The Press.
London, England, 1856-05-31 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

mistake. Whatever may be its merits, it has certainly
no claim to take rank with the other compositions.
We even question the title of " The Charge of the
Light Brigade" to a place with the " Mariners of
England " and " How Sleep the Brave." The war
has produced finer lyrics than those selected for
insertion here.

Social Delusions concerning Wealth and Want. By
R. Jennings, M.A. London: Longmans.
THE theory propounded in this little book is, that all
expenditure is waste which is unnecessary, and that
such waste must result in individual suffering. Mr.
Jennings writes:—
We can perceive that all who are maintained, under
whatever pretext, without helping to produce the necessa-
ries of life, must be fed, and housed, and apparelled, by
the labours of others who produce these commodities, and
that the larger the number of the former, the harder must
be the work and the more wretched the remuneration of
the latter.

The consideration may be worth private thought,
but when insisted on as a right principle of legislation,
it. becomes stark socialism. The theory has been
stated and refuted a thousand times, both in prose
and verse. In our day the instinct of men is a pre
servative against waste in any general form being
carried to excess, but some waste there always must
be, and Providence has provided a sufficient margin
to prevent that waste being injurious. Mi. Jennings
cannot understand the consequences which would
result from carrying his theory into practice. It is
not to a spurious political economy that we should
look for the means of counteracting the evils atten•
dant on a high state of civilisation, but to the culti-
vation of that vital principle of Christianity which
promotes moral conscientiousness, checks hurtful
luxury, and prevents modern societies from falling
under the dominion of the vices and corruptions
which crushed nations of the ancient world. Mr.
Jennings sees but a little way before him ; fairly
carried out, his principles would clothe him in serge,
feed him on oatmeal, and lodge him in a barn.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.-MAy 29.

BOOKS.

The Lamp of Life.

Simpkin and Marshall.
Gerard.

G►ace and

Poems. G.

Bosworth and Harrison.
The Paricide. A Posthumous Rhapsody and Domestic
Drama. Saunders and Otley.
_ .

Glimpses ;f Life and Manners in Persia. Lady Sheil.
Murray.

PAMPHLETS.

Sonnets (chief/ Astronomical) and other Poems. C. Dol-
man—Ups and Downs of a Public School. \V. and F. G.
Cash— The National Gallery. J. E. Taylor—On the Pro-
gress of Religious Liberty. George R. Wright—The Muni-
cipal Directory for 1856. Kelly and Co.

THE CANADIAN PUBLIC reap all the advantage to
be derived from American cheap literature, as the
works printed from English copyrights can be im-
ported into the colony by payment of a small duty.
The Canadian publishers, I fancy, would prefer that
the British law of copyright should extend to Ca-
nada, or rather that British copyright works printed
in the States should be excluded from entering
Canada, but that they should be allowed to print
them, paying a royalty to the author. As the case
stands at present, although there is a very large
reading public in Canada, every day increasing with
the extension of education, as well as by the increase
of population, the British author enjoys from it not
the slightest profit.—Kingston's Western Wanderings.

DESOLATION OF PALESTINE.—DI Palestine you are
nearly as much in the wilderness as when in Arabia,
for as to inhabitants they are precisely the things
which do not exist for all you can tell, except in the
towns and villages you pass through. You ride on
day after day, and you rise over each hill, and you
sink into each valley, and except an occasional soli-
tary traveller with his servant and his muleteer, or a
Turkisk official with his party, rarely does a mi.ving
object appear upon the landscape. No cattle are on
the land, and no passengers are on tho highways.
How lonely it is; and this loneliness strikes you more
than that of the Desert, for it seems unnatural be-
cause here there should be life and there is none.
Sometimes you may make out at a distance on the
hillside a single figure—a man upon a donkey. It
is the only moving thing your eye can detect all
round. And so you go on through this desolate land.
From Jerusalem to Beyrout you scarcely light upon
one single scene of rural industry—not one single
scene of life that can he compared with those on the
Arab pastures from the top of Jebel El Sufar to the
wells of El Mileh. There in places the country was
full of people and children, and flocks and herds—a
rejoicing picture of pastoral existence in all its
abounding wealth ; while here, in the country of
tillage, and towns, and villages, the whole land
seemed to lie under a spell.—Louth's Wanderer in
Arabia.

Stusir.

HER MAJESTY'S THEATRE.

