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    Pr . Cumming , having , it must be remembered , failed to teach them how to employ it religiously . Does a project ( would that it were less ridiculously impossible , for the sake of our over-worked industrial population !) which aspires to give labouring men a half-holiday in the Crystal Palace on Saturday , meet a difficulty of this kind , which occurs from the want of an open Crystal Palace on Sunday P Bold as the Doctor is , he will hardly venture to say " Yes" to that . Does he deny that the prohibitory religious system for which he is fighting so resolutely , and to support which he has hit on this notable plan of a Saturday compromise , has failed altogether to make the lower orders of the people spend their Sunday , in any sense , as they ought P Let him do what we believe neither he nor any other Sabbatarian agitator ever has done , —let him walk round any poor neighbourhood in London during the hours of

    Church service . Let him try his present fanatical theories by that plain , straightforward , and most terrible test , and his own eyes will tell him , if his conscience and his principles will only allow him to keep them open , that there is not merely an " excuse" ( as he calls it ) , but an absolute necessity for opening the Crystal Palace , and other decent places like it , on Sunday . The remaining arguments in the Doctor ' s " Letter" are identical with those advanced by the Bishop of Lincoln , and answered in our first article * We may therefore take leave of him here , with the conviction that his pamphlet will prove much more mischievous to the cause of true religion than to the cause of opening the Sydenham Palace on Sunday . The letter , from beginning to end , is an outrage on the common sense of any reader , high or low , who thinks for himself .

    As to the next tract on our list—a Sabbatarian Sermon , by the Rev . John Weir—the author has the modesty to express himself at the outset as " sensible of its imperfections . " In this respect , he cannot possibly be more " sensible" than we are . The plain fact is , Mr . Weir , you have written thirty pages of such prodigious nonsense , that we are afraid even so much as to refer to it remotely in the columns of this journal . . You Jiave reached , Sir , the lowest depth of the Theological Bathos , or Art of Sinking in Sermons ; and there we propose to leave you undisturbed . You have plenty of companions , let us add , who are every way worthy of

    you—and the Rev . Capel Molyneux , B . A ., is one of the number . This gentleman asks hazily on his title-page , ( speaking out of the profoundest depths of Bathos , ) "Is it Expedient ? " If these words refer to the propriety of opening the Crystal Palace on Sunday , we can answer the pamphlet at once , in one word , by saying " Yes . " If they allude also to the question of whether the tract be worth reviewing by ^ ius , or reading by any one , we reply unhesitatingly : — " Oh , Capel Molyneux , B . A . ! It is Not Expedient either to criticise or to read your present contribution to the controversial literature of the English Press . "

    Here , for the present , we must come to a pause ; not from lack of Sabbatarian pampnlets to review , ( would that it were so !) but from lack of space .

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    NOTES DRAMATIC AND MUSICAL . The retreat of Vivian to the country , and the exigencies of other Arts , restrict our dramatic record of this week within the narrow limits of a mere passing mention—with one exception , and that will be forgiven , as it is the fast word that can be spoken this year about one who has claims not only on the admiration , but also on the hospitality , of an English journal . To begin with the Opera . Mario has re-appeared in the Puritani , and , as the Athenceum truly said of Grisi , " Time is Time , " so we must say of Mario , " Meyerbeer is Meyerbeer . " Robert Browning ' s very charming dramatic poem , Colombes Birthday , the daintiest of legends , clad in delicatest language , has been dragged through the rude ordeal of

    a stage murder ; all the noble feeling , the bright-piercing purity , the chivalrous tenderness , the subtle thought and gentle fancy of the poet , weighed in the balance of a Haymarket audience , and found wanting—in those qualities which a Haymarket audience naturally prefers . Colombes Birthday , to be enjoyed as it deserves to be enjoyed , demands audionco and actors the most cultivated and refined . On this occasion , with tho exception of Mr . Howo , who played with good sense and judicious propriety , and of Miss Helen Faucit , who with all her fine sympathetic intelligence , cannot bo said to have improved in her art , ( she needs repose , gradation , harmony , a little less consciousness , and a little more continuity of expression , ) the play was condemned by its interpreters . two bettor momentsattitudinized

    Mr . Barry Sullivan , saving one or , oppressively ; and as to the four courtiers , —think of Mr . Braid emphasizing every trivial word of a very small part with a lugubrious and awful solemnity , as if tho life of tho play and the existence of the British drama depended on it . Perhaps this may como from imitating Charles Koan ; his grimaces and contortions were those of a Richard the Third . Indeed , I think this Mr . Braid must bo tho celebrated provincial actor who , anxious to give a new reading to a celebrated passage , exclaimed , — " Off with his head so much—( Marking the exact lino in the neck to bo sliced . ) „_ For Buckingham . " If Mr . Braid had only to nay , How d ' ye do P he would say it us if it wore a message charged with death . This in assassinating elocution with a VC M \ TTil ° bury , too , must needs give himself a sort of faux air do Polonius , and look imbecile with a wand in I iih hand . Such m tin * lory ism o tho British stage . The play , lot m « say was mounted with howo euro , and certainly went oil'better than I had anticipated . But Mr . Buckstono will probably content himself with oho success " of ostcom . Two rattling farces have renewed tho playbill of the Lyceum = jno ™ which Frank Matthews is enormous , and tho other in wluoh baarlei

    appearing as one of the Fees de Paris in a piece by that name , to which I shall not further allude than to say that it is scarcely worthy of M . Bayard . I want you to listen to the opinion of a friend , whose exper ienced criticism I value far more than my own . Listen to what he says of the secret of Madlle . Page's success . " It is easy to see the excellence of Page ' s acting , but extremely difficult to describe it . The great merit by which , as it appears to me , she is distinguished among all other actresses who perform in what are called sentimental parts , seems to lie in the admirable delicacy and facility with which she blends together , on the stage , the natural feminine charms of the woman , and the artificial refinements of the actress . The exotic graces ,

