"Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures ;" the "Pas des Déesses" did not attract crowds by the prodigal display of female charms. In every country, and in every art, there is a period of purity in the national taste, and a period of corruption. We have fallen into the sere leaf.

Mademoiselle JENNY LIND created so great a sensation while her performances lasted, that any account of the British Theatre during the last half century may justly be regarded as imperfect which did not give some description of her wonderful powers. As a vocalist she is in some respects supreme: her power of prolonging a single note, of warbling on a single key, is unrivalled. She is charming in pastorals and lighter pieces: her delineation of Innocence in the Sonnambula, and of arch but yet faithful gaiety in the Figlia del Regimento, were inimitable, and have deservedly won for her the marvellous reputation which she enjoys. But as a tragic actress she cannot be said to have risen to great eminence. Her Lucia di Lammermoor and Norma were failures. Her powers were not adapted for these deeply tragic parts. She is the Calderon, not the Schiller of dramatic poetry; the Aminta of Tasso or the Pasto Fido of Guarini would suit her better than either Phèdre or Juliet. Within her appropriate limits she is fascinating and delightful, and we know not whether to admire most her enchanting vocal powers, or the sweetness, simplicity, and pathos of her acting. But she is not inspired by Melpomene, and would do well not to attempt the higher flights of the tragic muse.

If these flights are unsuitable to Mademoiselle Jenny Lind, as much are they adapted to her great rival on the opera stage, Madame GRISI. It is impossible to witness the chief parts of this celebrated performer without feeling that, in addition to her extraordinary vocal powers, she is a great tragic actress. Her period of life, figure, and mental temperament render her unsuitable for the expression of the tender passions. She has nothing pastoral or winning in her composition. She is not the person to play Lucia di Lammermoor or the Sonnambula. But in the delineation of the tragic passions-in the expression of jealousy, grief, hatred, anger, or despair-she is supremely great. Her figure, too large for juvenile characters, is admirably adapted

for the dignified matron; her countenance, eminently expressive, portrays all the strongest passions which can agitate the breast; her voice, powerful and melodious beyond example, alternately melts our hearts with the emotions of pity, and thrills them with the agonies of terror. There is nothing that is now, or ever was, on the stage superior to the last scenes of her Norma and Lucretia Borgia.

DIRECT TAXATION

[BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, FEB. 1847]

"FREE TRADE," say the Americans, "is another word for direct taxation, and direct taxation is another word for repudiation of states' debts." The Americans are right; it is so and the strongest proof of these propositions is to be found in the conduct of the Americans themselves. The subject, however, is one not less interesting on this than on the other side of the Atlantic. It involves the fortune and the temporal prosperity of every man in the kingdom; and we do not hesitate to say that, on the embracing of correct views on this all-important subject by the constituencies of the United Kingdom, the maintenance of the public credit, the upholding of the public prosperity, the ultimate existence of England as an independent nation must come to depend.

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We hear much, in the popular phrase of the day, of great facts." We will assume "free trade" as a great fact." We will not stop to inquire how it was brought about, or whether, by any means, it could have been avoided. As little shall we stop to ask whether direct or indirect taxation is the best, or whether a mixture of both is to be recommended. We shall not inquire whether it is better to pay taxes on the price of the articles we purchase, when the amount is not perceived, or, if perceived, seldom objected to, at least against Government, and when the disagreeable operation of paying money is compensated, in some degree, by the pleasure derived from the article purchased, or to pay them at once to the tax-gatherer, when we get nothing for our ample disbursements but a bit of paper from the collector to remind us of

the extent of our losses. As little shall we investigate, from history, how many nations have been ruined by direct taxation, and whether there is one, the decline of which can be traced to indirect; or from reason, whether it is possible that a nation can be ruined by indirect taxes, when the only effect of their becoming too high is, that they check the consumption of the articles on which they are laid, and therefore cease to be paid. We shall not remind our readers that, in the latter years of the war, £72,000,000, under the protective system, was levied in the shape of taxes amidst general prosperity, on eighteen millions of people in the British empire; and that now, under the free-trade system, £52,000,000 net revenue is felt as extremely oppressive upon twenty-eight millions. We have chosen to have free trade, in other words, to abandon indirect taxation; and free trade we have, at least for the present, and indirect taxation will in consequence be gradually more and more abandoned.

But it is particularly to be observed, in the outset of this system, that free trade, once adopted and applied to certain great branches of national industry, must necessarily be progressive, and embrace all, if we would avoid the total ruin of many of the staple branches of our production and main source of our direct revenue. In a short time, grain of all sorts will be left with the nominal protection of a shilling a quarter; and many branches of manufactures already find themselves with a protecting duty so small that, keeping in view the difference of the value of money in England and the Continental states, it amounts to nothing. If the classes thus left without any protection, or a merely nominal one, exposed to the effects of foreign competition, are not indemnified for their losses by the diminished price of the articles which they themselves purchase, they must grow poorer every day. Amidst the general cheapening of the articles sold, which constitute the income of the productive classes, if there is not a proportional cheapening of the articles bought, which compose their expenditure, they must inevitably be destroyed.

This truth is so obvious, that it is adapted to the level of every capacity; and accordingly we already see it producing agitation for the further repeal of indirect taxes,

which it does not require the gift of prophecy to foresee will in the end, though perhaps after a severe struggle, prove successful. It may not do so in this session of Parliament, or the next; but, in process of time, the effect is certain.

A ministry in difficulties, a yielding premier, will ere long be found who, in a moment of difficulty, will be glad to buy off one set of assailants, as we did the Danes of old, by giving up what they desire. The separate agitations which must in the end produce this result, are already manifesting themselves. The West India planters allege, with reason, that, exposed as they are, when burdened with costly and irregular free labourers, to the competition of slave labour in Cuba and Brazil, without, in a few years, any protection, it is indispensable that the market of the mother country should be thrown open to them for all parts of their produce, especially in distilleries and breweries. The farmers, exposed to this attack in flank, while the corn laws have been repealed in their front, have no resource left but to clamour incessantly for the repeal of the malt-tax. In this attempt it is probable they will in the end prove successful, not because their demands are either just or reasonable-for, as power is now constituted in this country, that affords no guarantee whatever for being listened to-but because their claims are likely to be supported by the beer-drinkers in towns, the constituents of a majority in the House of Commons, and therefore an important and influential class of the community. The tea-dealers, encouraged by the success of agitation in other quarters, are already making a loud clamour for a reduction of the duty on tea, and prepared to prove, to the entire satisfaction of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that nothing is so likely to increase a branch of revenue now producing £4,800,000 a-year, as to lower the duty from half-a-crown to a shilling on the pound. The tobacco-dealers will not be behind their brethren in agitation; and we may soon expect to see all the venal talent of the nation enlisted in the great cause of free trade in smoking and chewing. The spirit-dealers will, most assuredly, not be the last to insist upon a reduction of the duties affecting them; and they are certain to be supported by the whole of the publicans in the urban constituencies,—a