had indeed survived the d chivalrous delineation; and tary column of a past age, to the days when the the popularity upon plays and bined extravagance of incid able ethics, and the mana upon his scene-painter and than upon his actors. In Charles Kemble had been diences composed of the re plished and the judicious; the theatre had ceased to att generally, because it no lo means of intellectual ente are inclined to think, at lea hope, that a portion of this away. We possess, indeed, well-appointed companies of answering to the deman tragedy or comedy. But we though still dispersed, and of the advantages of coöpe siderable number of acco who would, in their degre themselves a name in any per history. We have play-wri their number be few, who, honest purpose, may yet do improve the actor in his art audience in their taste and

F

We should not be rende to the memory of Charles K to omit mentioning his exerti of the historical drama by r affording it for the first time, ry and costume. His brothe much of the neglect and ba matters which had disgrace Betterton, Quin, and Gar rescued Othello from his foot Macbeth from his brigadier Brutus and Coriolanus from and slippers. But the young many steps further; and in tions of the Moor of Venice, Henry IV., put upon the sta and captains of the Signory, of England, even in the ver them when their dukes wedd or Hotspur and Worcester fou bury. The pomp and cir beauty of Macready's rep Shakspeare's Historical Play nite honor upon his enterp and Mr. Phelps, annually at approves himself, so far as th is concerned, one of the m skilful of Shakspearian illustra

gentlemen belongs the full credit of having followed a good example; but to Charles Kemble appertains the honor of having led the way, and of having, as it were, couched the public eye, and made it capable of appreciating the power of scenic illustration when employed in the rightful and bounden service of the monarch of dramatic poets.

Hitherto we have considered Charles Kemble in his public capacity alone; but he was too remarkable as a man and as a member of refined and intellectual society, to be regarded merely under his aspects as an actor. In our account of him in his professional relations we have indeed anticipated many of his individual qualities. His intellectual powers are presumed in his ability to conceive and impersonate the highest order of dramatic character; he who is competent to embody poetic creations must necessarily possess no ordinary share of the imaginative faculty itself. He who is able to analyze, combine, and reproduce the fine and subtle elements of Shakspearian life, cannot have studied either universal or specific human nature with an unlearned eye, without exerting, and that in no common degree, the perceptive and logical powers of the understanding. His fine and cultivated taste was displayed in the grace of his manners, in his noble demeanor, and in the skill with which he enlisted the arts in the service of the drama. But apart from his profession, Charles Kemble's acquirements in literature were considerable. He spoke fluently and with elegance several modern languages; he was well versed in the masterpieces of their literature. Although not, perhaps, a deep classical scholar, he was familiar with the best writers of ancient Rome; and as the amusement of his declining years and comparative seclusion, he renewed his early knowledge of Greek, and prosecuted its difficult study with the zeal and energy of an aspirant for university honors. Like his brother, and indeed like his family generally, he derived from nature linguistic faculties of the first quality. Had John Kemble not been the greatest actor of his day, he would most probably have been among its very foremost philologists, as the notes he has left upon the subjects of his various reading abundant ly evince. And these philological powers were shared by his brother. The labor he bestowed upon the technicalities of the Greek grammar was to him a labor of love. With half the amount of toil he expended upon the dry, and to most people intolerably mi

attained facility in reading Homer, Xenophon, or Euripides. But he would dive to the very roots before he indulged in the luxury of the fruit or flowers; and a certain air of abstraction observable in his looks, was often owing to the circumstance that, in his walks, or while seemingly unoccupied, he was carefully going through, in his memory, some knotty paradigma, or defining, for the twentieth time, the precise import of the Greek particles. Art, and the department of sculpture especially, he had made the subject of earnest study-in some measure, perhaps, as auxiliary to his own profession--but also from more catholic and higher notions. Winckelman himself might have been proud of a pupil who appreciated the beauty of ancient sculpture with a zest and discernment scarcely inferior to his own. In both his literary and artistic acquirements, Charles Kemble's sphere of observation had been greatly enlarged by extensive travels--at a time when travelling was neither so usual nor so easy as it has since become--and by constant communication with intelligent and accomplished artists, British and foreign. His house, indeed, was at all times the resort of persons distinguished in art and literature; and rarely did they encounter a host more capable of estimating their common or particular excellences, or who entered with a more cordial interest into their respective pursuits.

