that it gives these particulars from authority. We ask our readers to compare them with the Admiral's dispatch, and more especially with his assertion, that he ordered no gun to be fired, &c. The Morning Post, on the same authority, says further-" Was the action at Navarino the first open act of hostility committed by the British fleet against the Turkish ships? Do the Ministers not know, that, in the Gulf of Patras, the signal was made by the Dartmouth-The fleet are much scattered, and some may be cut off?' Do they not know, that, in consequence, a firing commenced about four o'clock in the afternoon from the British squadron, which was kept up for nearly two hours, without the Turks returning a shot?" "Do they not know, that about ten of the Turkish brigs were cut offthat the next morning the Asia, the Talbot, and the Dartmouth, boarded Turkish brigs, which they found full of provisions, for the relief of the Turks at Patras ?" "Do they not know, that their vessels were towed as far as Zante ?" "Do they not know, that at this very time Lord Cochrane was at sea, AND HAD CAPTURED FIVE OF THESE TURKISH VESSELS?" We are inclined to believe that the truth of all this will, in due time and place, be properly established. These proceedings have been resorted to under the mask of offering mediation, and demanding an armistice; they have been resorted to under a treaty which pretends to bind the contracting parties from taking any part in the war between Turkey and Greece. We need not dilate on their atrocity, neither need we show what hideous pollution they have cast on the British flag, the uniform of the British navy, and British honour. Russia has an intelligible motive. She is pursuing this career of crime and infamy for the sake of territory and power. France is not without such a motive. She is aiding to crush the British empire in India; and she has doubtlessly an understanding with Russia that she shall have her full share of Turkish territory. But Britain is doing it only for her own destruction. She is aiding to rob and destroy an old, faithful, and valuable friend, without the smallest provocation, and with the certainty that it must bring upon her gigantic injuries of every description. If this abominable treaty had not been concluded, peace would have been established before this time between Greece and Turkey; and the peace of Europe would have been preserved. This treaty is not only perpetuating the war between Greece and Turkey, but it is involving Europe in general war. At the moment when we write, Turkey refuses the "offer of mediation;" her fleet has been destroyed without the least provocation; and for this the lawless powers are all to make war on her. This sequel to their guilt is worthy the commencement. Such a war must, however, be entered into by other parties. If Austria expect to preserve her Italian possessions and her existence, she must be neither a neutral, nor the ally of the piratical powers. This country, with a sinking revenue, with taxes which her destructive policy has rendered almost insupportable, with nearly all her great interests in a state of decline and suffering, must plunge into war to fight against herself, and conquer her own ruin. In such war she must receive no protection from public law. Public law exists no longer; she has assisted in its solemn annihilation. She must be attacked on all points, by all the means that lawless power and rapacity can employ. There are yet men in Parliament who value their country's honour as their own; and who feel that they are disgraced and degraded in her disgrace and degradation. Such men, in the approaching session, will purge themselves from the stain which these atrocious proceedings have cast on them and their countrymen. They will re-echo the nation's voice, and protest in the nation's name against all participation in the iniquity. They will call for inquiry, and, we trust, punishment. Farther than this, we hope they will do their utmost to take the charge of the honour and interest of their country from the hands of Ministers who have done so much towards blasting the one, and ruining the other. THE CAUSES OF THE DECLINE OF THE BRITISH DRAMA. "Why, this was known before- The In the treatment of things trite there is a peculiar difficulty. The decline of the British Drama has been so evident so notorious and palpable -to any one who has lore enough to compare the healthy productions of our ancestors with the ricketty offspring of modern times-that one feels inclined to apply for a solution to physical causes alone, leaving out moral considerations as too evanescent to account for effects so glaringly obtrusive. Melpomene, in short, is in the last stage of a consumption, with strong hectic symptoms; and Thalia in a tabes, inclining to the dropsical. This is the best account that can be given of the matter; and if Doctor Paris or Mr Abernethy is of a different opinion, let him publish his bulletin accordingly. In the history of the complaint there is nothing new. prognosis is easy enough. The sisters were respectable and amiable