The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-10-22 00:00:00

ject. from the preliminary destruction of the church of

land, in the effecting of which its future victims is now made

so prominent an instrument
It has been urged, indeed, that no such feeling of aversion
to the Roman Catholic church is to be found in the breast of
your modern liberal—that the spirit of persecution which dis-
tinguished the fanaticism of the commonwealth is extinct in
the present day. Be it. so. But, we ask, has
spirit taken its place? Has any feeling more in consonance
with the views or with the prejudices (if you like) of an
Anglo-Catholic gentry been substituted ? Is there any one
feature of the many-headed thing which can draw towards it,
or ought to draw towards it, for Us own sake, the respect or
the affection of such a body of men? On the contrary there
is no such feeling ; there is nothing to excite either
or respect in the breast of the conscientious member of the
church of Rome, who is at the same time a loyal and pa-
triotic English gentleman. Upon this point we may be al-
lowed to quote from a letter addressed to LORD EDWARD
HOWARD by ANGLO-CATHOLICUS," in which the policy
required from the English Roman Catholics, (and which has
already been adopted by the Roman Catholic gentry in our
own county,) is traced with an able hand, and in bold and
vivid colours.
" In the stern, unrelenting, uncompromising fanaticism of
a BROOKE, or a PRYNNE, I can see something to respect ;
but allow me to ask, what do you see in the conduct of a
MACAULAY or a BAINES to remind you of catholic virtues
or anti-catholic greatness? Too selfish and too sensual to
believe in catholic verities themselves, it is true your modern
liberals will not restrain or inveigh against Protestant heresy,
nor Roman Catholic superstition ; but do they, therefore,
the more respect your belief, or the less indulge the lax
irreverence of their tongues ? And yet it is with these men
you are to ally yourselves! With these men are the How-
! ARDS, and the EVRES, the DE CLIFFORDS, and the
TOWNLEYS, and the THROCKMORTONS, and the VAVA-
SOURS, the CONSTABLES, and the JERNINGHAMS, to swear
eternal friendship, and ' merge all minor differences' in—
what ? One grand scheme for propagating the faith ? For
resisting a foreign enemy ? or rallying round the old citadel
of the monarchy ? Alas ! no ; but to strengthen the en-
feebled powers of latitudinarianism and dissent, and prop up
a tottering administration, who claims your support to
divorce religion front the state—regards the ballot-box with
greater reverence than the font—and exalts the will of the
people over the voice of the church."
And such, we believe, is the spirit which is gradually
taking possession of the minds of the Roman Catholic
gentry, not of England alone, but of Ireland itself. A feel-
ing of deep repugnance to he dragged in unreflecting help-
lessness at the chariot-wheels of a truculent democracy—to
be bandied about at the price of a mendicant's immunity is
fast rallying to the side of law and order, the well-disposed
and conscientious members of the Romish church on both
sides of the channel ; and before many months have elapsed,
we venture to predict that a vast majority of the Roman Ca-
tholic aristocracy and gentry will be found, if not imitating
the example of their fellow religionists in Lancashire, by
taking up their position to stem the advancing waters of
democracy and irreligion, at least convinced—(to quote the
language of the same eloquent writer)—that the time has
arrived " when those who desire to stand upon the old ways
—to maintain the old things—to keep up the old English"
(and Irish)—" aristocracy—to preserve what title remains of
eld fashioned charity and social intercourse between the

any better

`faction

higher and the lower classes, must make up their minds to
withdraw from the fellowship of the atheist, the democrat,
and the dissenter, and the leveller ; or be content to close
their eyes, and go down the stream into the sea whereunto is
no bottom."

THEATRE-ROYAL.-"THE POSTILION OF
LONJUMEAU."

Another new opera under this title has been produced at
our Theatre, but we have not had an opportunity of witnessing
its representation. It is thus described by a contemporary

The plot is simple, but clever and effective. The piec'e opens
with a chorus of villagers in celebration of the wedding of
Chapelou (Mr. Wood), a postilion, the handsome but fickle
beau of the village, and Madeline (Mrs. Wood), the young
and pretty hostess of the Fleur-de-lys. In the midst of the
merriment, and while Chapelou is deprecating the arrival of
any traveller that night to interrupt the nuptial fke, the ill-
omened crack of a whip is heard, and a most important tra-
veller makes his appearance in the person of the Marquis de
Courcy, and demands the services of the reluctant Chapelou
for the next stage, in spite of his entreaties and those of his
pretty bride. The carriage of the Marquis has just broken
down while he is on a most important royal mission, namely,
seeking through town and country a first-rate tenor for the
opera, to supply the place of one whose default has suddenly
left the Marquis, who is director of the menus plaisirs of his
Majesty Louis XV., grievously in the lurch. The royal
commands are imperative and unconditional, to create, find,
or educate, a first-rate tenor, and, §s the Marquis, like other
managers, is aware that first-rate tenors are not quite " as

plenty as blackberries," he is in an amusing state of perplex-
ity and despair, till, on coming out of the little inn where he
has been waiting till his carriage is repaired, he hears the
voice of Chapelou singing his postillion song in the midst of
the villagers. The Marquis is astonished, enraptured, and,
as the song proceeds, beats time to it with an air of increas-
ing self-satisfaction, and, at length, draws the postilion apart
and offers to make his fortune by introducing him to the
king, telling the puzzled rustic that his B flat is magnificent.
After a short pause of incredulity the fickle bridegroom
accepts the offer, 4nd departs with the Marquis quite obli-
vious of his young wife, who is left for ten years in her bridal
widowhood. .

