The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-12 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 12, 1863.

to shuffle off the expense and trouble of building
or repairing; others, from indolence, ignorance, or
indifference—three prolific sources of mischief—are
content to leave things as they found them, and are
in no way anxious to introduce startling innova-
tions or troublesome reforms. Still the evil is a

growing one, since our increasing population ren-
ders the scanty accommodation at present existing
more and more insufficient; and the ricketty cot-
tagesi
ornyf::t fortunatelandlordscv thinghe
and landowners generally can be convinced that it
is possible for them to make a good speculation
the same time that they fulfil a very pressing duty,
and that the exercise of the consideration and kind-
ness due to honest workmen and their families will
not make more than a temporary demand upon
their purses. The experiment has just been made
\vith signal success by a French nobleman, and
as he has carried out his designs in the most liberal
and benevolent spirt, the result of the trial is
especially gratifying. It will be remembered that
the great and striking improvements made in the
city of Paris during the present reign necessitated
the dislodgement of a large number of poor persons
who lived in the small houses and narrow streets
now swept away. Such people found it of course
no very easy matter to secure a home suited to their
limited means. Some of them, however, have
found a valuable friend in the Count DE MADRE.
This nobleman has built a number of houses adapted
to the wants of mechanics and their class, in which
the sanatory arrangements deserve unqualified
praise. The houses are four stories high, and,
according to the French custom, are let off in flats.
Each tenement is eight guineas per annum, or a
fraction more than 3s. 3d. per week, a sum for
which it is hardly possible to secure two decent
rooms in London. Yet for this money Count DE
MADRE provides in each division a sitting-room, a
bedroom, and a kitchen, in which there is a cooking
apparatus and means of letting off water. The
rooms are well papered, painted, and ventilated.
Each group of houses has its wasLhouse completely
fitted up, and to these the benevolent landlord
promises next year to add baths, for the use of
which a small payment will be required. That
large class who form such an important part of
every community, but whose welfare troubles so
little the thoughts of landlords and builders, are
also cared for in a very necessary particular. One
courtyard in each cluster is laid out as a playground
in which the children of the poor may freely obtain
those two vital elements of health and strength'
air and exercise. Count DE MADRE goes a step
farther than we suspect most landlords would
like to do, however benevolent their feelings.
He pledges himself never to eject a tenant
except for two causes very great mis-
conduct or persistent non-payment of rent. He
promises that, should a tenant be really unable to
pay, he will allow him to depart with his furniture,
It is satisfactory to know that his goodness has not
been abused, but that the enterprise has been en•
tirely successful, and returns to the charitable land-
lord and owner an interest of 6 per cent' on the
money invested. This is in reality the most impor-
tant fact in the scheme. Many equally Wise and
kind heads among ourselves have projected good
things for the working classes, and some have been
found to carry them out. But if we want to do
practical good we must face the question fairly.
The great body of houses and land in and around
the metropolis does not, and never will, belong to
disinterested friends of the poor, who are Willing to
sacrifice their profits for the good of their tenants,
and who hold their houses rather with the view
of carrying out their benevolent projects than as
a means of increasing their yearly rental. We
shall never get the substantial and Widespread
improvement that we want until we can prove to
landlords and landowners that gaol and whole-
some dwellings for the labouring classes can be
provided without loss, or rather with profit. It
is useless to reform here and there, to pull down
one choking alley and rebuild it, if the lane be-
hind is left untouched. We want something that
will come home to the majority of the wretched
tenements which, it is well known, are among
the most profitable of house properties. Our
remonstrances, our expostulations, our appeals to
their sense of justice and humanity may not be
very effective, but if we can bring forward the brief
but emphatic argument that is lodged in the little
letters £s. d., we shall have gained a potent ally
whose logic is generally unanswerable. The model
lodging-houses already tried have not been so suc-
cessful as their well-meaning proprietors hoped.
There are several faults in their construction, and
a want of adaptation to the habits of the poor; the
rents besides are so high as to be a serious draw-
back. Houses built on the scale of the Court de
Madras would be more likely to answer, especially
if the rents, like his, could be reduced something
below that terrible rate that presses so heavily on
the poorer working classes. There is one aspect of
the case which might lead to immediate practical
good. Our metropolitan railways are in a great
measure playing the part of the Paris improve-
ments. They are turning the working classes out
of their houses and destroying them. Why should
they not invest a little capital on building blocks of
these houses, properly fitted up, at a :short distance
from Landon ? There is plenty of land to be had
cheap on the northern line, and they could let the
tenants have monthly tickets at a low rate for going
to th • eir work and returning home—thus ensuring
a double profit on 'the house and on the journey.
Such a scheme, while it would certainly bring the
three magic letters as its recommendations to rail-
way companies, would give the working classes the
great advantage of goal and clean dwelling places
in a pure air and at a reasonable rental. Working
meb would be glad to avail themselves of them,
and they would supply a want long felt and hardly
pressing on the most industrious members of the
community.