spinsters in Queen Elizabeth's time. They unluckily for themselves got into habits of familiarity with that insinuating debauchee, Charles the Second. From him they learned to take more stimulus than is proper for well-educated young ladies. They talked French, kept late hours, and company none of the most reputable. Such conduct could only have one end. Loss of character kept pace with increase of style, until, in a series of years, both got into that equivocal situation, to which less delicate minds might perchance be inclined to apply a term too coarse for the pages of this Magazine. Ill-got affluence is never permanent. Overgrown incomes were followed by overgrown establishments, and overgrown establishments by all manner of luxury. The consequences were soon evident. Great houses and multitude of servants brought many guests and many tastes. Everything was gradually turned topsy-turvy. The old plain household economy was changed for high French dishes, drams, and extravagance. A bloated body soon became the sure argument of a depraved appetite. False appetite is but the forerunner of dyspepsia. As VOL. XXIII. ex Coriolanus. now the stomach waxed weak, the peppering grew stronger. At last the patients could digest nothing, and retain little. It was in vain, like the King of Prussia in his dropsy, to set disease at defiance, and eat "hot eel-pies."—" E'en dismissing the doctor don't always succeed." Hydrothorax and phthisis supervened, and the sisters are gasping under the triple evils of ill taste, ill cooks, and too much money. As for their applications to the quacks to tap or bleed them, it would be merely putting them to useless pain. The water would soon accumulate again, putting aside the risk of mortification or hemiphlegia; and this is the medical account of the matter. Under a critical system, the three causes of the decline of the English Drama range under three heads,-Ill Taste, Ill Criticism, and Monopoly-Ill taste as to the drawing of character, Ill criticism as to style, and Monopoly as to representation. Most men are, some time or other, induced to read occasional sermons, or moral discourses, or philosophical dissertations, or treatises on ethics, or something in some shape or other, pretending to treat of the human mind or character. Now, be the books good or bad, everybody will recollect that they all agree in one point, and that is in a general bewailment of the "inconsistency" (as they call it) of human nature. They complain that there is always something (call it infirmity, or what you will) which contrives to set a man's doings by the ears with each other, and seems to take a delight in making him go to buffets with himself, and contradict himself to his own face. This is all very well, aud very true-and as the drama professes to be an imitation of human nature, one of course looks to find the same thing there, better or worse pourtrayed, as may happen. Hearing, as one does, such a loud talk from all manner of theatrical people-authors, players, critics, managers, scene-painters, and candlesnuffers, about "holding a mirror up to nature," and " veluti in speculum," E and suchlike phrases, one naturally this is to go for nothing in a theatre. Your stage heroes and tyrants are to be heroes and tyrants out-and-out; to the world, as well as their valets-dechambre, talking nothing but "fire, sinoke, and bounce"-lapping blood— drinking gin and gunpowder ;-in short, perfect crystallizations of hardheartedness. After the same rule, your stage lovers are to do nothing but sigh, to have nothing in their mouths but "Ah, me!" nothing on their stomachs but wind, nothing in their pockets but billets-doux. Your stage mothers are, evermore, to have an infant in one hand, and a white pocket-handkerchief in the other. Your stage ruffians are to be ready, at a minute's notice, to stab, rob, and ravish man, woman, and child, without provocation or remorse. Your stage fops are to be, ad infinitum, silly in stays, puppyish in pantaloons, and blackguard in buckskins; and your stage jockeys, all the three at once, in a swell hat, Belcher handkerchief, white upper toggery-boots, spurs, and a switch. This is poor work. Whoever has had observation enough to mark human nature, even in her commonest phases, must know, that even to the most purblind metaphysics, this sort of "consistency" is mere stuff. Instead of the inconsistency of the The fact is, that nine times out of ten, human character, he now hears of no- humanity is the reverse of consistency, thing but its consistency. He is told in the common acceptation of the of this and that (at every turn), out- word, and now and then so in any raging that or the other-of keeping sense of it. There are few general of propriety. In plain terms, he learns, rules which are true of human conthat though Elwes the miser, in real duct; few, that, on reflection, one life, used now and then to do generous is astonished there should not be more. things; though even Garrick him- The best explanation, indeed the only self was, at times, liberal, until he got one, is to account for