    Mathews is impossible , each outvieing the other m outrageous improbability , and in convulsive fun . At the Olympic a burlesque of Macbeth , suggested by Charles Kean ' a playbill , has been produced . I have not assisted at this the latest of those periodical assaults on the English language , which always send me home sick and savage ; but I hear that this Macbeth is really ( as indeed the name of the author would induce me to believe ) something better than a vile decoction of that lowest wit—the wit of words , and that it betrays something like humour and invention . Also , that the Mr . Robson who is the Macbeth in question makes even a burlesque respectable . But I hasten to the French Plays , where Madlle . Page , whose voice is a caressand whose eyes are a subjugation , is taking her benefit , arid

    of the footlights , and the native graces of the fireside are always more or less present in equal proportions in everything she does , and in everything she says . A little careful observation of other actresses—especially at the moments when they are submitted to the trying stage-ordeal of' byeplay '—will suffice to show that the distinctive merit here claimed for Page is a much rarer accomplishment in her profession , and a much more important superiority to accord to her than might appear at first sight . There are plenty of women on the French stage who look well and act well ; but in no other instance , that I can remember , are the woman and the actress so completely part and parcel of each otker , so intimately and exquisitely connected together as in the instance of Page . This marking characteristic not only gives a peculiar charm , a sort of quiet ,

    loveable eloquence to the slightest words she utters , but makes even her ' bye-play' delightful—an attraction and an excellence in itself . When the business" of the stage requires it , she can do the most difficult of all things in acting , to perfection—she can do nothing—she can sit down , or listen to others , or retire to the back of the stage , filling up as much of the scene exactly as the scene at that moment requires , and no more . Those who have acted—and those only—can appreciate the immense difficulty of properly performing this apparently easy duty . Those who watch certain actresses on our own stage in their bye-play , will see how the very best of them fail utterly in this respect by comparison with Page , who is never altogether acting , and never altogether not acting at such moments—the natural and the artificial balance each other exactlv ; and the

    result is , that the audience applaud her for what she does , as well as for what she says , to the echo . In Les Extremes se touchent , for instance , they clap their hands at the manner in which , she silently takes the letter from Lafont , curtseys to him , and leaves the scene . There are some actresses who could do this with equal stage grace , and others who could do it with equal womanly delicacy ; but no one actress I have seen has ever before combined the two qualities so exactly in herself—keeping the artificial and the natural perfectly equal in prominence throughout . In this , I think ,

    lies the great secret of Page's success . " . Next week comes Madeleine Brohan , and with her , Eegnier . By tho bye . Imusthere give you two interesting scraps of dramatic news from Paris , where they bring out fifty or a hundred original pieces to our one adaptation . Balzac ' s morbid , but very powerful story , Le Lys dans la valUe has been converted into a drame for the Francois ; and Frederick Lemaitre is about to make his rentree on the scene of his early triumphs , the Porte St . Martin , in a dumb part , composed for him by those indefatigable dramaturges , MM . Dennery and Dumanoir .

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    CONCERTS . The second meeting of tho Quartetfc Association was on Thursday . The original piece was a sonata for piano and violin , by IIerr Pntier : played bv the composer , with Sainton . I can't honestly profess admiration of tfiis sonata . It seemed to me to betray all tho fatal facility of a practised hand , aided by a too faithful memory . It was * clever , p leasing , elegant . but languid and deficient in vigour of conception and development . Now let us hear what tho learned say . K . P .

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    ROYAL ACADEMY—PRIVATE VIEW . To artists , picture lovers , and " sitters , " who have been fortunate enough to get in among tho portraits , Monday will be a great day—tho exhibition , of the Royal Academy opening to the public . At present , leaving criticism to follow , we can only mention the nVost striking works , marked in our catalogue , out of the thirteen hundred frames with their points of sight running away in all directions ; which makes pietiiro-He-eiiig the most wearisome-of all pleasures , b y -the-bye , an we aro constantly adapting our view to a fresh illusion , and following each painter ' s process of effect without being aware that we are doing ho .

    Four omissions are remarkable . Frith is absent , and ho in Leslie-. We hear the latter could not got his work finished in time . The namo struck us once in the catalogue , and did indeed attract us to a picluro , by a Mr . J . Leslie , till now unknown to us , but soon to become known to all , Ilia picture , with this title , " Children—they havo nailed him to a Cross , " is a hostage to fame . Mulready is absent ; imd the fourth astounding blank is also in the M's , where wo look vainly for Macliso . With one or two loading It . A . 's , however , this in a year of Hpoeimena . Leo has bouic half-dozen of the bent landscapes he has ever painted , combining , in more than one instance , tho familiur ( rattle of Thomas Sidnoy Copper . Landsour ban woveral fine passages of lower animal life . Two very largo pictures of his tell one story , but tho chief force is given to the concluding ueeue . The iir » t shows a deadly conflict between tVQ

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    Arm * 8 Qt J 853 . ] f P | LEA PIER . 429

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), April 30, 1853, page 429, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1984/page/21/