282. Landscape. C. C. INGHAM. One of the most wonderful specimens of finish we ever beheld. The grass is finer than Genoa velvet, the cattle are elaborated as minutely as a miniature, and the very leaves of the trees and cracks in the bark are individually perceptible. The water is clear and good, although rather blue. 28. Landscape. W. M. ODDIE. A perfect contrast to the preceding. That is all minuteness and delicacy, this all freedom and general effect. There is a world of industry and professional knowledge in the first, yet we confess that to our taste there is more of the artist in the second. Mr. Ingham's landscape is astonishingly beautiful; but to our mind Mr. Oddie's is the most pleasing, because most like nature. 284. Boston Harbor. G. L. BROWN. A clever sea-piece. The distances well defined, and the sky natural. 285. The Raffle. W. S. MOUNT. Another admirable picture of rural life and manners. The attitudes and expressions good, although the faces have too much family resemblance. 298. The Devil's Deacon. F. S. AGATE. This is described in the catalogue as a sketeh, and it certainly wants a deal of finish. We cannot say that we like it much. The figures are too numerous, and confusedly grouped, and the demons are rather ridiculous than fearful, as they should be, to justify their introduction. The deacon is well imagined. Altogether, the picture wants clearness and expression. Being but a sketch, we will not condemn the execution, as regards drawing and color. Beside these, there are in the 'small saloon' some ten or twelve cabinet pictures by C. MAYR, which are more creditable to his industry than to his skill, although two or three of them show considerable improvement within the year. The excessive muscular development in the faces, which we have before noticed, continues to be his fault; and in almost every instance, his heads are too large for his bodies. His pictures are all sadly objectionable in perspective. Mr. F. WILLIAMS has a good specimen in No. 239, The Skinner, and his Dominie Sampson reading the commission to the Laird of Ellangowan, has very considerable merit. The attitude of the Laird is especially deserving of praise. 267. A Sunset Parade at West Point, by Lieut. EASTMAN, is very clever for an amateur. There are many pictures, by professional artists, in the exhibition, far from being as well drawn or colored as this. 296. Young Thieves, by F. FINK, is also a deserving picture. But we must close, although we have actually a good deal more to say. 'LETTERS FROM PALMYRA.'-We find the following hearty tribute to this admirable series, in the recently published work of Miss MARTINEAU, 'Society in America.' Our readers will bear testimony, that the several numbers which have appeared, since our authoress left America, so far from deteriorating, have even increased in beauty and interest: "Last spring, a set of papers began to appear in the Knickerbocker, a New-York Monthly Magazine, called 'Letters from Palmyra,' six numbers of which had been issued when I left the country. I have been hitherto unable to obtain the rest; but if they answer to the early portions, there can be no doubt of their being shortly in every body's hands, in both countries. These letters remain in my mind, after repeated readings, as a fragment of lofty and tender beauty. Zenobia, Longinus, and a long perspective of characters, live and move in natural majesty; and the beauties of description and sentiment appear to me as remarkable as the strong conception of character, and of the age. If this anonymous fragment be not the work of a true artist-if the work, when entire, do not prove to be of a far higher order than any thing which has yet issued from the American press― its early admirers will feel yet more surprise than regret." THE DRAMA. We are left, by our three correspondents below, small room to speak of the performances at the several theatres, during the month. We reserve them, therefore, for future consideration. Will 'M.' let us hear from him again? He has an effective lash for fashionable or tolerated follies. EDS. KNICKERBOCKER. THE DUCHESS DE La Valliére. —During the May engagement of Miss TREE, this performance of EDWARD LYTTON BULWER was produced at the Park Theatre, and was played three times. Its success upon the stage was such as to bear us out in the opinion we had formed on perusing it in the closet. Mr. Bulwer is a fine novelist, a fair writer on political economy, but a very mediocre poet and dramatist. In the first place, we quarrel with him as to his selection of a subject. What points of character possessed the heroine of the piece, to form the basis of a drama, to be acted before the eyes of men, and to be judged of, as men judge, by their own sympathies and feelings, their own experience and moral sense? A simple country maiden, of pure character, goes to the licentious court of Louis XIV., as a maid of honor to his queen. There she 'falls in love,' as romancers express it, with the king, who soon discovers the fact, and returns the compliment. So soon as she perceives this, she has sense enough to see the false position in which the difference of character, subsisting between their several attachments, places herself. Urged by a friend, who seeks her at the court, hearing of the danger in which she stands, she consents to fly to a convent, to prevent the consummation of a connexion which she