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elsewhere. Make food plentiful, i. e. in women of the right to use their own dis excess of the mouths, and the voluntary cretion as to the amount of work they will principle will relieve all Lord Ashley's anx-perform, is gross tyranny. Factory work iety about long hours. We will venture on is one of the few employments by which two illustrations. women can render themselves independent of the support of their relatives,—as a vicious father or brother, or a husband who will not maintain them and their children by his labor, but confines his attention to robbing them of their earnings according to law. A law which would protect a woman's right to her own earnings, beyond the control of a vicious husband, would indeed be a boon to the working classes.*

Some years back, while examining some new buildings at the workmen's dinner hour, we were unintentionally listening to the conversation of two laborers from the Emerald isle, who were planted in the sun behind some hoarding, dining on-smoke -two "dudeens." "Sure, Pat," said one of them, "it's I that wish wages was a guinea a day." "And what would ye be afther thin, Dennis ?" replied Pat. "Sure, and it's only one day in the week that I'd work, any how," was the rejoinder. We are satisfied that Dennis spoke the simple truth in this matter, and in no way needed Lord Ashley's paternal solicitude.

We object to any law which would interfere with the natural freedom of human action, other than the protection of individuals and society from the aggressions of other individuals. If, for example, a solitary man chooses, in an isolated spot, to live in an A very benevolent manufacturer in Lon- ill-drained and ill-ventilated house, or to don, who employed many workmen at their live on unwholesome or insufficient food, own dwellings, beheld, with compassion, society has no right to interfere with him; the misery they suffered from high rents but if he comes into proximity with other and wretched accommodation. They earn- people, the law ought to interfere to proed good wages, which, if well applied, tect their health from contamination. Also would have placed them in positions of we think the law may fairly interfere with great comfort. The work they were em-persons practising on the ignorance of othployed in was independent of locality, and ers for the sake of gain. If the owner of having purchased land in a healthy and the ill-drained and ill-ventilated solitary beautiful neighborhood, their employer fit-house tried to hire it to others, he should ted up several cottages, with gardens and be prevented from so doing, until it were every kind of convenience, and removed made wholesome. And we think society thither a certain number of families. He might fairly interfere with a nan keeping expected to get a greater amount of work his family in such a house, because the done, on account of their removal from wife and children are under his control, temptations to drunkenness. But in this and society may be endangered by the disresult he was disappointed. The men eases they may be subject to; therefore it preferred working in their gardens to work-is quite competent for society to say, that ing at their trade, and earned no more money than was sufficient for their maintenance, in spite of the remonstrances of their wives. If Lord Ashley will place the factory population in such a position as this, we will undertake that they shall not overwork either themselves, their wives, or their children.

after a certain period no houses shall be erected in any inhabited districts below a certain standard of health and comfort. It is certain that the children born in improved dwellings would be an improved race, and the question of food in no way interferes with this. There are a certain number of laborers and artisans constantly unBut it is only indirectly that Lord Ashley employed, who are, notwithstanding, fed, would interfere with the hours of working and their being employed in the construcmen. He professes to protect the children tion of better dwellings, i. e. working up and women of factories, and to say he will native material of all kinds for these and prescribe the hours for them, which is other useful purposes, would not add one equivalent, in other words, to prescribing shilling to the expenditure of the general the hours for the steam-engine and men community. The possession of better also. It is unquestionably right that chil-dwellings, with warmth and pure air, would, dren under age-not recognized as free- on the contrary, virtually increase the agents, but who are under the control of * This point was urged by Mr. Roebuck on the persons older than themselves—should be attention of the House of Commons in the late deprotected from ill treatment; but to deprive bates.

amount of food, for it is a fact that a person in impure air cannot well digest his food, and therefore requires to eat a larger amount to keep up his strength.

result would be-if we could conceive the possibility of such a thing-the downfall of English energy, English power, English mind, and a state of ruin and misery to the Had Alfred the Great passed efficient many nations, civilized, uncivilized, and sanatory laws, virtually prohibiting the ex- half-civilized, dependent on English guidistence of disease, i. e. prescribing the min-ance and English progress.

imum of physical comfort and health in We do not doubt that the movement dwellings and their concomitants, the prob- amongst the working classes-instinctive, ability is, that the increase of population but not yet perceptive-analogous to the would always have been restrained within the limits essential to national happiness,

"Blind motions of the Spring,
That show the year is turned,"

