Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 407, September, 1849

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Various. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 407, September, 1849

THE SCOTTISH MARRIAGE AND REGISTRATION BILLS

THE CAXTONS. – PART XVI

CHAPTER XCV

CHAPTER XCVI

CHAPTER XCVII

CHAPTER XCVIII

CHAPTER XCIX

CHAPTER C

AUTOBIOGRAPHY – CHATEAUBRIAND'S MEMOIRS.3

THE GREEN HAND

MORAL AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF WALES.14

THE STRAYED REVELLER.19

NEW LIGHT ON THE STORY OF LADY GRANGE

THE ROYAL PROGRESS

Dies Boreales

Scene II

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The stage-scene has dropped. Settle yourselves, my good audience; chat each with his neighbour. Dear madam in the boxes, take up your opera-glass and look about you. Treat Tom and pretty Sal to some of those fine oranges, O thou happy-looking mother in the two-shilling gallery! Yes, brave 'prentice boys, in the tier above, the cat-call by all means! And you, "most potent, grave, and reverend seigneurs," in the front row of the pit – practised critics and steady old play-goers – who shake your heads at new actors and play-wrights, and, true to the creed of your youth, (for the which all honour to you!) firmly believe that we are shorter by the head than those giants our grandfathers – laugh or scold as you will, while the drop-scene still shuts out the stage. It is just that you should all amuse yourselves in your own way, O spectators! for the interval is long. All the actors have to change their dresses; all the scene-shifters are at work, sliding the "sides" of a new world into their grooves; and, in high disdain of all unity of time as of place, you will see in the playbills that there is a great demand on your belief. You are called upon to suppose that we are older by five years than when you last saw us "fret our hour upon the stage." Five years! the author tells us especially to humour the belief by letting the drop-scene linger longer than usual between the lamps and the stage.

Play up, O ye fiddles and kettle-drums! the time is elapsed. Stop that cat-call, young gentleman! – heads down in the pit there! Now the flourish is over – the scene draws up: – look before.

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"But," concluded Uncle Jack, with a sly look, and giving me a poke in the ribs, "I've had to do with mines before now, and know what they are. I'll let nobody but you into my pet scheme: you shall go shares if you like. The scheme is as plain as a problem in Euclid, – if the German is right, and there are mines, why, the mines will be worked. Then miners must be employed; but miners must eat, drink, and spend their money. The thing is to get that money. Do you take?"

Pisistratus. – Not at all!

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