Distinguished by a courtesy of demeanor, even in days more courteous than our own, Charles Kemble transmitted to the present age the express image of the English gentleman of the past generation--of the gentleman whom Reynolds painted, and of whom Beauclerc was the sample and representative. He was, indeed, not less formed to delight and instruct private society than to be the mould of high breeding, and the glass of refined manners on the stage. In his later years his own social enjoyments were much impeded by deafness, and by the recurrence of a painful disorder. But neither privation. nor pain diminished the urbanity of his address, or the general sweetness and serenity of his temper. With a shrewd perception of character, he was lenient in his judgment of men and their opinions. He was slow to censure, and swift to forgive; and more inclined to make allowance for error than prone to detect imperfections.

In the long period of days allotted to him, Charles Kemble had both mingled much in society, and marked its features with a

inexhaustible, and his stories derived as much grace and point from his mode of relating as from their intrinsic pith and moment. He might have written and it is much to be regretted that he did not write--a volume of reminiscences. The arc of his experience stretched from the days of Burke and Sheridan to the present moment; for at every period of his life he had sought the society of his elders, and courted the intimacy of men younger than himself.

Charles Kemble has departed from us in the fulness of days, and attended by the respectful affection of a numerous circle of friends. His name will endure as long as the records of the stage retain their interest, and wherever the genius of the actor is held in honor. But it is the condition, twin-born with the nature of his powers and the demands of his art, that he who in his day reaps the first harvest of popularity, is, after that day has passed, the soonest forgotten in all but-Name. Yet he is not without compensation for the ephemeral nature of his efforts and triumphs; if neither the pencil nor the chisel have power to perpetuate the effects which once electrified multitudes-if the flashes of his genius be

All perishable like the electric fire,
They strike the frame, and as they strike, expire
Incense too pure a bodied flame to bear,
Its perfume charms the sense, then blends with air.

Yet, on the other hand, while the painter, the sculptor, and the poet are generally compelled to expect from the future their full meed of honor, the recompense of the actor is awarded to himself: he enjoys the fulness

of his fame, and is at once the inheritor and witness of his own triumphs. To no one but the actor is it given to speak at once to so many feelings, to move and permeate so vast a mass of human passions; to impart pleasure, enlightenment, and instruction to so many delighted auditors. He is the interpreter of the arts to the many: he holds the keys of sorrow and mirth. It is his voice, or gesture, or look, which has filled the eyes of crowded spectators with gentle tears, or has elicited from them bursts of genial laughter. But for him, poetry might have been dumb, and painting meaningless to many men and many minds. He is the merchant who brings the gold of Ophir and eastern balsams within reach of those whose abode is far removed from the regions where Nature has exerted her most subtile and strange alchemy.

The place of Charles Kemble in his profession, though long vacant, has never been supplied; nor is it probable that it ever will, for he combined, in an unusual proportion, intellectual powers with natural gifts; the void which his decease has made in the circle of his friends is as little likely to be filled up, for he united all that is pleasant in man with principles and virtues of "sterner stuff." In contributing our mite to the final Plaudite of Charles Kemble we will repeat the challenge of the greatest orator of Rome, uttered upon the decease of Rome's greatest actorQuis nostrum tam animo agresti ac duro fuit ut Roscii morte nuper non commoveretur? qui cum esset senex mortuus, tamen propter excellentem artem ac venustatem videbatur omnino mori non debuisse.

