, 1876-07-12

servant, or rather slave, within the palace,
and still utterly igp0rant-behave amidst such
a scene : And then the third soene-the Sui
tan and his sons, aud the women and the
slaves, floating down the Bosphorus to
prison, with guards !" ordered to slay the
whole party if they resist the monarch silent.
bus protesting, and half -paralysed with min,
gled amaZ8ment, rage, and fear. What can
be more natural, or what, to the modern
and Western notions Of people who expect
dethroned kings to go away unohtrusively to
England, more perfectly operated One seems
to see Giuglini's pantOmime, as the mimic
fleet, With the singer as Sultan, aud the wood.
en- soldiers, and the huddled women, are roWed
slowly and silently across the stage into the outer
darkness. Granted a beautiful scene, a grand
catastrophe necessarily extremely sudden, ex.
cited and impassive pers0nages, great ladies
with dishevelled hair and furious speech-the
Sultana Waldo is said to have recalled her
youth. and expressed herself in energetic
Turkish BillingSgate-and threats of death.
and that actual " Committal to the Tower"
which was once so real an episode in the life
OF the English great, though now the desorip-
tl0n reads like q noyelist's "pYoperty, " and
we have all the elements which make up
theatrio tragedy, and which, though they have
grown 80 old and so meaningless, were once as
real as Newgate.yard and the galIows aud the
HAu5uAUu anu lax NulCAulo lOH dl6 W GuC JUL
demAed. The early tragedians did not invent
their " situations. > They described WHAT
they knew to have occurred, and the situations
seem only STACEY now because they represent
q life which in Europe has passed away, though
it continues in the East. We execute, but
after long formalities, aud we arrest, but it is
through unarmed men in blue coats, who do
not oondesoend to threaten.
1901 Al t.. IL I II
Is one which, as it is described, an early trage-
dian would have loved to depict,-the de-
thr0ned monarch in his Imprisonment, raging az
only an Oriental can rage-that Is, as Rossi
or Salyini would rage, II theatrio emotion had
put them really beside themselves-muttering,
cursing, praying, now dashing his head against
the wall, and then forcing himself into soorn-
full calm, as tho officer appeared to demand
his arms, lest he should kill himself, it is said,
but by possibility also lest he should strug-
gle too violently for his life. The revolver is
aurrendered-it is characteristic of Oriental
manners that the officer would not touch 1t
till the sx-Sultan had laid it out of his hand
and then came the s%cornfuI question.
"If they, Sir, are so careful of my life,
Why leave that sabre here 2"
and the cunning, half-maniacal demand for
the scissors, which may we'll serve instead of a
pOniaTQ, the sharp 6t8DS, the silence, the Inr0aQ
of shrieking women, and finally, the half, fren-
zied mother, who struggles in vain to terminate
her life by throwing herself from the lofty VIM
dow oftho palace. The scene is painfully theatre
cal, but it is so only because the men who gave
US our stereotyped impression of the theatre
depicted scenes they knew to have occurred,
and which occur still in Turkey, where, if the
other story be true, and Abdul Aziz were done
to death, the scene with the man sinking under
his sleeping potion, and his arms then cut
whilo he was p~aralysed for resistance and
incapable Of pain, but alive enough to bleed,
must have been equally theatric, equally like a
scone from Titus Andronicus or King John.
Every violent incident, except an ordinary
murder, now strikes Englishmen as unreal
but violence in high places is still one Of the
conditions of Eastern life, rs it once was Of
European. The temper Of the day makes men
too intolerant of exaggeration, too much
inclined to set down everything sensational as
untrue, and more especially anything sensational
which assumes a CHASTITY callousness or a
debase 1 timidity in the surrounding population.
Captain Mayne Reid's villa novels are spoiled
for grown up readers by the fendish cal
~lousness he attributes to Mexicans, the readi-
ness With which they tolerate or sanction afro
cities which, to the European mind, are i'm
possible or sickeniog. Yet what story that
he ever told or invented-we suspect he has
invented very little of the scenicaIly horrible
deliberateneSs Of Mexican observation-disclosures
near this statement, seriously and indeed Incl