-

little quiet duties and opportunities which is more doubtful. The pleasure of taking lie within their reach, and dash off with an incapable partner through all her hoops the idea of accomplishing some brilliant depends a good deal upon circumstances. coup, which fails. In one feature, bowever, And then players do not always contrive the parallel curiously breaks down. In to get hitched into the right set, which is actual life, most people are ready to give a as bad as having to take quite the wrong helping hand to those who are getting on person down to dinner. So when it comes well in the game; "nothing succeeds," as to "red's " turn to play, red's eyes and they say, "like success; " and the more thoughts are continually found to be fixed hoops a player can contrive to work him- in quite another direction say upon self through (even though by the most "blue" in the other set- which gives to palpable pushing), the more sure he is to the game a distrait and bewildering characfind eager friends to take him on to the ter, somewhat trying to the patience of next, and carry him to the goal in triumph. those who are playing in earnest. Still, it But no one comes back to pick up the poor is a great blessing on the whole to rural devil who makes a fiasco at first start, or mothers of families, and the first introducer has been driven hopelessly out of his course of it deserves to have a statue erected at by some unscrupulous antagonist. Whereas the public expense. With the ball in the at croquet, it is these lame ducks who, as one hand and the mallet in the other, the the game goes on, become the centre of effect would be quite imperial. But in this charitable anxieties, and whose most per- case, as in so many others, the world knows verse blunderings only insure a double at- nothing of its greatest benefactors. tention on the part of their friends; - the fact being, that at croquet your own final success depends upon the progress of your slowest friend, and you cannot possibly drop him en route, however great a drag he may be, because you cannot win your own 'game without him. The only analogy in society is in the case of the scamp of the family, whom every relative is anxious to get into some safe place, that he may be no longer a scandal to the name. And it must be sometimes felt that if, as at croquet, he could be taken up to the stick, and killed dead at once, it would be the best thing for all parties.

The revival of archery has been by no means equally successful. Most people don't pretend to shoot, and most of those who do, shoot abominably. The men who might be good shots are busy with rifle practice. So the thing is left chiefly to the curates and the young ladies, and becomes slow in consequence. It is a pity, for it is one of the most graceful of out-door exercises, and when fairly good, very pretty to look at; and it is somewhat curious that the most historical and the least barbarous of our national pastimes should have fallen into such general disuse.

But attempts at reviving the old sports of But the morals of croquet are probably our ancestors, which has been a popular too little heeded by the players. It is a idea of late years, have not been successgreat institution, nevertheless. All the ful. It is not likely that they should be. people who, in a country-house, are some- History may repeat itself, but popular tastes times so difficult to amuse all the casual and habits of life do not, except in a forced visitors who may drop in of an afternoon and unnatural fashion. Such attempts at all the younger members of neighbouring reviving the past only last with the first families who are of difficult ages, to whom enthusiasm of their promoters; the moveyou want to be civil and really don't know ment is "wilful, not spontaneous." Hawkhow can be safely turned loose upon the ing was a noble pastime in its own day; lawn in favourable weather, and left to its very vocabulary has a romantic attracsort themselves into one or more games. tion. The imaginative reader longs to go Send out a little tea and fruit, and really straight from one of the Waverly novels, or the entertainer's responsibilities are at an Bracebridge Hall, and take his falcon on his end, and the great duties of society are fist, and gallop, with some fair rider at his performed with an ease and simplicity side, out upon the breezy downs, as they which is quite delightful. You have did in days of yore. Enthusiastic gentlebrought people together, and given them men have tried it, with much pains and something to do, which is a great point expense, in modern England, and the regained. To those who have got their flirt- sult was not much more satisfactory, we ations before them, at all events, the ar- suspect, in most cases, that in the instance rangement is satisfactory enough. To the of a friend who joined one such party, and lookers on, and perhaps to some of the whose horse tumbled into a rabbit-hole gentlemen players, the positive enjoyment while his eyes were fixed upon the

that one form of rational enjoyment-the oldest, the most universally attractive, and in itself the most unobjectionable the theatre- has for many reasons, and owing

