Walpole, with all the power of office, always writhed at the bold and haughty scourge of the great Commoner," a title afterwards given to Chatham.

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Garrick's Italian trip may have amused him, but it seems to have done him but little good. He thus

writes from Munich, on his way home: "I am most truly the Knight of the woeful countenance, and have lost legs, arms, belly, cheeks, &c. I have scarcely any thing left but bones, and a pair of dark, lack-lustre eyes, which have retired an inch or two more in their sockets, and wonderfully set off the parchment which covers the cheeks."

Every man who lives long must expect to be surrounded by deaths, but Garrick's best-known contemporaries seem to have perished nearly all together. In this year, Hogarth died suddenly, after a cheerful supper at his house in Leicester Square.-A man of singular talent: the first, and indeed the only example of a style combining the highest humour with the severest satire; at once sportive and grave, and playing with the lightest follies of fashion, while he was fathoming the depths of the human heart. Hogarth was next followed by his antagonist and libeller, Churchhill, a man of undoubted ability, but a ruffian; first disgracing his gown, then insulting society; a vigorous poet, though frequently lapsing into feebleness; and by nature a highspirited and generous being, though ultimately scandalized by habits which brought him to a premature grave. The next who sank was Lloyd, an accomplished scholar, a considerable poet, and a man of keen and wellfurnished faculties. A course of giddiness and self-will had brought him to deserved beggary. For a while he lived on the public; when that resource failed, he lived on the bounty of his friends; at last he was thrown into the Fleet prison, where Churchhill (and it ought to be remembered to his honour) allowed him a guinea a week, and the expenses of a servant. When Churchhill's death was nounced to him, he gave up all hope, took to his bed, and never left it again. Churchhill died in November 1764; Lloyd in the December following.

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Colman had now become a dramatist of name, and he combined with Garrick in producing a new comedy, perhaps his best-the "Clandestine Marriage." Its success, however, produced a species of quarrel between the authors, by dividing the fame. The quarrel was sharpened by the interference of "friends ;" and all the

merits being given to the great actor, and all the feebleness to the dramatist, there was the fairest probability that the quarrel would have become inveterate. But Garrick, with all his frivolity, was a man of sense, and the wound was healed. In later years, George Colman, (jun.,) thought it worth his while to enter into a long detail, claiming the authorship for his father. But the combatants and their seconds had been long swept out of the field; and no one took the trouble to renew the war. It is surely evidence enough that Garrick did not write the part of Lord Ogleby, the most original part in the play, to say that Garrick positively refused to perform it. If it had been his own, this he certainly never would have done. But let us hear the facetious George himself. He gives a curious frag

ment:

"In respect to the report of Garrick's having written the entire character of Lord Ogleby, my father once told me that it was not true; and that, as an instance to the contrary, he (my father) wrote the whole of Ogleby's first scene. He also informed me that one of Garrick's greatest merits in this work, and it is a very great one, was planning the incidents in the last act; the alarm of the families through the means of Mrs Heidelberg and Miss Sterling; and bringing forward the various characters from their beds to produce an explanation and the catastrophe. I regret that, when my father imparted this, I did not make further enquiry; but I was then a moonish youth,' and troubled my head little or nothing about the matter. He always talked, however, of the play as a joint production." The Clandestine Marriage was professedly suggested by Hogarth's prints.

Theatrical propensities must be very powerful things; for, when once adopted, they seem never to be shaken off, except in prison or the grave. Col

man, who apparently had lost one for tune by adopting the life of a dramatist, now lost another by adopting that of a manager. General Pulteney had offered him a seat in parliament, and to provide amply for him, " if he would quit his theatrical connexions of all kinds; he wholly disapproving of Colman's taking any part in the purchase of the patent of Covent Garden theatre." This was a singularly un

lucky transaction; but it had only the fate that naturally follows the self-willed; for the General soon after died, and as there was no son in the family, Colman might, and would have inherited the whole; but he was now left but £400 a-year by the will. The estates and ready money were distributed among remote branches of the family, the chief part going to the husband of the General's niece, Mr Johnstone, who took the name of Pulteney. Some idea of the magnitude of the property may be formed from the single fact, that it comprehended the reversionary grant of all the ground in Arlington Street, and all Piccadilly, from that street to Hyde Park Corner; in the whole forty acres, all built on, and at the expiration of the leases, calculated at £100,000 a-year! But Colman was at last a manager.

How any man in possession of his senses will ever become the manager of a theatre, is one of those problems which we shall never attempt to solve. In nine instances out of ten, ending in the ruin of all the parties concerned, its whole course is generally one of quarrel. Colman's management commenced with an open battle, which proceeded to the length of four pamphlets, and a challenge from Harris. Then came old Macklin, from Dublin, to embroil the fray. He had brought with him a farce, which failed instantly. A Chancery suit had by this time grown up, among the other thorns and thistles of the management. Macklin plunged into it with the spirit of one to whom litigation was his natural element, and actually himself answered all the bills in Chancery.

Actors are curious people. Smith, better known as "Gentleman Smith,' from his subsequently performing such characters as Charles Surface, &c., made it an indispensable condition in his engagements that his face should "never be blackened," nor was he ever to be "lowered down a trap," as the first might disguise his beauty, and the next might endanger the elegance of his legs.

On the first night of Macklin's performance of Shylock, the crowd in the upper gallery pressing on, a man ran with such rash haste down the seats, that he fell over the edge, and coming on one of the chandeliers, carried it down with him, a circumstance which broke his fall, but destroyed the chan