now perceives can only be a crime. But the convent proves no sanctuary, and she is carried thence by the impassioned king himself, after a scene of eloquent persuasion, by which she is prevailed on to consent to leave the convent, and then swoons in the arms of her ravisher. The steps in the path of vice are rapidly trodden, and the heroine, now made a duchess, that the mistress of a king may at least be a splendid victim, passes through the different grades of full success, enjoyment of courtly splendor, hopes and fears, and finally desertion. Her mother dies broken-hearted, and her only other friend, (and he her early, honorable lover,) assumes the monk's cowl. By the aid of the latter, she again seeks the convent, and takes the veil, as a Carmelite nun, which ceremony is enacted on the stage, with all its minute and solemn details, in the last act. And this is the story of the Duchess de La Valliére. As originally written, there was represented the silly Marquis of Montespan, whom the author intended as a stalking-horse for much of the wit and humor of the Duke de Lauzun, and Count Grammont. As actually performed, all that fine fabric was cut out of the loom, and a patch of after-work, rather linsey-woolsey, was substituted. Madame de Montespan, too, who occupies a goodly space in the written play, was only allowed to come in, in the ast act, or a moment, and read a letter, and find that she was banished from Versailles; but for what, though the letter might tell her, she does not inform the audience. The play was presented as written by the author, at Drury Lane, and was summarily damned on its first night, though MACREADY played the part (Bragelone) written for him. The author then made the alterations noticed above; and as there was then less of it, it was endured a night or two more, and then shelved. Now, here, it came out, with all its manifold imperfections on its head, under far different auspices. Our audiences are not so rigidly critical as are London audiences, and the heroine was performed by Ellen Tree. Yet, the fate of the Duchess de La Valliére in New-York has been about the same as the catastrophe at Drury Lane. The cause of this was, the character of the play itself, which would have secured its condemnation, had the incidents and the dramatis persona been of a class better calculated to insure the sympathy and approbation of the audience. The latter consideration had great weight, but still it was the former which was far more potent in producing this result. Miss Tree personated the fair and frail heroine. She made the most of every incident, gave effect to every position, and developed, to the best of her very great abilities, all the character and genius which were to be discovered in the piece. Her dresses were new, various, rich, and splendid; and all she could, she did do, to save the play. But in vain. There were no other redeeming traits in the cast. MASON, as the king, walked through a part which he must have felt to be vapid and pointless, from beginning to end; NEXSEN played (?) 'the witty Grammont!' Think of that! CHIPPENDALE failed completely in the Duc de Lauzun, Mrs. DURIE performed the Duchess Montespan, and Mrs. WHEATLEY, as the mother of La Valliére, had a half dozen common-places to repeat in the first act. Macready's part, the early lover of the heroine, which was intended by the author to be the leading character, was assigned to FREDERICKS, who performed it—not quite so well as Macready, probably, but yet as well as such a stick of a part deserved to be performed. Is it then surprising, that with such coadjuments as these, Miss Tree should have failed successfully to carry through such a piece as we have shown the Duchess de La Valliére to be, by dint of her own individual powers, great though they be? Let us see what she had to deal with, in the language of the poet. In reply to the suggestion that she loves the king, she is made to say: "Who spoke of love? The sunflower, gazing on the Lord of heaven, And this soliloquy: she is musing on the king: Act I, Sc. 5. "He loves me then! He loves me! Love! wild word! Did I say love? Dishonor, shame, and crime Dwell on the thought! And yet and yet - he loves me!" Act II., Sc. 2. And in the same scene, this passage, in reply to Bragelone, remonstrating with her against her love for the king -a passage which really seemed, as acted by Miss Tree, to be the only one, in the whole scene, affording the least opportunity to express aught like deep feeling or pathos: which seems, on perusal, to be very like nonsense; as does the following, in the same scene. Addressing Bragelone, La Valliére says: "Ah! when last we parted, I told thee of thy love I was not worthy; By which the author means the lady to say, that another should take her place in Bragelone's affection. The following, too, how vapid, how inflated, how labored! What actress could be expected to clothe such language with any thing like real pathos of action or enunciation ? One more extract, to show the burthen so valiantly assumed and so creditably sustained by Miss Tree, and we have done. The following is from the scene in the church, where the heroine takes the veil. She is addressing Louis, and has to say: "I am weak, The best scene in the play, is that where Bragelone reads to the king a presage of the destiny of the French throne. But it was mangled, mutilated, and misunderstood; and Fredericks, instead of giving it in a calm, solemn, impressive manner, roared it into the ears of Louis, as if it were an anathema. All things considered, it was a decision very creditable to the New-Yorkers, which, after three fair hearings, they have decreed to the Duchess de La Valliére — damnation. 