"quarry," and the hawk fastened bill and claws into his wrist, and was not to be adjured by any terms of art. It is the same with attempts to bring back the old Christmas revels; such things may have a sort of to very contradictory influences, by no success, but it is the success of a masque- means maintained the comparative place in rade, in which the unreality makes part of public estimation to which it is entitled. the amusement. The boar's head and the In a highly civilised nation, it should be the wassail bowl were good things in their purest, the grandest, the most perfect of day; but even in the hall of Queen's Col- national luxuries. It is very far from being lege the guests prefer the modern turtle so; and therefore it has but a capricious and champagne. My lord of misrule, in popularity amongst the highly educated these days, would undoubtedly have to and refined, to whom it should look for its finish his evening in the custody of the true patronage and encouragement. FashCounty police. To try to sew a patch of ion will still flock to see a favourite play or old cloth upon the new garment is even aa favourite actor-and these are by no greater mistake than the reverse process in means always the best of their kind. But the proverb. But this tendency to fall the drama has not kept pace, either in the back upon obsolete ideas shows how diffi- morals of the scene or the ability of the cult a question amusement is. If we really performers, with our advances in the more understood the thing, we should no more refined pleasures of life. The standing think of resuscitating our ancestors' games protest (not always unreasonable) against than of republishing their theories of ge- its immoralities, from the more scrupulous; ology or surgery. If philanthropists would the inconvenient clashing of the time of find some corner in their brain for this performance with the modern dinner-hour; question of amusement, and hit upon some the impatience of fastidious taste with the ideas that would meet the wants and habits very mediocre ability of nine-tenths of the of our own days, they would be national actors; all these causes prevent the theatre benefactors indeed. If the Social Science from taking its proper rank amongst our Congress would devote a sub-section to the national amusements. The dramatic insubject, we could forgive them a great deal stinct is as strong as ever it was, of the grander nonsense which they talked tural and universal as the taste for music; at their gatherings. We want a new King and the checks upon its reasonable_indul James to give us a modern 'Book of gence are forced and undesirable. Private Sports,' enjoined by royal ordinance. theatricals, acted charades, character recitations, are all so many instances of the same inborn craving for scenic representations which the South Sea Islander, with whom we made acquaintance yesterday, shows as strongly as the Greek of the heroic ages. It is a taste which we ought not to be ashamed of cultivating, to the highest point of perfection to which it is capable, for our own enjoyment as educated men; whilst as an intellectual amusement for "the million" it is at once the most attractive and the most innocent in itself, if it may not even be made the most humanising. For although" Jack Sheppard" and the "Trabiata" of low life have their special attractions for the public of St Giles' (as their more elegant counterparts have for May-. Fair), yet those who have studied the tastes of a penny audience assure us that the pathos of domestic drama, in which the purest natural feelings are appealed to, finds even more enthusiastic applause. And we may perhaps ourselves remember, if we ever patronized the "Richardson" of other days, when the grand melo-drama of Virtue Triumphant' was performed at least a

Source

People who live in London have, of course, no lack of resources which may be classed as amusements. But these, to busy men, savour more of weariness than relaxation. Club life-the Londoner's great re-is for the most part solitary and selfish. The more intimate social relations which exist amongst some classes of artists are regarded by the outside world as rather too "Bohemian; and possibly, as modern English society is constituted, it may be difficult to step out of the stiffness of high respectability without stepping into the other extreme. We do everything at high pressure. Yet it is probably a fact, and a fact which has a very pleasant significance, that the intercourse between those who may be called the more intellectual workers-meaning by this all those who are more or less engaged in literature, art, or science has less of formal restraint, and more of that genuine social enjoyment which alone makes society a relaxation, than can be found in any other of the various combinations in which people find themselves thrown together. It is a pity FOURTH SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. IV. 59.

- as na

dozen times in the day in every fair in the great towns of England, that when the "tyrant" received his final settler in the terrific combat with the champion of the persecuted damsel, the triumphant rescue of "Virtue's" highly-rouged representative invariably "brought down the house," and in such style as was enough to bring down the booth into the bargain.

classes in country towns, probably, ever enter the doors of their own theatre unless on some very exceptional occasion. Whether, under the old state of things, there were not happier faces to be seen, among the young people at any rate, than are to be seen now in the lecture-room and at the classical concerts, is what cannot be fairly decided without getting a photograph of the past generation; of which, unhappily, we possess only caricatures.

