The Sun.
London, England, 1864-06-14 00:00:00

111 E SUN', LONDON, TUESDA EVENING, JUNE 14, 1864.

and more judiciously than our now excluded elec-
tors when once they are a3mitted to the franchise.
They will be eager to show how well they deserve
the privilege, how fairly they are able to judge of
those political questions on which they were sup-
posed to be mere wrongheaded enthusiasts. We
trust before long that when thanks are returned for
the Lower House the speaker may felicitate his
hearers on the fact that that House does fairly re-
present the English people.

LATEST DITELLIGENCE.

[R4UTER'S TELEGRAMS.]

POLAND.
LEIPSIC, JUNE 13,

The Oyczyzna of to-d 3 says:—

" The RtliitlnS have rased the village of Pras-
zauba, in Poland. The inhabitants had bastinadeed
and children have been sent
ahaslpfynakledietno, wmSiberia,en,

" A decree of the National Government prohibits
the purchase of national landed property sold by
the
Russians,a the sale to be null and void
even
hand."declari g
t third

.........., J.....

SPAIN.
MADRID, JUNE 13.
At Coimbra, fires have occurred in the houses of
several of the professors. Suspicions have fallen
n the
of students,some thein consequence of which the
Councilreauntil
University hare suspended the lee.
u
provision has been made for the
to r
security of the professore.

FRANCE.
PARIS, JUNE 14 (Morning

The Moniteur of to-day regards the death of Si-
El-Azarey as calculated promptly to disorganise
the insurrection.
Telegrams from Algiers announce that addi-
tional tribes had given in their submission.
The attitude of the Kabyles is pacific.

BOURSE, June 12.—The arrival of the English
funds with a decline of 8 has had a depressing effect
on the market. Threes, for the Account, have re-
ceded to 66f. 70c., and Mobilier to 1,090 f. Railway
Shares have been rather offered, and many of the
lines are at present quoted at lower prices. The
market continued heavy to tile close, and Mobilier
showed a farther decline. Business left off as
follows :

41 per Cents. .....• 93 25 Italian L0an...... 69 70
Do. end month.... Do, end month.... 69 60
3 per Cents ..... 66 75 Ditto Threes ..
Do. end month.... 66 95 Nev Mexican .• . 5711
Credit Mobilier.... 1087 50 Russian -
Bank Shares ...... 3400 ipsnish Threes.
Credit 1' onciar ...• 1240 Horne Debt ..... .
Roman

LITERATURE,

A Brilliant Managerial Career.

