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Aikhjst 13, 1853.3 THE LEADER. 78Q
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EOYAL ITALIAN OPERA. Owing to tho indisp...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Sits ©F Hy B@¥Y©@©. " Well Hunt Thou Don...
their keenest . The man walks through the streets and fields , with liiouffhts occupied with his interests , pursuits , and cares . The boy roams here and there with exploring eye , in the full but unconscious exercise of his growing powers of observation . On half-holidays , he has no business f hurry him through town or country , or to make him heedless of what is before and around him . He will stand , in the sunny afternoon , at the door of the cpach-oftice , heedless of the . jostling aud objurgation of the porters , till the last passenger has got down ; or he will be nutting in the woods or the hill-side , madly grasping at the tantalising full clusters hangin ^ just out of reach , heedless of napped face and scratched hands ; now off his legs , by the upspring of the bough- now dropping to the
swung eround , amid a shower of twigs and leaves , with the prize clutched in his trembling fingers . And so the features of both town and country will stamp themselves upon his mind , with a vividness which the impressions of after life can neither rival nor efface . Hence , as has been often observed , the localities in which poets have spent their youth , furnish them with their most natural and striking pictures , and give a character to the imagery they employ . Thus , Tennyson ' s poetry is full of the most exquisite bits of Lincolnshire landscape , each containing more nature than fifty pastoral poems ; the open wold , the breezy upland , the meadow , with its cuckooflowers , —the pool , with its belt of grey willows , —all are there . about ten
The school to which I went , in this old city ^ numbered boys , and was conducted by an elderly man , who , though a sound classic , and compelled , in the exercise of his craft , to keep up his acquaintance with the beggarly elements of Greek and Latin Grammar , had , for the last forty vears , ceased to make any addition to his learning . After school , he read his newspaper , and smoked his pipe , and what was ' Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba ?" It has been truly said , by Dr . Arnold , that the instructions of a man of this sort , compared with those of one who is himself alive and interested in the pursuit of knowledge , are like water from a stagnant pool , compared with invigorating draughts from a fresh and running stream . Accordingly , my progress did not get beyond
" The mere schoolboy ' s lean and tardy growth ;" and the hours which I passed at my school-desk > were mostly spent in counting the marbles in iny pocket , or in intense contemplation of a double-bladed knife , or day-dreams of adventurous pirates and jocular midshipmen , bred of some recent novel of Marryatt or Gooper . Owing to the circumstances under which I prepared it at school , I can never read Horace ' s " Vides ut alta" stet nive candidum Soracte — "
without -vivid associations of a hot afternoon , and bites taken , by stealth , out of- the juicy side of a Windsor pear . Oh ! what a mockery it seemed to be , looking out nouns and verbs in Ainsworth ' s Dictionary , when the country was flooded with sunlight , and the dancing vine-leaves tapped against the school-room window , and reminded us that the cool evening airs were beginning to stir abroad . However , the restraint was afterwards compensated , by the way in which we used to burst through the town , to the meadows by the river-side . But Tom Hood has exquisitely described this very moment of schoolboy existence : — " It was a summer ' s evening , An evening cairn and cool , And four-and-twenty happy boya Came bounding out of school ; There were some that leapt and some that ran , Like troutlets in a pool . # # # They came to a level mead , and there They pitched the wickets in ; Pleasantly shone the setting sun , Over tho town of Lynn . "—Ballad of JEugene Aram . Like most boys , I had a great love for the water , and I love it still , in all its many shapes , —as it trickles from some " woodland urn , " and winds among matted grass and sodden dark-red leaves ; as it swells and deepens into still black pools , beneath bending willows ; as it washes the banks of some historic river , and rushes murmuring to the sea ; as it widens and spreads along the horizon , in a bright blue line , with a white sail or two bearing up in the distance , and a long dim smear of smoke from some faroff packet . Near our city was a canal , made some forty years ago , with grassy banks , and rich country on either side , —broad , deep , and winding , with here and there a creek , filled with dark masses of weeds , in which you might see " the great sulky pike , hanging midway down , " and shoals of dace leaping in the sunshine . It was visited , too , occasionally , by strangelooking foreign craft , the trim-built American schooner , with her raking masts , —and the picturesque Dutch galliot , with its clean-scraped yellow deck and green-painted windows . This canal mingles largely in my recollections . I have visions of it under all aspects of the day and year , —on the fresh autumn morning , with the ' mist rising- from the waters , —on the burning summer noon , when the sun was reflected from its surface , in sparkles of intolerable brightness , and the oar seemed to splash into molten gold , —white and sulphur-coloured butterflies flitting about its banks , and the heavy perch lying under the shadow of the bridge . There was a culvert , through which a small stream trickled into this ennal , and , into this culvert , a schoolfellow of mine and I used to creep , bared to the knee , and endeavour , with hand and foot , to prevent the large