- who

In country towns the theatre has fallen into hopeless discredit. The general features of society, even in a provincial capi- There will always be plenty of people tal, are so entirely altered from what they who insist upon being wiser than Heaven were fifty years ago, by the removal of made them, and who look upon this world nearly every family not bound to the place as a school which has no play-hours. There by professional ties, that the number of are those who consider all amusement as those who would be the natural patrons of more or less a waste of that precious time a respectable performance is very much which was given to man to employ in getlessened. And every one now goes up to ting money. And there are those whose London, and conceives himself too critical narrow and grudging creed only differs to be pleased with a mere country enter- from that of the worldly money-maker in tainment. If the old boxes at York and that their principles are, as Sidney Smith Bath and Liverpool could but speak, they happily termed it," other-worldly" would have a pathetic contrast to draw be- talk and act as if all pleasant things were tween their present and their past, when snares of the devil. But these two classes their occupants were county families who do not make up the majority of the world, had driven in many miles "to see the play," nor the best of it. The danger is, lest beand met there the friends and connections tween them both they should tempt some who had not yet grown too grand to live weaker vessels to grow ashamed of their next door to trade; when there were actors natural craving for honest and wholesome on the stage whom London managers came recreation, and try to veil it under some down to see, and who did not always choose | shabby disguise. And there is the greater to sacrifice their position as "leader of the danger, that if all amusement is indiscrim circuit even to the tempting of the metro- inately classed as frivolity and waste of politan charmer. As the quality of the time, there are always plenty of foolish audience deteriorated, so, in the natural people who will rack their empty brains to course of things, did that of the actors. show how thoroughly they can justify the Few members of the higher professional description.

WHITTIER TO COLFAX.
COLFAX!-well chosen to, preside
O'er Freedom's Congress, and to guide,
As one who holds the reins of fate,
The current of its great debate;
Prompted by one too wise and good
And fair, withal, to be withstood,
Here, from our northern river-banks,
I send to thee my hearty thanks
For all the patience which has borne
The weary toot of Bunkum's horn,

The hissing of the Copperhead,
And Folly dropping words of lead!
Still wisely ready, when the scale
Hangs poised, to make the right prevail.
Still foremost, though Secession's head
Be crushed, with scornful heel to tread
The life out from its writhing tail!
As wise, firm, faithful to the end,
God keep thee, prays thy sincere friend,

JOHN G. WHITTIER.

R

From the Spectator, Dec. 8.

THE IRISH UTOPIA.

"You do not understand," said an Irish friend a few days since, "you do not understand what the Fenians, that is all Irishmen

We greatly fear that the ballad-writer is nearer the truth than most of our English not landowners or well-to-do citizens, really publicists, that the passion which is now want. They do not want their stomachs sweeping through the Irish people, which filled, but their imaginations satisfied. You makes men in Ohio suffering under no may abolish the Church, and reform the magistracy, and pay for a perpetual settlement, and so relieve your own consciences, but you will not thereby pacify, far less reconcile, Irishmen. The poetry in them has been stirred. They think they could build up a new and splendid and happy society, utterly different from yours, and very much nobler than it; could recall their emigrated brethren, could take a distinct place among the nationalities of Europe, could be, in fact, a separate and a consider able people. They want to be Irishmen, and not West Britons." Most of our readers have heard of the Nation, a journal which just at present holds a singular position in Ireland, representing hostility to the It amounts to the devotion of the whole Union, and therefore to Britain, but dis-imaginative faculty in the most poetic race couraging armed insurrection and detesting in Europe to an unattainable end. Fenianism. The Nation on Saturday published a ballad which it heads wittily enough "Non Possumus," and which expresses with that wailing melodiousness never wanting even to Irish doggrel the idea our friend expressed in prose: :

grievance subscribe for muskets to be used Milesians in London offices to declare that against Englishmen, and induces jovial after all, were Fenianism not so hopeless, they would be Fenians, is caused by a sentiment deeper, more intangible, and more enduring than any political resentment or social aspiration. The quarrel of the creeds, the rivalry of the two ideas of tenure, are but the occasions which permit the deeper feeling to blaze up, the rifts through which the smoke pours, and reveals unknown masses of fire below. It is, we fear, the passion for nationality which has seized the Irish, and no heavier misfortune has, in our day, ever befallen a people.

“ "As wise advice these words are said
Forsake the unsuccessful cause,
Brave, foolish Ireland; bow your head,
And yield your heart to alien laws.

"Behold how busy Scotland thrives:-
She struck her banner years ago;
She gave her name, and flag, and race,
To union with her ancient foe.