actions by argufrightened by the ghost of a farthing, ing from passions, opposite in their which met him at the door of a snuff- nature, but co-existing in the same shop, nevertheless, your stage miser individual. Of these, sometimes one, is to think of nothing but his money. sometimes another, has the mastery; Were he to show a tittle of generosity, for, as to the doctrine of a "ruling be the occasion what it might, the passion," that, whatever Lord Bolingcritics would at once arraign him of broke might think of it, is mere noninconsistency. They would tell the sense. It is contradicted by all expeauthor he absolutely knew nothing of rience. If men's doings were regulated what they, in their jargon, call "pre- by one wire, we should have much servation of character." No, forsooth! less trouble than we have. The truth it would not be "in keeping." It of the matter is, that there is no such would be a violation of "colouring, thing as a predominant passion in this of costume, of probability."-Psha! sense, The strongest passions of men In like manner, though, in reality, are perpetually opposed, neutralized, your Cromwells were kind-hearted and turned aside by others. men to their relations and familiars; and your Napoleons beloved by their servants, military and civil, yet all He who feels himself entangled in the meshes of some besetting sin, every now and then, like a blue-bottle in spider's web, makes a desperate attempt to flounder out of it. He who is, as he thinks, most firmly seated on a virtue, is, generally, when he least thinks of it, cheated in his most praiseworthy attempts (holding by mane and crupper), not to be kicked off upon occasion. Well for him if he has patent stirrups. Thus, do we not, every day, see shabby fellows of all descriptions, attempting, by some convulsive effort of ostentatious expense, to redeem themselves from the conscious stigma Devoted lovers, every warm July, going near to turn out "perjured men" and "treacherous wretches?" Duellists, getting nervous, after supping upon lobsters, and coming off "second best," with an "explanation," on a frosty morning? Respect able matrons of forty-three, who have had four children, running away with whey-faced ensigns of nineteen, turned up with green? Old bachelors of seventy-eight marrying girls in their teens; and, equipped in Wellington pantaloons and stays, giving their congratulators wine at two in the morn ing? "Saints" getting into trouble with their housekeepers, or indecorously tipsy at vestry meetings; and high-bred young ladies, who play upon the harp and talk Italian, sneaking off to country churches with small tradesmen, who cannot talk at all, except behind the counter, or play upon anything but their customers? Now these, God wot, are all inconsistencies, but all strictly natural; inasmuch as they chance, upon an average, to happen about every other day through the week. It is this opposite play of the passions this crossing of the currents of mind-which constitutes the charm of Shakspeare's characters, and of the successful characters of other dramatists. Hamlet is, probably, the finest dramatic character that ever Was drawn. But he is so, not because he is highly consistent, but because he is amazingly inconsistent. We dispute and argue, pro and con, about him, as we do about living friends, whose actions do not happen exactly to accord with our notions of the fitness of things. Now, if he was one of the French " sistencies"-if he was set in motion, leg and arm, like a child's Jack-o'-longlegs, by pulling a string, there would be no occasion for this. Some large-eared critic will interpose here, and, with con a knowing smirk and wink of an eye, because he thinks he has caught one -remark, "if inconsistency be what you want, it is easier to draw an inconsistent than a consistent character; it is only to jumble up all sorts of heterogeneous passions and actionsGently, gently, good friend. We were just going to observe that this doctrine of inconsistency is the dramatic "pons asinorum," over which, as you are sure to plump, you had better stay where you are for a little,- -we were upon the point of saying, that inconsistency merely, good critic, in the naked sense of the word, will not do. It must be a natural and consistent inconsistency; that is to say-(Now, mark, long cars)-the actions inconsistent with each other must be such as we have seen to occur in nature in the order in which they stand; and which may be accounted for by reference to some known and customary temperament. And this is the case with Hamlet. His aberrations are precisely those which we are accustomed to observe in nervous, morbidly sensitive, and melancholy characters. His hatred of his uncle and disgust for his mother; his extreme curiosity respecting the supernatural appearance of his father; his determined purposes of revenge; his speedy falterings and doubts; his loathing of the world and distrust of all around him; his love for Ophelia ; his suspicions and consequent harsh treatment; his easy assumption of insanity, as being constitutionally inclined to