English genius has far outstripped. He is not a spirit of the age, he is but an appendage of a blind movement of the age, and Mr. Horne is a small dog, either leading or following him in the wake of Oastler and Company, who have donned the mantle inherited by the Chartist agitators from Robert Owen, who first propounded the "sacred month" in which the weary were to be at rest as a commencement of the millennium. Prosy, unreasoning, and im

and we should at this time have possessed will produce results of far more scope than a healthier, wealthier, and far more power-Lord Ashley's benevolence, which not being ful population. The same results would based on benescience, cannot bring forth have obtained with our people as with our beneficence. His legislation, if not of the cattle; the wretched would be unborn. Jack-Cade calibre as to intellect, does not We have the finest sheep and horses, cows get beyond paternal Jesuitry, which the and oxen, that the world has ever produced, because our farmers take care that they shall be well fed and lodged. With the same care for our people, the same results would follow sound legislative enactments, always supposing they could be carried out in practice. But instead of passing laws to increase comforts, we find in the statute books, enactments called sumptuary laws, tending to diminish personal comforts or luxuries. Strange is it that the State should think it necessary to take care of practicable was Robert Owen, and he, morepeople's money for them, as it still tries to over, wasted about 100,0002., lawful money do, by means of usury laws. of the realm, and thus filled the mouths of people with intellects no better than his own, with matter for ignorant exultation that there was no millennium produced by it; but still we like justice, and think that Mr. Horne may continue to expatiate on the virtues of a respectable nobleman like Lord Ashley, without robbing Robert Owen of the merit of originating the plan of shortlabor hours.

Had Alfred the Great passed laws to regulate the hours of labor, they must have been accompanied by other laws to regulate the wages of labor, and in such case, laborers and employers would constantly have been at work, trying to defeat the laws for the sake of their own interests, just as the Jews, ancient and modern, have succeeded in defeating the usury laws. But if such laws had been successful, we should have Mr. Horne has a very odd mode of huntmade no national progress;-we shoulding in couples with his spirits of the age, have been a nation of schoolboys, of ser- dodging from one to another till we somevants doing what our governors taught and times lose sight of the subject of his reordered us to do, but originating nothing; marks. In this mode he has introduced we should have been like the Austrian Dr. Southwood Smith, which we think very nation under Prince Metternich, or the unfair treatment. Southwood Smith is a Paraguay Indians under the paternal care real man of earnest purpose, working for and instruction of the Jesuits. If a Gov- the poor from strong sympathies for the ernment be competent to regulate the hours miseries with which his medical practice of labor for adults, it is also competent to has made him familiar. He is, moreover, regulate their wages, their food, their in- a practical man of sound purpose, struction, books, religion, and their par- working for self-glorification, but for a true ticular branches of labor. Such a people and useful result. No believer is he of would neither require a House of Com-results without causes, no planner of Jackmons nor suffrage at elections. An aris- Cade or French-princess legislation, no robtocracy of landholders might deem this a ber of the independence of women in legally very desirable condition of things, but the denying them employment by which to

not

"I dipt into the Future far as human eye could Saw the Vision of the world and all the wonder

earn their own living, independent of the the wisdom-poet, the master mind, above frequent coarse tyranny of their male rela- the littlenesses of humanity, and looking tives. Working for the public as a public through every varied phase of nature and of instructor, and thereby neglecting private art, ancient and modern-and yet more: pecuniary advantage, it is to us a matter of surprise that no Government has yet adverted to an easy method of attaining popular approval, by appointing him to a Professor's chair. Praise Lord Ashley at your pleasure, Mr. Horne, but we beg of you in charity and fairness to let Dr. Southwood Smith alone. A sad jumble have

you made of his life and history. Mr. Grant, of the Great Metropolis,' must surely have been one of the "hands" engaged on this.

Passing by "William Howitt, his grandfather and ancestors up to the time of Queen Elizabeth," and various other spirits of all ranks and sizes, we come to a veritable spirit of the age, Alfred Tennyson. A man of genius, who it appears, according to Mr. Horne, has escaped the persecution of the "Reader," and is recog-. nized by the public. Having stated this, off he flies at tangent and begins a criticism on John Keats, the chief purport of which, we incline to think, is to hint that "a kindred spirit has had (its) own inherent pulses quickened to look into (its) own heart and abroad upon nature and mankind, and to work out the purposes of (its) soul," in the production of Orion.' Mr. Horne speaks with great approbation of Tennyson, and so he does of Landor. But of Landor he says

"His complete dramas are not often read through twice, even by readers who applaud them, but for the sake of a particular act or scene."-Vol. i. p. 165.

And of Tennyson he says

see,

that would be."

And withal a patriot loving his native land. "It is the land that freemen till

That sober suited Freedom chose,

The land, where girt with friends or foes, A man may speak the thing he will."