Mr. BUCKSTONE'S CHRISTMAS BURLESQUE will be
furnished by Dlr. William Brough.

DI. JULLIEN is about to give promenade concerts
at Her Majesty's Theatre, to commence in November.
MR. SOTHERN will, on his return to the London
stage, follow the illustrious Corsican Brothers' exauiple,and
play his own relation, " Tham." Mr. Tom Taylor has been
commissioned to write the piece, which will introduce this
long-expected individual.
BEL DEMONIO, the placard so entitled of late
observed about London, heralds a new drama, to be pro-
duced by Mr. Pechter at the Lyceum. It will be founded on
a new romance by Paul Feval. The season will probably
commence on October 24.

RENAN'S." VIE DE JESUS" is not popular in Ger-
many ; and, it is said, of the three translations not one will
cover the expense of the printing.

IN YORK MINSTER a second organ is to be placed
in the third opening of the nave arcade on the north side
from the central tower, the front pipes to range with the
piers; the back of the instrument will project into the aisle
behind it, and will not, it is averred, interfere with the view
of the stained-glass windows.
ROBERT TROLLOP the builder of the exchange
on Sandhill, at Newcastle-nu-Tyne, had his tombstone
made during his lifetime, adorned with his own effigy point-
ing to the Exchange, visible on the Newcastle side of the
Tyne from the high ground of Qateshead churchyard, and
inscribed with the lines,—
Hero lies Robert Trollop
Who made yor stones :oil up ;
When des( h tock his soul up
His body fill'd this hole up.,
The inscription, however, will now be sought for in vain in
the churchyard,

DRITRY-LANE THEATRE.

" MANFRED."

