tolerance for human weakness, and mature generosity, self-sacrifice, and a host of virtues. The intrigues and misunderstandings are cleverly contrived, though not so clearly explained, and Mr. Phelps would play the principal character very well if he had not the shadow of Manfred still darkening his spirit, and could give his caustic replies with more point and animation. He lacks elan terribly, but is exact and careful in those long soliloquies and family histories of which Mr. Falconer is always so prodigal. Having made a suggestion for the good of the Parisian stage, it is fair to notice our latest adaptation from it. "La Vie en Rose," christened by Mr. Leicester Buckingham "The Silver Lining," is a very pretty comedy, but with a strong family likeness to many comedies we have seen before. The names of the chief characters recal two of the pleasantest creations of modern light literature. The name of Frank Fairlegh reminding us of Mr. Smedley's hero, and that of Mrs. Dorrington of Mr. William Howitt's heroine. There are no highly-finished dramatic portraits in the play, but Mr. Buckingham, by thus introducing familiar names, makes us at once at home, as amongst old friends; and when we find that the gentleman overflows with good humour and excels in horsemanship, and that the lady is all geniality and cleverness, we want no new lights thrown on the characters, and are glad to find persons whose names are so pleasantly remembered by us retaining their ease and affability in the midst of a family circle far more tragic and certainly far less interesting. The burden of the three acts is principally borne by Mr. Charles Mathews, who continues so fresh, active, and light-hearted that he will soon deserve to be called the Palmerston of the Stage. His wife has an opportunity for exhibiting her powers of feeling and passion, and though they are severely taxed, the result is to raise our notion of her talent and energy. Mrs. Stirling is given a far less arduous and much more grateful part. as ever, ladylike, natural, and piquante. She is, In the musical world we note two events of importance. First, the production of "Faust" in English. Of this we have only space to say that Mr. Santley's Valentine is a performance not to be seen once, but to be studied. His singing is superb, and as a proof of his increasing dramatic power it is enough to observe that in the fourth act he frequently reminded us of Mr. Fechter. The second novelty is Mr. Macfarren's latest work at Covent Garden. "She Stoops to Conquer" makes a good English Opera. If Miss Pyne's " Barmaid Song" brings to the recollection of amateurs with inconvenient memories a reminiscence of a certain Sontag Polka, the "Cuckoo Chorus" is not less novel than it is fresh and sprightly. We scarcely can name an actor who could play Marlow better than Mr. Harrison. THE mere mention of Mr. Micawber's name, at once suggests a man who is waiting for something to turn up. He is the popularised embodiment of Futura expectans, præsentibus angor. He is the Representative Man, duly returned, of those who never by any chance have (or at least hold) a bird in the hand, though they are always seeing or about to see two, or more, in the bush. When Mr. Micawber, then, as ever, in difficulties, and then, as ever, with an increasing family, first made the acquaintance of little David Copperfield, and confided to that small boy the story of his straits and the calculation of his ways and means, it was nothing at all unusual for him to sob violently at the beginning of one of those Saturday night conversations, and sing about Jack's delight being his lovely Nan, towards the end of it. He would come home to supper with a flood of tears, and a declaration that nothing was now left but a gaol; and go to bed reckoning the expense of putting bow-windows to the house," in case anything turned up." At a much later stage in David's autobiography, we find Mr. Micawber confiding to him his relief in having their common friend Traddles under the same roof with him. For," with a washerwoman, who exposes hardbake for sale in her parlour window, dwelling next door, and a Bowstreet officer residing over the way, you may imagine that his society is a source of consolation to myself and Mrs. Micawber. I am at present, my dear Copperfield, engaged in the sale of corn upon commission. It is not an avocation of a remunerative description-in other words it does not pay-and some temporary embarrassments of a pecuniary nature have been the consequence. I am, however, delighted to add that I have now an immediate prospect of something turning up (I am not at liberty to say in what direction), which I trust will enable me to provide, permanently, both for myself and for your friend Traddles, in whom I have an unaffected interest."