Reminiscences of the Opera. By Benjamin Lumley.
One vol., pp. 448. Hurst and Blackett.
Daring a full noire of years Mr. Lumley was
Director of that greattLyrical establishment in the
Haymarket, familiarly known to our fathers and
grandfathers as The King's Theatre, to ourselves as
Her Majesty's Theatre, An Operatic Manager at all
times is, in his way, somewhat of a Potentate, He
lives in the rarified atmosphere of what, by way of
especial distinction, is emphatically termed Society.
He floits upon the surface of the cream of the cream.
He is not simply an unit, but a very important unit
in the midst of the Upper Ten Thousand. Nor is
this all—his power, influence, prestige, whatever
you may like to call it, extends far beyond the
walls of his Grand Opera House, wherever that
may chance to be situated, whether in Pall•mall
or in Covent-garden. It extends far even beyond
the outer borders of Mayfair, of Belgravia, of
Tyburnie—it extends beyond the Channel—it ad-
vances into the capitals of all the great leading
Powers of the European Continent—it penetrates
into the Cabinets of Statesmen, even into the
Cabinets of Sovereigns. Of all this, if attesta-
tion is required by the incredulous, the fullest and
the amplest attestation is certainly afforded by
these Reminiscences of Mr. Lumley's. As a reper-
tory of anecdote, we have not for a long while met
with anything at all comparable to these unusually
brilliant and most diversified Reminiscences, They
reveal the Twenty-years' Director of Her Ma-
jesty's, to us, in the thick and throng of all his
radiant associations. They take us luringly—as it
were led by the button-hole—behind the scenes,
in every sense of that decoying and profoundly
attractive phrase. They introduce us to all the
stars, now singly, now in very constellations. They
bring us rapidly, delightfully, exhilaratingly—as
we turn the pages containing them, that is, con-
taining these charming recollections—to a know•
ledge so intimate of what has really been doing
there in the Realm of Song, not only behind the
scenes and in the green-room, but in the recep-
tion apartment of the director himself, that
we are au courant with all the whims
and oddities of the strange world in
,which he fills
so high and responsible a position. Reading Mr.
Lumley, we now know more than we have ever
known before of such Queens of the Lyric Stage as
Pasta, and Catalani, and Malibrao, and Grisi,
and Sontag, and Piccolomini—cf such light-
footed Lilies of the ballet es Taglioni,
and Fanny Eisler and Cerito—of such primi
tenori as Rubini, and Mario, and Gardoni,
and Giuglini— of each baritones as Ronconi
and Tamburini, or of such bassi profondi as the won-
drous Standigl and the mighty Leblacne. Nay, Mr.
Lumley takes us out of the glare of the footlights,
away from the clang of the orchestra into the di cam-
haunted presence of the great composers of the age,
bringing us face to face, as it were, among others,
with Rsseini, and Mendelssohn, and Meyerbeer,
and Verdi, and Balfe, and Donizetti. He lets
us into the mysteries of his correspondence
in regard to the successful acquisition by him now
of an Italian, now of a German artiste, foe whom
rival Operatic Managers, rival Ministers of State,
occasionally even rival Kings and Emperors are
contending—he lets us, we say, into the mysteries
of his correspondence in respect to such nego-
tiations, cow with Count Cavour, now with
Prince Metternich. For—in his doings, in
his movements, in his negotiations, Sove-
reigns, Prime Minieters,Ambaesadors,Governments
are turn by turn not merely vaguely and cour-
teously, but directly and profoundly interested! It
is pleasantly illustrative of the extraordinary variety
of people of eminence in different ways with
whom Mr. Lumley, as Director of Her Majesty's
Theatre, was brought into familiar communication,
according to a homely idiomatic expression,
"rubbed elbows," where we fled him mention-
ing, among a crowd of kindred incidents, the
circumstance of his standing vis a vis once upon
a time with the Emperor Napoleon 111., then
Prince Louis Napoleon, in a quadrille with
Carlotta Grisi, Cerito and Taglioni, at the Great
Operatic Director's own well-known vi!la at
Fulham, " The Chancellor's!" That ultra suburban
haunt of the Fashion, wnere he used to collect
together on the ';smooth shaven lawns," among
the flower beds and the shrubberies, all that
was to be found most interesting, season after season,
in the Westeend districts of the metropolis. The Re-
miniscences here recounted, in symmetrical order,
if not always with the strictest regard to chrono-
logical arrangement, extend over a period of two-
and-twenty years, beginning in 1836 and ending in
1858, within which interval lie the scorn of years,
already referred to, as marking the epoch of Mr.
Lumley's reign at Her Majesty's, as Director. These
twenty years, it would hardly be any extravagance
to assert, were, all things considered, the most
resplendent in the history of that superb establish-
ment. Remembering it, as he does, in the palmiest
days of his very memorable management, Mr.
Lumley speaks of it, and we can't wonder in the
least at his doing so (bearing in mind, that is, what
his recollections must be) as " the noblest lyrical
theatre of Europe." Troubious though the history
of it has been from first to last, it has always been
profoundly interesting. It was so in the days of
Mr. Taylor, the first lessee of the King's Theatre.
It is so still—with such artistes yet on the
boards as Titiens and Giuglini—under the Skilled
and enterprising and undaunted direction of the
present manager of Her Majesty's, Mr. Mepleson.
From the hands of Mr. Taylor who, by mortgaging
and selling the boxes, began the complications,
thenceforth trammelling the enterprise, year
after year, increasingly, the establishment
passed for a brief time into the possession
of Mr. Goold— thence through a series of dis•
tressing Chancery suits to Mr. Goold's executor,
Mr. Waters—and not long afterwards from thelatter
to the banker Chambers. The father-in-law of the
popular novelist, Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, in other
words, that miniature Mudie of his day, Mr.
Ebere, first of the Library, later on of the King's
Theatre, held the latter for seven tolerably success-
ful, at any rate not disastrous, years under his
management. Ho had taken the great opera house
at the beginning of those seven years from Mr .
Chambers, and at the end of them handed it over to
Mr. Laporte. From the management of the last-
mentioned Director, it was that the King's
Theatre, afterwards Her Majesty's Theatre, passed
into the possession, under the direction, under the
mastery of Mr. Lumley. Mr. Lumley, as the world
knows, originally having to do with the House and
its affairs, purely in his capacity as Mr. Laporte's
peal adviser—finally assuming the sole sway there
-'v memorable years as, himself, in his
Director. As exemplars at
i'v interesting incidents
of his sparkling
ne. several