"Re

peal," as it was called, supposing it to have been honest, to have represented a genuine wish for self-government under the British Crown, was not, we have always thought,. the wild absurdity most English politicians. pronounced it to be. If Ireland were heartily loyal, Britain could govern her as she governs Victoria, leaving her absolute self-control on every subject not connected with. foreign relations and military defence. It is of no advantage to this country to main-tain English law in Ireland instead of the Code Napoleon, or any other Celtic digest of Roman principles, no advantage to forbid the creation of a scientific administra-tion, no advantage to sustain its peculiar form of landlordism, provided compensation were found for landlords. Provided. Ireland were heartily with us, yielded her contingent of soldiers, was ready to defend England as well as herself, was allied, in fact, as Scotland would under such circum-stances be allied, she might arrange her internal society almost as she chose. It would be far easier to make that revolution than to go on suppressing insurrections, keeping up an expensive garrison, and fettering our own internal development for ever. O'Connell meant Ireland to be a colony of France instead of England, and of. course was defeated, but honest "repeal," *self-government under the British Crown,,

was not a future absolutely unattainable. | tion merely resolves itself into this - that The creation of an Irish nationality is. To Ireland is ready to wage a tremendous civil secure it Ireland must conquer England, war in order to substitute for the dominion which she is incompetent to do, and which of the English nation the dominion of the for that object no one can help her to ac- English settlers. Nothing more utterly complish. Suppose the wildest of Fenian hopeless could be imagined, and this utter dreams to prove true, and the Union to hopelessness of result is, to our mind, the fight Great Britain on behalf of Irish inde- saddest feature in the whole Fenian movependence, and win that tremendous game ment. It kills not only the English desire three preposterous assumptions. Ireland to concede, but the motive for concession. would either be a State of the Union, What is the use of changing tenures at would, that is, be governed by Englishmen enormous expense if when changed the popon the other side of the Atlantic instead of ulation is as discontented as before, or of Englishmen on this side, or she would be risking our own system by innovations in reconquered by the men of her own North- Ireland which seem to Irishmen like the' ern counties. The men of the Pale have offer of milk to a man athirst for brandy? done it before, they would do it again, they The Irish say that Englishmen approve ask nothing better than the opportunity of their emigration, wish them gone, are ready trying their strength unhampered by the to facilitate their going, and they declare with English sense of justice and English hatred much justice that this is, if not an injury, at of slavery. In three years the true Irish least a carefully selected and most exaspe would, if no external.power intervened, be rating insult. But if their true passion is accepting gladly permission to emigrate en for separation, if nothing less or else wil masse, and the island would be really content them, if they reject friendship, defy or avowedly a Scotch province. If the Irish partnership, and despise equality, they are really of opinion that they would be themselves produce this terrible state o happier as a State of the Union, so much feeling. They drive English thinkers into happier, we mean, that they are ready to a corner, out of which there is but that one die for the cause, why do they not demand escape. If nothing will content the junio from England the position of such a State? partner in a concern which cannot be spli Granted their honesty in the matter, they up, what is there for it but to wish hin could have all the independence of London gone? We have always maintained tha which Massachusetts has of Washington, emigration, as practised in Ireland, was a without rushing blindfold on irresistible evil, that the Empire wants the addition a force. The truth is they do not want that, the Irish strength, that our race lacks ex but something totally different from that, a actly the power the Irishman can yield. separation which England, apart altogether is a sad thing for the world as well as Eng from its unchangeable instinct in the mat- land that the Connaught cottier should fee ter, could not grant. Nothing she could do moved by a ballad such as the one we hav would prevent the dominant class of Ireland quoted, but it is a sadder thing that th from immediately reasserting its old ascend- Suffolk peasant cannot be moved by an ancy, and compelling the Irish Catholics to political ballad at all. But while we a call in foreign aid. The prayer for nation- knowledge to the full the beauty and th ality is merely a prayer for a change of originality of the Irish genius, while w servitude, the single proposal in the whole recognize longingly all it could give to ot range of politics for which no hearing will own more stolid people, while we see in it ever be obtained. Englishmen have never capacity for a nobler, brighter, more var thought it out, but they feel instinctively coloured life than ours, rather than the pr that with Ireland American or French, sent condition should endure, rather tha either life in Great Britain would be intol- separation should be granted, we would se erable from the weight of conscription and the Irish race depart, satisfied that at lea taxation, or Great Britain would sink into our loss would be their own gain. The a third-class power. They see no moral is, if this separatist idea be true and invi gain in that result, and there is none. The cible, no other hope. All that Britain ca existence of Great Britain as an immense and free power, able to do grand works such as the reduction of Southern Asia under civilization, is a greater gain to the world than the independence of Ireland can possibly be. The race so convinced is sure to fight to the end, and the cry for separa

do is to hold on quietly, repress Fenian repress Orangemen, repress agrarian di turbers, and wait till in the course of yea we have arrived at peace by sustaining a unspeakable loss. It is the most melancho of British prospects, but if this aspiratic for an impossible nationality be the real ro