-And even when we get rid of the Micawber family, by shipping off the whole lot of them in an emigrant vessel, the Head of the Family goes through the solemn farce of begging to propose his note of hand, drawn at eighteen, twenty-four, and thirty months, as security for the money with which a generous friend enables him to emigrate: adding, "The proposition I originally submitted, was twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four; but I am apprehensive that such an arrangement might not allow sufficient time for the requisite amount of-Something-to turn up." Mr. Emerson unconditionally asserts, in his considerations on the Conduct of Life, that wherever there is failure, there is some giddiness, some superstition about luck, some step omitted, which Nature never * See "David Copperfield," pp. 117 sq., 182 sq., 288, 399, 540, 541, 546. : pardons. "There must be fidelity, and there must be adherence. How respectable the life that clings to its objects! Youthful aspirations are fine things, your theories and plans of life are fair and commendable :but will you stick?" When something has turned up, to it will you cleave, and by it will you abide, till death do you part? How many are the impotent men, like him at the Pool of Bethesda, though without his spiritual earnestness and without his physical excuse, who plead want of connexion and defect in position as their apology for lying still they have no man, when the water is astir, to put them into the pool; but while they are coming, festinantes lente, very lente, another steppeth in before them. But that his actual future (proleptically speaking) developed better things, one might almost augur very badly of Schleiermacher's prospects in life, when one comes across such passages as the following, in his early correspondence: "I am living in the hope, that if I get so far as to pass my examination, some little place or other may turn up for me in Berlin, or at least be found through means of Berlin influences."+ Sir Bulwer Lytton's Captain Higginbotham is described as one of that class of gentlemen who read their accounts by those corpse-lights, or willo'-the-wisps, called expectations. "Ever since the Squire's grandfather had left him-then in short clothes-a legacy of 500l., the Captain had peopled the future with expectations. He talked of his expectations as a man talks of shares in a Tontine; they might fluctuate a little-be now up and now down-but it was morally impossible, if he lived on, but that he should be a millionnaire one of these days." Richard, the expectant legatee in the great Chancery case of Bleak House, points a tragic moral in that tale of great expectations. turn up. Great Expectations. In the tale properly so called, the start in life of eventually successful Herbert Pocket seems ominously unpromising, from the cherished habit that young man has of "looking about" him, for what may "So, he got into difficulties in every direction, and continued to look about him. When we gradually fell into keeping late hours and late company," writes Pip, himself the hero, and victim, of Great Expectations, "I noticed that he looked about him with a despondent eye at breakfast time; that he began to look about him more hopefully about mid-day; that he drooped when he came in to dinner; that he seemed to descry Capital in the distance rather clearly, after dinner; that he all but realised Capital towards midnight; and that at about two o'clock in the morning, he became so deeply despondent again as to talk of buying a rifle and going to America, with a general purpose of compelling buffaloes to make his fortune."§ In all labour there is profit, but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury. Towards the close of his history of Amelia, Fielding comments on her unstable husband's Micawberism in these words: "Thus did this poor man support his hopes by a dependence on that ticket which he had so dearly purchased of one who pretended to manage the wheels in the great state-lottery of preferment. A lottery indeed, which hath this to recom Conduct of Life, ch. vii. Life and Letters of Schleiermacher, vol. i. p. 81. § Great Expectations, ch. xxxiv. mend it, that many poor wretches feed their imaginations with the prospect of a prize during their whole lives, and never discover they have drawn a blank."* When Strepsiades is at his wits' end for some device to get him out of his entanglements, Aristophanes, it has been remarked, "sees nothing for it but to send the Attic Micawber at last to bed, in the hope of some bright idea turning up between the sheets."+ There is a flavour of Micawberism about Pope Clement the Seventh, in his tactics anent the divorce of Catherine of Arragon. He said and unsaid, sobbed, beat his breast, shuffled, implored, threatened; in all ways, writes Mr. Froude, he endeavoured to escape from his dilemma, to offend no one, and above all to gain time, with the weak man's hope that "something might happen" to extricate him. And so there is about Kaiser Sigismund (of Huss notoriety) as pictured by Mr. Carlyle, who styles him a weaver, of highflying, flimsy nature, both warp and woof of whose weaving were gone dreadfully entangled. "An everhopeful, never-resting, unsuccessful, vain and empty Kaiser. Specious, speculative; given to eloquence, diplomacy, and the windy instead of the solid arts-always short of money, for one thing."