for twee..,
turn, Lessee an,.

once of the delightfui.,
he here has to recount, anti
vivacity of manner while recounting tab—.
passages of the attractive work now under noi._
tempt us to give them by way of illustrative quota-
tion; Torn away from the context piecemeal,
though they are; given thus though they necessarily
must be in a mere fragmentary shape, they will
serve to justify our commendation of the book as
one more than simply readable throughout. A
book as enthralling, let us say, as an anecdotal
talk over a cigar in a Richmond-hill balcony,
upon a summer's evening, with some most
agreeable companion, who, besides being an agree-
' able companion, has a good deal to tell from his
own experience, and who, beyond all that, is a bril-
liant conversationalist. After this fashion, as be-
tween the puffs of our cigar, we listen to Mr. Lumley
while he thus recounts to us his vivid remembrance
of Jenny Lind's Debut :
The brilliant appearance of the house inside was increased
by the presence of the Queen and Prince Albert, the Queen
Dowager and Duchess of Kent, who had all come to witness
the debut of Jenny Lind. On the entrance of the newprima
donna as Alice, the welcome given to one who, though un-
known, had already won renown, was unusually enthu Antic.
For a few moments she appeared bewildered and" scare
but her self-possession returned. Her very first notes seemed
to enthral the audience. The cadenza at the end of her
opening air—the whole of which was listened to with a
stillness quite singular—called down a hurricane of applause.
From that moment her success was certain. The evening
went on, and before it ended, Jenny Lind was established
as the favourite of the English opera public. Voice, style,
execution, meaner, acting—all doliglated, The triumph

Messrs.

was achieved. At the end of the performance, the Queen,
who during the entire evening had repeatedly manifested
hei extreme satisfaction, expressed to me he: admiration
La a lona arta
ii.tiner that showed how deep an impres-
" What a beautiful singer I"
sion had teen made upon
" What an actress << Hoc ohm -ling 1" " How delight-
ful i" Those were the exclamations that 11 from the lips of
her Majesty, whom I had never before seen thus ra"" to
enthusiasm.