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A statesman too, and a hero:

"Make Knowledge circle with the winds,
But let her herald, Reverence, fly
Before her to whatever sky

Bear seed of men or growth of minds.

If New and Old, disastrous feud,
Must ever shock, like armed foes,
And this be true till Time shall close
That Principles are rained in blood;

Not yet the wise of heart would cease
To hold his hope through shame and guilt,
But with his hand against the hilt,
Would pace the troubled land, like Peace;
Not less, though dogs of Faction bay,
Would serve his kind in deed and word,
Certain, if knowledge bring the sword
That knowledge takes the sword away-

Would love the gleams of good that broke
From either side, nor veil his eyes;
And if some dreadful need should rise
Would strike, and firmly, and one stroke."

This is the impress of a MAN. A house of parliament of such men, were

"The Parliament of man, the Federation of the World."

"He does not appear to possess much inventive construction. He has burnt his epic or this would have settled the question. We would almost venture to predict that he will never write another, nor a five-act tragedy, nor a long heroic poem. Why should he?" A marvel, indeed, will this our England Why indeed? Has not Mr. Horne done be, if ever such a parliament should assemble. It will be, in the words of Longfellow, all this, and does he not claim to be the equal of the Greek and Elizabethan dramatists? Tennyson would be superfluous, and Mr. Horne says, "certainly Tennyson is not at all dramatic."

"The holy, and the happy, and the gloriously free."

Under the head of "Sheridan Knowles

Mr. Horne's paper on Tennyson is, how- and William Macready" is embodied the ever, the best in the book. He does partly true spirit and gist of Mr. Horne's paraappreciate him, but the magnificent por- mount purpose in these two volumes.

trait does much more than Mr. Horne's "The Drama should be the concentrated Spirit writing. It is emphatically the head of of the Age."

That is to say, Mr. Horne's drama. cause they have hearts in them; and they Speaking of Knowles, the writer says

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And so does Mr. Horne too, by his speculation on 300 and 1007. for epics and tragedies, but there is a merit in his popularity which Mr. Horne does not penetrate. Sheridan Knowles is a man with a heart in his bosom, and that heart speaks in sympathy to the hearts of his audience in true words of passion.

The merits of all the minor stage authors who do not write epics or tragedies are handsomely acknowledged by the writer, but he says that "managers only regard them as a degree above street minstrels," and

"Herein is shadowed the fate of their mighty predecessors, and in the red herring and Rhenish banquet that killed Nash-in the tavern-brawling death of Marlowe-in the penury of Dekker-of Webster, who was a parish clerk-of Beaumont and Fletcher, and the distresses of nearly every one of the dra matists of their age, is to be found the symbol of the conduct which originality ever suffers." -Vol. ii. p. 92.

are, moreover, essentially the works of an artist. Compare 'Richelieu' with 'Cosmo,' and the difference will at once be perceived. The former is a thing of life; the latter is a piece of statuary.

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The taste of the article on Macready is what might have been expected from an angry unacted dramatist of weak mind. Not a man No man of genius could have written it. straitened in means," but straitened in soul, and working, not from high impulse, but for "remuneration," calculating on a permanent 1007. per annum for life and due honors "-only such a man could have done this thing. We quote again :

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"But if the unacted drama be held in no re

gard by theatrical people, it is not much more esteemed by the majority of the public press. The slightest acted piece often has a long notice; whereas, of an unacted tragedy or comedy, any thing or nothing may be said, and any thing with impunity.”—Vol. ii. p. 112.

in "a

To this is appended a foot note, stating that a certain unacted dramatist was not noticed by a professional critic, who, fit of frank cordiality," said it was because he did not like the dramatist's whiskers. The taste of betraying this "frank cordiality" is questionable; but the dramatist. This seems to us very like bathos. What might as well have stated at the same time on earth have red herrings and tavern- that the " offending hair" was cut off, lest brawlings to do with the matter? They it should be a bar to a promised public emwere quite optional to Nash and Marlowe, ployment where " my Lordés" sat as critics and the latter Mr. Horne has made a trage-on appearance. dy hero of, out of the very tavern brawl The statement that Macready weft to which he seeks to lay on the poor man- America on account of bad success in London, is untrue. As regarded the public, Macready did not fail. It was the plundering system of compelling him to make up theatrical" properties" from his gains, that drove him away. He publicly stated him"He can hardly be considered as a drama-self, that as regarded his receipts they were tist, having pursued this class of writing not from any strong internal gift and predomina ting influence, but rather as a man of first-rate talent and ingenuity who could produce any kind of literary article that might be in request.”—Vol. ii. p. 103.

agers.