§ Certainly, says Owen Feltham, it requires a great deal of judgment to balance our hopes evenly. He who hopes nothing, will never attain to anything. "But then again, he who hopes too much, shall deceive himself at last; especially if his industry does not go along with his hopes; for hope, without action, is a barren undoer." Lello, in M. About's Roman roman, would sometimes, by way of variety in the midst of his gloomy presentiments, speak of his hopes and prospects for the future. At one time he would offer up to Heaven his present vocations, and implore perfect happiness in exchange; at another, he would enumerate one by one the pleasures he counted on for the following winter. Whereat "Toto could have wished him to depend a little more upon himself, instead of leaving matters so entirely to Providence." He who in conducting the daily affairs of life, observes Mr. Isaac Taylor, has acquired the settled habit of calculating rather upon what is possible than upon what is probable, naturally slides into the mischievous error of paying court to Fortune rather than to Virtue. Nor will his integrity or his principles of honour be at all strengthened by the mere metonymy of calling Fortune-Providence. "It is easy to fix the eye upon the clouds in expectation of help from above with so much intentness, that the tables of right and wrong, which stand before us, shall scarcely be seen. This very expectation is a contempt of providence, and it is not often seen that those who slight Prudence pay much regard to her sister-Probity." An intelligent agent, elsewhere observes the same sententious moralist, will always prefer to act on even the slenderest hope which reason approves, rather than to lie supine in the ruinous wheel-way of chance.** Shrewdly says La Bruyere that "Celui qui dans toute sa conduite * Amelia, book xii. ch. ii. Froude, Hist. of England, 125. † Saturday Review, xvi. 559. § History of Friedrich II., i. p. 186. ** Natural History of Enthusiasm, pp. 122-3, 125. Tolla, ch. v. laisse long-temps dire de soi, qu'il fera bien, fait très-mal." He keeps others waiting, to see him waiting, for something to turn up. What though the odds are against him, in this state of chronic expectancy? Fortune (a various power) may cease to frown, And by some ways unknown his wishes crown.f When Boabdil, "most truly called the unfortunate," was holding a diminished and feeble court in Almeria, he vexed every Moor of spirit by his maundering Micawberism. His trust was that, in the "fluctuation of events," something in his favour might turn up. In vain his lionhearted mother strove to rouse him from his inert, pusillanimous, procrastinating languor. "It is a feeble mind," she said, "that waits for the turn of fortune's wheel: the brave mind seizes upon it, and turns it to its purpose." Be it so. Boabdil would rather wait. And verily, he had his reward. In 1781 Horace Walpole sits and gazes with astonishment at English frenzy-all for war with America, France, Spain, and Holland. "I would not willingly recur," he says, "to that womanish vision of, Something may turn up in our favour."§ For he would have been of a mind with the Lord Bardolph, at an earlier crisis in the historical wars of Old England, that -in a theme so bloody-faced as this, Conjecture, expectation, and surmise Of aids uncertain, should not be admitted.[] Mr. Guppy's friend, Jobling, finds himself, in his own phraseology, on the wrong side of the post," because of his inveterate habit of trusting to things coming round. An infirmity on Mr. Jobling's part which suggests to his author an apposite reflection on "That very popular trust of flat things coming round! Not in their being beaten round, or worked round, but in their coming' round! As though a lunatic should trust in the world's coming' triangular!" "I had confident expectations that things would come round and be all square," says Mr. Jobling, with some vagueness of expression, and perhaps of meaning, too. "But I was disappointed. They never did." 6 Cecil Danby likens himself to one of those floating webs of gossamer one sees upon the evening air, as if evermore in search of the setting sun; for he too lives in vague expectation of being caught by some bush, and endowed with a local habitation. He trusts to Destiny," the blind goddess compared with whom the blind god is a lyux,"-to accomplish something for him worthy his imperceptible deserts.** Miss Jewsbury maintains that, although it may sound immoral, it is not the less a matter of fact, that the idle and good-for-nothing who hang about in the world, expecting "strokes of fortune," generally receive them. Those who become burdens on their friends-who are always in want of "just a few pounds," to enable them to go to America, to India, or to heaven, she says, to take possession of a "most excellent situation," † Dryden, Palamon and Arcite. * Caractères, ch. xii. History of Conquest of Granada, ch. xxviii. **Cecil, vol. ii. ch. vi. |