As the aroma of the regalia floats off into the even-
ing air from the Richmond balcony, hear him es he
discourses about Mademoiselle Rachel:--
In " Bajazet," in " Andromaque,” in " Marie Stuart,"
she electrified the house, and even in the monotonous
" Ariane," of Thomas Corneille, and the dull " Tancrdde,"
of Voltaire, she worked up her audience by the great force
of her impersonations to a state of frantic admiration,
Great indeed must have been the power of this young actress
to have not only reconciled the Euglleh taste to the un-
congenial claesicalities of French " legitimate" tragedy,but
to have produced in her audience a petitive enthusiasts.
It is a genuine fact, that many ladies fainted from emo-
tion curieg these representations. One was carried in-
sensible from the theatre, in spite of all efforts to recover
leer. On this circumstance being told to an American
maaag-er, he exclaimed, " Oh, that's nothing I she ought
to have died in the theatre I the effect would have been
tremendous—what a good puff lost I" Thu humble origin
of Mademoiselle Rachel is well known; but few perhaps
are aware that she had not received in her youth the com-
monest rudiments of education, and that she taught herself
writing merely by copying the manuscript of others. Oa
her first introduction into high society she was greatly
embarrassed by the conventions of the table, and the ques-
tion that once arose in her mind, at a grand dinner, as to
the proper use of the knife and fork in the consumption of
asparagus, was infinitely embarrassing.
Among the earliest of his recollections, he thus re-
lates the stirring aspect of the KIIN's Theatre
during the height of " The Tatuburitti Row :"
The famous omnibus boxes were filled towards the con-
clusion of the opera, with tha fashionable allies of the
coalition; and it was from this quarter that, on the fall of
the curtain, the uproar first commenced. Shouts of " Tam-
burini I" "Laporte I" " Tareburini I" were taken up and
echoed by partisans, and easily-led public clamourers, in
various parts of the house; whilst many of the genuine
public raised the counter cries of " Shame !" "No inti-
midation I" "Don't be bullied I" arid even evidenced
their sense of the real cause of the disturbance by shouting,
"Turn out the omnibus!" responded to by the occupants
with cries of "You had better try," Several times
Monsieur Laporte appeared, and endeavoured to
address the audience, but the deafening clamour
rendered him inaudible. Yells, hisses, shouts, over-
powered every other sound. A tort of stormy conference
took place during this scene of confusion between the ma.
nager and the tenants of the omnibus boxes, whose rage
seemed to increase as the "row" warmed their blood. The
curtain at last rose upon the ballet. Cerito was that evening
to have made her first appearance. For more than an hour
the scared coryphdes stood ready to begin. In vain ! For
the fourth time M. Laporte appeared. He seemed to have
succumbed, for in answer to direct appeals on the point, ho
promised to make propositions to Tamburini. But even
this did not appear sufficient to the originators of the row.
They still hooted, and at last, the whole of the noble and
fashionable occupants of the omnibus boxes leaped on the
stage, among them a young Prince of the Blood. The cur-
tain now fell definitively, and, amidst the sympathetic
cheers of one portion of the house and the hootings of
another, the gallant chevaliers of the " omnibus' waved
their hate triumphantly, and shouted Victory /e
Altogether these " Reminiscences" of Mr. Lumley,
as Operatic Manager for twenty years at the Grout
Lyrical Theatre in the Haymarket, ought to have
been written ! And now that, in recognition of this
fact by Mr. Lumley himself; they have been written
thus delightfully and, all will admit, most emus-
jegly, we are rejoiced that they have been jotted
town and given to the world during his own life
time, by the weliaknown areetor's own hand

almost, w© had said, in the very form, certainly
with all the authority of an autobiography.

A Fatal Error; or, The Vyviannes. By J. Mas-
terman. Two Vols. Smith, Eider, and C
The story of Constance Vyvianne—who arrives,
a little timid child, from India, to prove a bone of
contention to her uncongenial relatives—in the first
chapter—who, shortly afterwards, falling into the
hands of a novel-reading lady, undergoes a danger-
ous apprenticeship of sentimentelity—aad who ulti-
mately, under the influence of the "fatal error"
which overcasts the sunshine of her lite, enacts
(under mistaken views) the part of a heroine, is a
most interesting story, and is most charmingly
narrated. We cannot but think the conduct et
Constance, even under her "error," a great mistake,
but we shall not here enter into a particular ana-
lysis of that conduct lest we should reveal the
mystery of the book. The first volume, and the
early portion of the second, before the occurrence of
the event which leads to the "fatal error," is by for
tee most pleasing. The various characters are very
happily delineated, and the domestic sketches are
singularly attractive. Bolton Lance, the lively
sailor hero, is a most delightful character, and
assuredly deserves better treatment than he
meets with from his mistaken bride. Major
Vyvianne is gay and selfish, and Gabriel Lance,
his admiring shadow, occasionally appears to be
an imitation of Lord Dundreary. The first volume
is enlivened by an election, and the second con-
tains a very interesting account of the rescue of
some miners, buried in the earth. The conver-
sations with which both volumes abound are, for
the most part, sprightly and animated, and the
nevel_reader who seeks to be pleasurably enter-
tained will indeed commit a " fatal error" if he
neglect to make acquaintance with " The
Vyviannes.''