that disease; his moody triflings with Polonius, the Players, Osrick, and the Grave-diggers; his wildass at Ophelia's funeral; and, lastly, his resolute and cool activity when mortally wounded, make up a compound of character, natural in the highest degree, but depending upon intricacies of temperament, passion, and situation, such as Shakspeare only could have conceived, and of which the world will probably never see the equal in ideal representation. Other plays may be more poctical; others more terrible; others inore pathetic; but, for the exhibition of h man nature, this unrivalled effort must continue to be the admiration of learned and unlearned as long as the English language shall exist. The play is almost a monologue. The other characters are barely foils to Hamlet. He appears in nearly every scene, and yet at every appearance it is under some new phase, some change, some turn of the varying currents which ruffle the surface of his mind, some momentary shadowing of feeling or circumstance which we have not seen before. Upon the same principle is to be calculated the value of the characters of Lear, Falstaff, Richard the Second, Macbeth, Rosalind, Beatrice, Jacques, and (to leave our great dramatist) of Leon, Caratach, Friscobaldo, Lady Brute, Lord Ogleby, Mrs Cole, Sir Luke Limp, Sir Peter Teazle, Charles Surface, Tyke, and a host of others, which to mention were endless. All these are "inconsistent," some of them enough to puzzle a college. But then they are naturally so; and that is the key of the matter. So much for character. Ever since about the year seventeen hundred and eighty-nine, there has been a dreadful outcry against "French principles," and perhaps they may be bad enough; but "French criticism" has done us ten times the harm. To be sure, it has had more time, having infested us for these hundred and sixty years and in that hundred and sixty it has played the mischief with the play-houses. It has gone near to transform our tragedies into pompous dull poems, and our comedies into acted charades, or witty essays, in question and answer. In these doings, it has proceeded upon the wise or rather sage principle, vulgarly called "buttering a goose;" prosifying where there was prose enough before, and poetising what was poctical enough already. In tragedy, the mischief was wrapped up in a single word, "dignity;" in comedy, by another, "wit," small pills, considering of what a strong dose of nonsense they were the vehicle. If we define the Drama, it must be a sort of poetry, which represents the serious or the lighter passages of human life, by exhibiting the conversations and actions of supposed agents. To be Poetry, it must of course be poetical, more or less; and to be Dramatic, that is to say, like life, it must, equally, of course, be familiar more or less; for human actions and sayings are, more or less, familiar things. This secms so palpable and self evident, that one wonders how it could ever be missed, and what is still more ex 66 traordinary, the practical part or way to bring the desired effect about seems equally plain. If a thing is to be at once poetical and familiar, there is only one way for it, and that is to mix poetry and familiarity together in some proportion or other. There is no other conceivable way. This was the mode of the old English Dramatists one and all-the very "heart of their mystery," too sound a one to be "plucked out" by a gabbling " Mounseer" of a French critic. In Shakspeare and his fellows we find the most glorious and exalted poetry brought down to the familiar level and semblance of common life and nature, by a judicious and artful intermixture of the strongest, boldest, plainest, most straightforward expressions and allusions. But this was not refined enough, forsooth, for the "polite nation!" not it! To put water in his brandy, until it was reduced to proof, was too homely an expedient for a triple-japanned French man, who "could not say apple dumpling" if you would hang him. The allusions were too coarse, too low; and the expressions too rude. Your French critic, like the owner of the dancing bear in Goldsmith's play, "hates anything low." "Meal and bran together" is not for them. So we are to be crammed with indigestible superfine French-Roll, as insipid as chalk, and twice as noxious, in lieu of our wholesome old English Messeline. "Oh! their bons their bons!" Somebody, the other day (was it the Opium-eater?) told a story of his reading the play of Macbeth (he should have read him first his own admirable critique on "the knocking at the Door") to an intelligent Frenchman. When they came to the line, "I heard the owl scream and the cricket cry," up starts monsieur, with a loud "bah !” declaring that no audience in France could be brought to endure an allusion so mean and ridiculous. He would have said the same thing a scene or two afterwards, "The night hath been unruly. Where we Jay Our chimneys were blown down—” A French tragedy hero does not condescend to know anything of chimneys. This is just of a piece with all their criticism; and what havoc would |