A LITERARY CURIOSITY.-In the beautiful edition of Goldsmith's Complete Works, just published in London by Murray, we find a poem of several hundred lines by Dr. Goldsmith, now for the first time printed. It is a translation from the Latin of the celebrated Italian poet Vida, and is entitled The Game of Chess. It is difficult to imagine where this MS. has lain perdu for three-quarters of

a century; but it is all in the poet's own hand-writing, and is not only vouched for by Mr. Peter Cunningham, the editor of Murray's new edition of Goldsmith, but by Mr. Foster the poet's biographer. It will be republished here in the course of a few days, in a volume now in press, by Phillips, Sampson & Co., of Boston.

In the interest which attaches to every thing connected with his name, Mr. Disraeli is not unlike Lord Byron, one of the gods of his early idolatry. Since Byron, indeed, no one in this country has piqued the public curiosity so much, and for so long a time. From the day on which he succeeded, by those memorable philippics, in banishing Peel from office and from the favor of the Tories, he has been the most marked man in Britain; and at the present hour he attracts more attention than ever. The newspapers chronicle most minutely all his movements, all his manoeuvres-how he talked with this member behind the Speaker's chair; how he turned, to whisper that member on the bench beside him; how he slept while Mr. Windy droned; how he smiled as Captain Hornet buzzed; how calmly he listened to the roaring of Sir Lionel; and then, when he rose to reply, the cut of his trousers, the color of his vest, the lappets of his coat, the tie of his neckcloth, the arrangement of his hair. And as buds of genius in days of yore practised the Byron scowl, and the Byron necktie, and the Byron limp; so all the very clever youths in this year of grace shuffle along the streets in Oriental style, bury their hands in their pockets with all the Disraelitic rites, have a passion for mouse-colored wristcoats, nourish a tuft of moss on the point of the chin, and study vacancy of expression in their countenancein this last succeeding to perfection.

On the whole, however, it is not a vulgar curiosity that is thus directed towards Mr. Disraeli, nor is a vulgar gossiping the result. The truth is, that to most persons he is quite an enigma, a hieroglyphic, at once inviting and perplexing inquiry; and not knowing what to think of him, they set themselves to speak about him. It is ever so. If the fruit of faith be works, it is not less true that words are the fruits of doubt. Silence is divine, because it implies faith, knowledge, perfect satisfaction; we break silence, we begin to talk, because our vision is not clear, and to assure ourselves, as much as to convince others. And that, in fact, this is the reason

draw so much notice will be evident, if it is considered that, of all the vituperative epithets which are flung at him so lavishly, none are more frequent than those which describe him as a juggler, a conjuror, a mystery. He is not understood; he is pure Hebrew, and without points, to by far the greater number of those who attempt to read his character and career. The sharpest missiles which are hurled at his head thus miss their mark, and, like the Australian boomerang, return again bloodless to his assailants. They declare that he has no principles, that he has no settled convictions on any one subject; and Lord John Russell even says, that he is infinitely above having any opinion whatsoever. But what does all this prove? It is simply a confession of ignorance on the part of these individuals; it simply proves that they, at least, have failed to discover that central solar point from which all his opinions emanate, and around which all his actions cluster, as planets in their orbits. Now, we are not defending Mr. Disraeli; we pass no judgment on the game which he has played for the last half-dozen years; his doctrines may have been worthy only of a visionary Laputan or a horrid Giaour, and his conduct may have been worthy only of a wily Jesuit or a dancing Dervish; but, whether good, bad, or indifferent, we must, in the name of all sound criticism, protest against thus cutting the mysterious knot by a too easy assertion, that he is alike without principle and without a policy.