The announcement that appeared in the bills of
this theatre, that Messrs. Falconer and Chatterton
intended to produce Lord Byron's choral tragedy
of " Manfred" with extraordinary splendour, na-
turally created the greatest interest amongst play-
goers, both old and young, and for weeks the event
has been looked forward to with more than ordi-
nary curiosity. That everything would be done in
the most complete menner was certain from the
fact that Mr. Phelps had been engaged to sustain
the part of Count Manfred, and also to arrange and
superintend the production of the tragedy. We
must confess to a certain extent we had our
doubts as to the result of the bold experiment,
because it will be recollected that the great
poet congratulated himself in one of his
letters to his publisher, Mr. Murray, that
he had at least rendered the work impossible for
stage representation. In another of his letters be
says, " I composed it (Manfred) actually with a
horror of the stage, and with a view to render the
thought of it impracticable, knowing the zeal of my
friends that I should try that for which I have an
invincible repugnance—viz., a representation ;" and
further on, "You may call it a poem, for it is no
drama, and I do not choose to have it called by so
d— a name—a poem in dialogue, or a pantomime
if you will; anything but a green-room synonyme."
With such a strong declaration from its gifted
author, and the experience that its production some
five and twenty years ago had wrought, it must be
admitted on all hands it was a bold venture on the
part of the managers of Drury-lane to undertake
its production, but that determination was tempted
and formed no doubt by the grand descrip-
tions of the various aspects of nature with
which Lord Byron had enriched his work, and
also by the matchless skill of the scenic artists
attached to the theatre. However, upon whatever
ground the matter was decided, it has been done,
and in a manner that will create the greatest won•
der and delight to thousands. Long before the
hour of opening the doors of the theatre, a crowd
assembled outside each of the various entries that
forcibly reminded many of the days of the great
Edmund Kean and Malibran, when all London was
wrought up to fever heat by the performances of
two such gifted artists. At half-past six the doors
were opened, and then a rush took place that will
be long remembered by those present, and fortunate
was either lady or gentleman who gained admit-
tance to the theatre without damaged and wrecked
attire. Within ten minutes after the admission of
the public every seat in the theatre was occu-
pied, and the scene presented was one of the greatest
animation. Prior to the commencement of the
tragedy a small pamphlet was circulated in the
theatre, and we cannot do better than give a para-
graph or two from it, because it will serve, in some
degree, to those unacquainted with the work, as an
oatline of the character of Manfred :—" The mix-
ture of remorse forsome hidden, fate-impelled crime,
and of haughty disdain for all the ways of men,
forming the constituent ingredients of this brooding,
self-devouring melancholy which the poet loved to
attribute to his heroes, is in Manfred idealised be-
y. ond human proportions. The mystery of his crime
is shrouded in hints so terrible, yet so impenetra-
bly dark, that the imagination fears to speculate on
its nature ; it seems that, if it were uttered, the
universe would be convulsed. His self-isola-
tion is so complete that it raises him
above merely mortal nature, and leaves him
nothing
human but the power of feeling
and suffering; and it is this intense self-assertion
--this absolute independence, moral and intel-
lectual, of all communion with created man, that
seems to lend him his strange power over the hid
den elements of nature rather than the magical
studies of which he speaks. Unlike the other moody
and naisanthropical heroes of the poet—Lara, Con-
rad, Childe Harold—who still preserve some ves-
tiges of ordinary human instincts, he neither seeks
to numb the gnawing agony within by plunging
into daring and wild adventures, nor indulge his
sullen and splenetic pride in reviewing the scenes
of history and hurling taunting sarcasms at the
Petty deeds of men. He is attached to earth only
by the memory of some beautiful and passionately
beloved being, who is herself no longer of earth, her
death being associated with the terrible unspeak-
able crime that inspires his torturing cureless re-
morse. Amidst the awful beauty and grandeur of
Alpine scenery, where his ancestral abode is fixed,
and with which no has from childhood been familiar,
he lives alone with hisinextinguisheble sorrow and
his unconquerable disdain for mortal nature ;
the only refuge he seeks from his anguish
and desolation is the contemplation of nature in
her terror and in her loveliness, and his only deal-
ings are with the potent spirits that preside over the
elements, and over whom his magical studies have
given him power—a power, however, which avails
him nothing towards assuaging the tortures of his
mind. Another essential, and, so to speak, personal
caaracteristic of Lord Byron's genius, is here thus
developed :—His intense love for all the changeful
moods and aspects of nature—a love so deep and
reverential that it amounted almost to a religion,
and has inspired him with passages, the grandeur
and elevation of which, combined with their in-
tens&y-vivid picturesque truth, have
.never been
surpassed. Of these splendid tributes to the
mightiness and beauty of creation, the poem " Man-
fred" possesses more than one; and the address to
the Sun, as Manfred, from the window of his an-
cestral hall, sees it setting in glory for the last
time—his death on the following day having been
foretold by Astarte, when her spirit is evoked in the
hall of Aricnanes, is impressed with a calm sub-
limity which is more characteristic of Milton than
of Byron."
The mortal parts were sustained as follows :
Manfred, Mr. Phelps; a Chamois Hunter, Mr. A.
Rayner; the Abbot of St. Maurice, Mr. Ryder.
The immortal, by Miss Atkinson, Mre. E. Falcone:,
Miss Heath, Miss Poole, Miss Rose Leclerq, Miss
E. Hoywood, Miss Cecily Nott. At the termina-
tion of the overture the curtain slowly rose, and
discovered the study of the arch-enchanter Man-
fred. On the appearance of Mr. Phelps, which
of
the most extraordinary nature was given him. I o
takes place immediately afterwards, a reception
say the audience applauded would be to say nothing,
as each and every one present seemed perfectly
wild in their endeavour to express the pleasure
they felt in seeing him on the stage of Drury-lane.
Again and again he bowed his thanks, but no in-
creased cessa-
tion of applause took place ; on the contrary, it
to a perfect hurricane ; certainly we
have never seen a more exciting scene, and truly
Mr. Phelps may say, with Edmund Kean, the
"house rose" at him. At length, the cheering
waving of hats and handkerchiefs having sub-
sided, the tragedy proceeded, amidst the moat
breathless silence. The wonderful imaginings of
the immortal poet were declaimed by Mr. Phelps
with taste, care, and
great judgment; many
instances he rose to a great height in
declamation
His asking for self-obltvion—his description of the
chamois hunter's simple life—his crushed and
heart-broken appeal to the spirit of his loved
Astarte—and his interview with the Abbot of
St. Maurice, were brilliant specimens of elocution,
and called forth the most enthusiastic applause.
At times he gave way to certain mannerisms and
tricky effects, but they were few and far between;
so far, indeed, that the beauty of the greater part
of the reading entirely effaced them from the recol-
lection. The other characters are so mfinitessimally
small, that but very little room is left for display by
those to whom they are, allotted. Manfred is the
others
part, the being merely used as helps to great
effects. Mr. Rayner's delivery of the few lines
allotted the Chamois-taunter was artistic and fault-
less. Mr. Ryder of course was correct and forcible,
but Miss Rose Leclerq's uttering of the two words
composing her part, Manfred" and "farewell,"
was a marvel of exquisite tenderness.
With respect to the scenery, it is certainly the
most magnificent that has ever been produced. In
fact, we cannot find words that will adequately con-
vey an idea of the expanse, beauty, and reality of
the principal of them. The precipice and glaciers
near the summit of the Jungfrau in the first act is a
wonderful effort, but the most wonderful of all is the
Steinbach waterfall in the second. The rising of
the Witch of the Alps, amidst a spray of myriads of