eels from gliding into the deep water . We would sit in it for hours together , contentedly leaning against its damp and trickling walls , and were proud of it , as a sort of stronghold of ours , a dark and secret cavern . We even talked of fortifying it—for what , and against whom , Heaven knows However , all such warlike intentions were frustrated , by the startling apparition , one day , of an angry countenance , at its entrance , and the threat of ( f a good hicjing . " Oije feat two schoolfellows and I performed on that canal , of which we were extremely proud . We , some time beforehand , planned an excursion to the other end of it , distant sixteen miles , where there was a glorious wide river , with rocks and sea-gulls , very captivating to our inland-nurtured imaginations . We started , big with resolution , in the grey of the morning , and the first few miles disappeared rapidly beneath our vigorous strokes ; but , as the day increased , and turned out intensely hot , there gradually appeared a tendency to prefer bathing to rowing ; and the relaxing influences attending the bath , induced in us a decided inclination to sit , half dressed , upon the bank . On returning to the boat , the planks of which felt burning hot , a tendency to sulkiness and recrimination showed itself , in two of us , while the third , who was an easy good-tempered fellow , and who had , withal , partaken largely of our bottled cider , proposed to lie there till the cool of the evening , and then never mind the boat , but walk quietly home . But it would be tedious to relate , how , at last , we reached our destination , with blistered hands and mahogany-coloured faces ; how we could get no ? - thing there to eat ; how we hated the bout , which we had to get back again ; how often the cider-bottles were replenished ; how our good-tempered companion , aforesaid , became , in the afternoon , incapable of rowing or talking , but seemed to find a placid delight in trailing his coat-sleeves in the water ; how , when half-way home , and it grew a lovely evening , we moored our boat to the water-side , stepped across a few fields , to a quiet village-green , and enjoyed an amount of tea , and ham and eggs , that made up for all past labour ; how" we pulled over the remaining seven miles ; how bridge after bridge , for a moment , shut out from view the broad full moon and stars , as we flew along , to the music of the rowlocks . Will the reader pardon the insertion here of a few boyish verses , which I wrote a year or two after this period , but the truth of which my heart still confirms?— ' _ , ~^ I love thee well , old city , ~ „ " Standing in pleasant vale , Whether r . "fcli 6 u shinest in the sun ~ _ Or sleep ' st in moonlight pale , I love thee well in winter , Thy streets all white with snow , Thine evening lamps lit one by one , Thy windows in a glow . When , like a hoary father , Thine old cathedral stands , And seems , above his child ' s white pall , To spread his aged hands . I love thee when , in autumn , Deep rains upon thee beat ; I love thee when the distant liills Look misty with the heat . Beneath all skies I love thee , Rain , sunshine , hail , or snow , Thou hast no rival in my . heart , Whithersoe ' er I go . As I was once standing in the streets of a quaint Flemish town , oppressed with that sense of isolation which one sometimes experiences in a strange place , the queer old jangling chimes suddenly struck out above my head , and touched me with a feeling of ineffable sadness , telling of the rapid flight of time , and all that he had done for me , and all that he had failed to do . But this mood passed off , and then I thought that here , too , time had been entwining , for his children , fond memories , around church and square , and market-place , and mill and meadow ; and the very strength of my own old associations , which had made me lonely , supplied me with sympathy for those of others , and I felt no longer a stranger . It is faith in the universality of this sympathy , that has induced me to set these scattered reminiscences before the reader .
Aikhjst 13, 1853.3 The Leader. 78q
Aikhjst 13 , 1853 . 3 THE LEADER . 78 Q
€\)T Irte.
€ \) t Irte .
Eoyal Italian Opera. Owing To Tho Indisp...
EOYAL ITALIAN OPERA . Owing to tho indisposition of Vivian we present our readers with an abstract of the excellent oriticiflm of tho Times upon the reconfc production of Jessonda nt Co vent Garden : — - . " Spohr ' s romantic opera of Jessonda—the third , and it may bo presumed the last , novelty of the -present season—whs produced on Saturday night , for tho iirst time on tho Italian stage—not ; , an Wna stated In the bills , for tho first tnno in UM country , since it wus performed many yours ago , with eminent succesa , by d nfterwardnhunouB baas
Gorman company , at tho St . JumcH ' s Theatre , when tho singer Staudigl made his debtlt in England as Tristan . Tl «» fc <»« R ° yal Ita \ 1 MJ Opera in gradually advancing towards tho position owned by tho great imiBiau establishment in tho Rtio Lopellotior—tlmfc of a national thflntro , open to composers and HingorH of nil nations , the only diflbranco beintf that the Italian , instead ot the vernacular tongue , k adopted aa tho solo medium of expression—can hardly bo denied . A glfinco ut tho nvailnblo repertoire is enough to establish thai fact . Wo have no longer an Italian Opera , properly no called ; and tho cause mupti simper
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 13, 1853, page 21, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_13081853/page/21/
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