To Talfourd is given some faint praise as a classicist. Of Sir E. L. Bulwer it is said

In the False Medium,' Mr. Horne expresses the direct contrary opinion to this. Now it is certain that Bulwer has been a successful dramatist in the 'Lady of Lyons,' and this seems to be the groundwork of the critic's anger. He cannot abide any one who may be a rival. Bulwer's plays, like those of Sheridan Knowles, are popular, be

ample. He labored only under the difficulty of "dead weight," paying interest on capital sunk and wasted under a monopoly. Could he have built a new theatre on the favorable terms of modern buildings, he would have grown rich beyond a doubt. The "wish" of the "unacted dramatist" is the "father to his thought." It is the petty feeling of a minor artist, seeking to gratify itself by mischief, in the spirit of "Swing," when burning down a haystack, or a disappointed dramatist, who "would burn down a theatre."

The cool egotistical assumption of this

unison with kindred spirits, actors, and authors, unshackled by monopoly and unworried by vanity. And we shall be glad if no future play be brought out, till it has stood the test of printing, publishing, and public reading.

writer, in supposing that a manager is bound to expend his property to produce the play of any dramatist who may present one, is very amusing. Much stress is laid on the superfluity of show-rich dresses, scenery, and decoration. If all these matters are indeed superfluous, why then the Mr. Browning and Mr. Marston are both matter resolves itself into a very narrow applauded as poets by Mr. Horne; but as compass. If the writing be the chief, and to their plays, though acted, he thinks they the acting merely an adjunct, let the unact- are utter failures. To make amends for ed dramatists read their plays to the public this, we are introduced to the acquaintanceat lecture rooms. Great interest is excited ship of a new Lope de Vega, a dramatic by lecturing on Shakspeare; and if the genius of the highest order as to quantity, modern unacted dramatists be of the Eliz-one Mr. Powell, who writes "five act trageabethan school, they will not fail to excite dies at three sittings." lecture audiences, testing the subject matter in a similar mode to that in which Mol

"That he has stuff in him of a good kind, if fairly worked upon and with any justice done be doubted from these specimens whether he to its own nature, is evident; though it may will ever be a dramatist."

There is clearly but one "dramatist” in the openly-expressed opinion of Mr. Horne.

The article on Bulwer is got up in the style which Carlyle calls" valethood."

ière tested his writings-by reading them to his cook. There is, to our apprehension, a great deal of quackery in the mystery preserved about new plays till they are produced on the stage. We should rather have all plays tested by publication and public reading previous to acting. We think this would be the best security against failure; far better than the coterie readings We do not think this work will add to which take place at present, and which pre- Mr. Horne's repute. The animus is of the sent the most remarkable instances of er- same kind as that of the False Medium;" rors in judgment. At any rate, the extinc- and as a false medium Mr. Horne will go tion of the monopoly has now left the unact- forth to the public, not as a spirit of the ed dramatists without ground of complaint. age, not as a high spirit. We would it had The world is all before them where to been otherwise. We counsel him to abanchoose; but we counsel them to bear in don his craving for notoriety, and apply mind that actor-artists of genius may be himself diligently to work, without regard stirred by as high a spirit as writer-artists. to results. Shakspeare wrote thirty odd Insolent assumption of superiority is no plays. Mr. Horne has written but three. mark of genius. Let him go on writing more. Let him lec. The services which Macready has ren-ture on them at all manner of Syncretic as dered to the drama are not lightly to be sociations, which will save printing: and, passed by. He risked his own capital; he above all, we counsel him to ponder on drove vice from his theatre. He establish- these lines of Tennyson :ed order in every department. A great actor and a poet-artist also, he was unsparing in expenditure. He produced new plays the best that could be got; and if they failed, it was not his fault. The public knows of none better than he produced. He did not produce 'Cosmo' or 'Gregory,' neither have they been produced elsewhere, though all stages are now thrown open to all dramatic writing. And it is quite clear that he has enemies, some for one thing, some for another, abstract or personal, public or private;" disappointed morbid vanity having no little to do with it. But gladly shall we behold his return to the management of a new theatre, wherein his perfect taste and thorough integrity to the texts of his dramatic authors may be developed in

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"Watch what main currents draw the years:

Cut Prejudice against the grain :
But gentle words are always gain:
Regard the weakness of thy peers:

Nor toil for title, place, or touch
Of pension; neither count on praise;
It grows to guerdon after days;
Nor deal in watchwords over much."

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N. U. S.

ROBOR CAROLINUM.-M. F. Senillosa writes

from Buenos Ayres, date 3d December, 1843, that for six months the star Robor carolinum has ap peared a star of the first class.

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