Is the dissipated period prior to the first fall of the
Bourbons perhaps there was never more vice and
corruption than that. which now exists in the Parisian
capital. From the date of the republic in 1E348 to the
inauguration of the actual empire, the luxury and
licentiousness of the bourgeoisie have been developed
even to an unprecedented extent. The stage, re-
flecting the manners and customs of the time, has
not been behindhand in the exhibition of social imt
morality, and the drama of the younger Dumsv,
La Dame aux Camelia., in which the tainted attri-
butes of that class of women in Paris called " Lo-
rettes" are so daringly depicted, met with an enor-
mous success. To the credit of English authors let
it be recorded, that no translation or adaptation of
this abominable drama has been attempted. It was
reserved for an Italian poet, in order to afford the
appetite of Verdi some strong situations, to arrange
La Dame aux Camelia. for the Italian lyric stage,
the only kind of compromise essayed by the librettist
being the throwing back of the foul incidents a cen-
tury, instead of giving Paris as it is, as regards the
actual aspect of society. In the Traviata, which the
English translator gives as " The Lost One," the re-
pulsive orgies of the Lorettes open the opera, an
attempt being made to excite sympathy, after a
drinking duo and chorus, for Violetta, because she
suddenly picks out from her admirers, by the gift of
a flower (reversing the Ottoman custom of the
harem), a young provincial, Alfred Germont. In the
second act, his father persuades Violetta to resign
Alfred, whose sister's marriage depends on the cess;
sation of the liaison, and then in the last act Violate
dies upon the stage of consumption for the loss of
Alfred, exhorting him thus:—
If a virgin pure and true
Thou, in the flow'r of youth, shonldst meet,
Who to thee her heart would give,
Ah ! espouse and love her well. T wish it.
Give her, too, this likeness.
Tell her that she who gave it thee,
Midst the saints in Heaven,
Prays for her and thee!
Can anything more debased and shocking than
this story be conceived? Verdi has noted the inci-
dents and sentiments of the lovers—can they be
dignified with such a holy designation ?—after his
usual fashion. The composer indulges in the
veriest trashy tunes, miserably treated, musically
speaking, during the orgies—for these abound
through the three acts, either on or off the stage—
in order to impart his strongest colouring to the
catastrophe, which, with all due deference to the
anti Verdi-ites, can be accepted as a masterpiece,
equalling almost his finale in the Trovatore. The
orchestral symphony preceding the rising of the cur-
tain foreshadows the denouement in solemn strains
from the stringed instruments ; the few bars heard
before the third act, and the whole of the music of
the dying frail heroine, are indeed worthy of a more
moral drama. The" Brindisi "of Violetta and Alfred
with the genteel guests, is catching, and is a pub-
lisher's prize ; and the great air of the barytone
father, in the second act, in the hands of an accom-
plished singer, would be most telling. Benevan-
tano's coarse and boisterous voice utterly failed to
inspire interest for the father, the only one in the
polluted circle who might relieve the horrible drama.
Still the music, if handled with tact, and with a
good band and chorus, might be rendered more
effective than it has been hitherto. Signor Bonetti,
the new conductor, understands his business, but if
he is not supplied with good materials—Cui bone ?
Piccolomini, the new prima donna, albeit the niece
of a cardinal and the descendant of a pope, is not a
phenomenon as an actress, and she is assuredly as
yet not a singer. In her latter capacity she has
everything to learn. She cannot yet sing the sim-
plest scale artistically. Her attack of the notes is
by means of the " sliding scale," a species of slur-
ring, showing smallness of study and poverty of
practice. The quality of the voice is a shrill
s,,prano, screamy and harsh in the upper
notes, and with little " timbre " in the lower
ones. Her intonation is not always accurate.
In the two first acts (acid this notice is written after
the second hearing) Piccolomini would be pronounced
by persons then leaving the theatre a failure ; but
in the death scene her dramatic powers predominate,
and hopes for the future are confidently inspired.
But this future will depend essentially on very hard
study. Is her fate to be that of so many juvenile
singers in Italy, who make their debuts, complete
novices in the vocal art, in Verdi's straining operas,
on the strength of young and fresh voices, which dis..
appear in three or four seasons? Is Piccolomini's
fame to be merely transitory, like that of Sophie
Cruvelli, who was endowed by nature with such a
magnificent organ, but whose progress was checked
by the ill-considered eulogies of ber critical parti.

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