T• •.
The second act opens, after a lapse of ten years, at the
splendid chateau of Madame Latour, no other than the for-
saken bride, Madeline, who has become possessed of wealth
by the death of a relative. The Marquis is also there, as
gallant, but considerably more wrinkled, than before. He is
a suitor to Madame, unaware that she is already married,
and, by way of paying his court to her, brings the principal
vocalists of the Grand Opera, of which he is director, to
rehearse an opera of his own. With them comes Chapelou,
now Mons. de St. Phar, the first tenor in Paris, an exquisite
of the first water, whose captivations have made as much
havoc among the nymphs of the opera, as formerly among
the girls of his almost forgotten native village. He also is
ignorant of the real character of Madame Latour, but in-
stantly recognises her as the lady who has never missed
gazing at him from her opera-box every night for three
months. Chapelou is heartless and vain as ever, and intends,
by means of a sham marriage, to secure possession of the
lady, little drem)ling the nature of the real claim she has
already over him. The Marquis overhears the plot, and the
lady baffles it by getting the ceremony, which makes her
doubly the wife of her faithless lord, performed by a real
priest. With this the second act closes.
At the beginning of the third act, the Marquis discovers
that his successful rival has brought his life within the reach
of the law by this supposed act of bigamy, and goes in tri-
umph to fetch the myrmidons of the police. In the mean-
time the confederates who were to have conducted the sham

marnag

of his. p

II /11111161

scene takes place, in svfiich ti
and th
door
app
L

ey assuie him he will be hang,'....d.
their escape on hearing a loud knock at the
La add to this consternation, Madeline makes her
ace in her own dross as the waiting-maid of Madame

uropping the candle, with a scream of affected
astonishment, assails him in the darkness that ensues, now
side in her character of femme de chanibi.e, and then
as Madame Latour. After sufficiently tor-
menting her faithless lover, Madeline astonishes the assem-
bled characters, delights her husband, and mortifies the
Marquis, by declaring that the sole guilt of Chapelou is, that
he has married the same wife a second time ; the piece ending
with a reconciliation.

on the otti

The simple outline is well filled up with piquant and well
contrived situations which aemit of some very capital acting,
and the music, which is thorouzilly French, is very live]
and agreea

Chapels
of the

me honey-sweet pas'-

Is a very

4 the vain

thority of the wise women
e, that he might have made a much higher match.

liut;,p-bcked old shepherd with regard to
match. A capital

scene occurs in the

re the opera vo;ialists,
ore, suddenly all turn

hoarse wh
the former

en the marquis's' piece is about to be rehearsed, till
r, on discovering that the performance is for Ma-

t, gives them their cue by

ng Tree.

OUR. PORTFOLIO.—No. VI

In a world like this, when there is so much rough work,
it is, we think, a great misfortune to be overburthened with
sensibility. We may lose enjoyment, it is true, by a want
of refinement in our organisation, or by neglecting to culti-
vate it with sufficient assiduity; but if so, the balance of
comfort is restored, and more than that, by the manifold and
multiplied miseries which we escape. It matters very little
to what particular species of pleasure this highly-wrought
susceptibility may be directed—whether it be of the purely
poetical, the pictorial, or the musical kind ; in all cases a

alt similar in kind, though not perhaps in degree, must
ue. The bad, the indifferent, and the worst must in each
class exceed the good ; and the occasions of offence be con-
sequently more numerous than those of gratification. Of
the three, however, which we have enumerated, the third
seems to be that which we would say is most decidedly fertile
The days are gone by when poets used to insist
ag their own verses, and would hold the sufferer by
the toga, or, in later days, by the button-hole, while they
recited a hundred verses, standing on one leg ;—the lays of
the last vocal minstrel have long since been sung ; and your
poor ballad-singer scarcely dares to raise his voice at the
corner of the street, lest ho incur the penalties of sonic
" vagrom " act or other, or be driven on or booked with a
charge by some too neighbourly policeman. Bad poetry one
is not bound either to hear or read ; and as to sign-painters'
daubing—the stiff, the grotesque, the unnatural, or the ab-
surd, in outline or in colouring, in the divine art of Raphael,
Correggio, or Lawrence—there is nothing so easy as to shut
one's eyes, and not see it. But the man, or woman either,
who is afflicted with a fine musical ear, exquisitely improved
by study, is in quite a different case—a far worse condition.
e mercy of almost every wind that blows ; he may

in misery.

t, or, w

from