It is not our intention, however, in these pages, to dwell at any length on Mr. Disraeli's political career. And it is the less necessary thus to rehearse the various passages of that party warfare in which he has of late been engaged, as within the last few months he has gradually, almost imperceptibly, changed his ground, and now fills a position more intelligible, and less open to criticism, than that which for so long a time he was content to occupy as the mouthpiece and headpiece of a party with which he has but little sympathy.

itself Tory. But, although thus arrogating | to itself an illustrious historical name, he maintains, or at least he maintained in "Coningsby" ten years ago, that, from almost the commencement of the present century, it has pursued a policy which is either founded on no principle whatever, or on principles exactly contrary to those which had always guided the conduct of the great Tory leaders of bygone times-the Bolingbrokes and Harleys, the Shelburnes and the Pitts. These pseudo-Tories made exclusion the principle of their political constitution, and restriction the genius of their commercial code; thus lifting the very banners of the Whigs themselves; for the Whigs, he says, in another part of the same work, "introduced sectarian religion, sectarian religion led to political exclusion, and political exclusion was soon accompanied by commercial restraint." When, therefore, in one of his speeches, he described the policy of Sir Robert Peel, by saying that the right honorable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing, and ran away with their clothes, he only described what, in his view, has been the Conservative policy generally; and these views he has never yet retracted. We believe, also, that he never once relinquished them, not even when most gallantly pleading the cause of the august female whose image adorns the copper coinage of the realm. Look at the Hughenden Manor manifesto. The phrase in which that celebrated state-paper announced that the genius of the epoch is favorable to unrestricted competition, which flew like a watchword all over the country, and which ultimately became the squire's formula of renouncing protection, and accepting free-trade, what was it but a resurrection of the very phrase, above quoted, which had long been buried and forgotten in "Coningsby," although not forgotten by him? And be assured that in this, and in his other novels, there are matters of weightier import than a mere turn of expression which he has not forgotten. Perhaps it is only the fond dream of those who are willing to think well of Mr. Disraeli; yet, whether right or wrong, it is said by not a few, and apparently with some truth, that he has shown a bias to those political views which he at first propounded in certain pamphlets, and afterwards in certain novels, as the standards of Toryism proper, although it is Toryism of a more enlightened hue than that of Lord Eldon, and laying claim to a birthright elder by far-the true, the aboriginal, the antediluvian Toryism. At all events, he is now reissuing these novels:

most of them have a political meaning and

whatever their significance, they demand our attention, as coming from one of the most remarkable statesmen of the day.

Is there any vital connection between politics and a novel? A most vital one, even when the novel is quite silent as to affairs of state; for the novel, after its kind, is a chart of human life, and the statesman is a navigator who steers according to his map. Some politicians, no doubt-as the economists in the British Parliament-are not statesmen in this sense, and, however good their financial schemes, can only be regarded as the pursers and supercargoes of the vessel; but the true commanders have a scheme of politics that is ever more or less consciously evolved from a study of the history, the philosophy, and the destiny of humanity. And this, truly, is the secret of that extraordinary eagerness with which the public devour every scrap of information regarding the private life of their princes and governors, more than of other men; the excuse for it also, as in like manner a lenient judge will find a noble element of gold in the sandiest follies of mankind. In the present case, the public are not actuated by a mere love of tattle; they desire to connect, what they so often see dissevered, the statesman and the man, and to trace the roots of his politics in the soil of human life.

Now there are, perhaps, no two men whose political opinions spring so directly from first principles, and from their idea of human life, as those of Benjamin Disraeli and Thomas Carlyle; and starting with the same assumption, their conclusions are practically the same. For a long time, Mr. Carlyle was considered a rank democrat, until, developing his doctrine of hero-worship, it appeared that he is nothing of the kind, but really an aristocrat-the aristocracy which he favors, however, being one of intellect, not of mere birth. In like manner, Mr. Disraeli at first seemed to wear the colors of a flaming Radical, until at length, developing the doctrines of young England, it appeared that he is nothing of the kind, but heart, head, and hand, a Tory, who sees the ideal of government in the principle of an aristocracy. And this principle naturally follows from the views which both maintain regarding the influence of individual character, and which may be summed up in the aphorism, that history is but the biography of great men. With the truth of that statement we have nothing, at present, to do; it has been impugned; it has been said that a nation is not created by its individual geniuses, but that these individuals

bubble un from the heart of the nation and