_Expeditions on the Glacier. By a Private of the
38th (Artists) Rifle Volunteers. Pp. 120.
E. and F. N. Spon.

This little brochure, written by a member of the
Alpine Club, gives a very animated and interesting
record of en actual ascent of Mont Blanc, "the
monarch of mouutairs," of Monte Rosa, of the
Col du Geant,and of Molt Btu.t. Appended to the
narrative is an extract from the writer's bill at the
Royal Hotel at Chamouniz for provisions required
for the ascent of Mont Blanc, and other practical
information calculated to prove serviceable to in-
tending travellers.

The Girls' Journal, Parts I. and 11.

The " boys" have for some time past bad a maga-
zine of their own, and now a new periodical makes
its appearance for the benefit of the "girls." The
contents appear to resemble the Family Herald and
the Lady's Newspaper, without possessing the par-
ticular merits of either. The " patterns" given
may be very acceptable for the work-table, and the
novelettes may wile away a passing hour, but we
could wish for the leisure hours of the girls of
land a more profi:,t,ble employmerA. !weed of
imitating the sensational effects now so mach
admired by older novel writers, the projectors of
this new journal should endeavour to grace its pages
with simple tales of sterling merit, such as the
writings of Maria .Edgeworth and M.ry Russel
Mitfent. A reprint of some of those deservedly
popular works, with original stories of a similar
character, such as Miss Tytler or the author of the
" Heir of Rt:delyffe" might contribute, would render
the Girls' Journal a valuable and enduring publi-
cation.

PRAED'S POETICAL WORKS will be published by
`,xon and Co., in two volumes, the first week in
'^z, the poet's sister, contributes a series
life, for the most part unpub-
Sir George,et will be s
YoungU is rev's-
pplied by

July, Lady Yot

of poems written in earl,
lished. Mr Praed's nephew, -
ing the text ; and a memoir of the jr-

the Rev. Derwent Coleridge. 'bon], of
REROVL, POET AND BAKER.—AL.
Nismes, died on the 29th May, in his native to,,
after long and painful sufferings. lie was born in 1796, and
continued to furnish his fellow townsmen with fresh rolls
all his life, although his poems had been received so
favourably. The first collection of his "Pussies" appeared
in 1836, introduced by Lamartine and A. Dumas. Lamar-
tine's muse has evidently strongly influenced Rsboul's
genius, which was not or power sufficient ever to take quite
an original footing, In 1846, a second collection followed.
In 1848, Iteboul was member of the Assemblee Consti-
tuante, for the Gard department. The town of Nismes has
honoured its poet by a princely funeral, at which the Maire,
the Prefect, till the higher officials of the department Gard,
numerous officers of the army, the bishop, and all the
clergy assisted, accompanied by a vast crowd of people,
After three different addresses, a poem in Provencal dialect
was delivered at the grave. The town is about to erect a
mausoleum to his memory.
PATRIOTIC AMERICAN LADIES.—A recent letter
from Indianapolis says :—" The ladies of Indiana-
polis have energetically entered upon the work of recruiting.
Seven hundred of them, under tneir own names, in the
public pints, volunteer to take the places in business of as
many men who will go to the war. This is more than the
city's quota under the last call."