0. DRAMATIC STARS-MAGNITUDE NUMBER SIX. 'JOHNSON.-'Sir, my opinion is, that whenever Bozzy expires, he will create no vacuum in the region of literature. He seems strongly affected by the cacoëthes scribendi — wishes to be thought a rara avis, and in truth so he is. Your knowledge in ornithology, Sir, will easily discover to what species of bird I allude.' Here the Doctor shook his head, and laughed.' P. S. TO BOZZY AND Piozzi.' THERE is a certain powerful influence acting upon every branch of society at the present day, and in its effects paralyzing all honest and honorable efforts, to which the expressive, if not classical, cognomen, 'humbug,' has been given. Guiltless, however, of the intention of writing a history of the world, we are not prepared to give an account of its rise and progress. There is orthodoxy in the belief, that our respectable grandmother Eve should be considered the 'First of the Humbugged;' and the oily rascal who beguiled her into a fondness for apples, whether he took upon him the shape of the genus 'Amphisbona,' which glorieth in two heads, or the 'Hydrus,' which, belonging to the temperance cause, delighteth in water, or the 'Cerastes,' which affecteth horns, or the 'Dipsas,' which, like a companionable sot, is not only thirsty itself, but the cause of thirst in others— whether the gay deceiver took upon himself either one or other of these seductive shapes, he hath claim to the honor of being regarded as the 'pater empirice.' His children and disciples are as the leaves of the forest - without number, numberless. They flourish on every stalk, and every trade, business, and profession nourisheth them. 'How many valiant generals are there,' reasoneth the philosophic Jacques, who dare not attack a bulrush, unless the wind be in their favor; sage politicians, who cannot comprehend the mystery of a mouse-trap; profound lawyers, whose heads would make excellent wig-blocks; and sage physicians, whose knowledge extendeth no farther than writing death warrants in Latin! How easy to continue the catalogue!-as thus: Pillars of sanctity, who have not so much grace as would serve as a prelude to a piece of bread and butter; princely merchants, whose wealth is snugly deposited in the mountains of the moon; great painters, whose works are so original, that there is nothing like them, on the earth, in the heavens above, or the waters under the earth; divine poets, whose divinity cannot keep them from stealing; astute critics, whom nature hath saved from being blockheads, by cramming their empty pates with knavery; honorable young gentlemen, in remarkably fine heads of hair, whose gentility is borrowed of their tailors, and whose youthful honors repose where resteth the wisdom of Hyppolite de Frisac, viz., in their wigs; and finally, 'celebrated actors,' whose greatness is the result of a puff, as is that of a distended soap-bubble, and who thereupon swell out, as continueth the oracular Jacques, 'like a shirt bleaching in a high wind,' and are shining examples, that a man need never want gold in his pocket, who hath plenty of brass in his face. Theatres, indeed, are the chief courts of humbug. There she has erected her throne, there bend nightly her worshippers, and there convene daily her disciples. Among the conspicuous members of her court, are many of those who call themselves 'stars,' but who would be more properly distinguished under the title of ' meteors,' 'Will-o'-the-Wisps,' and 'Jack-with-the Lanterns,' inasmuch as, like those luminous bodies, they generally take their rise in some unknown swamp, or bog, gleam gloriously for a moment, vanish, and are forgotten, leaving behind them a somewhat mysterious smell of sulphur, which has led naturalists into curious speculations as to their origin. We have in our mind's eye, at this present, a brilliant specimen of these emanations, which has within a short time flashed across our theatrical horizon. Ecce homo! The genius which hover'd o'er the classie fane that rears its noble stuccoed countenance in the Bowery, in the days of the big eagle of golden memory, smiled its sweetest smile upon the nightly aspirations of a promising juvenile, to fame and fortune then unknown. He was an ambitious youth, and even in the tender days of his paphood, did his soul yearn for greatness, even as the bowels of an unhatched gosling may be supposed to yearn for the bosom of a duck-pond. He panted for glory, from his birth- not the soldier's glory, which is gallantry-nor the statesman's, which is emulation — nor the poet's, which is enthusiasm-nor the patriot's, which is sand for the eyes of the dear people - but an actor's glory- which combines all other glories in one bright constellation of glories. The golden eagle of 'the Bowery' looked benignant upon his early efforts, and the genius of the place, in very ecstacy, and crowed! 'beheld his early flight Shook o'er him dew-drops from her wings of light,' Presuming to walk boldly forward, where lesser spirits only dared to creep, in good time he reached the glorious elevation of third-rate comedian! He took |