GLEANINGS. ,
THE PECULIAR Loox or NAPOLEON.—As soon as the quadrilles were over, (at a masked ball at the Tuileries,) the country-dances began, and the at-
tendants upon the court entered into conversation with the less favoured crowd, who occupied the first tier of boxes. It was impossible to distinguish the Emperor; he was lost in a crowd of dominos of all colours, engaged in the sport of perplexing us plebeians, who felt proud at being noticed by them ; though intent, however, upon watching the dense crowd, in which I could not discover a vacant space, I fancied I saw a grey domino, follewed by a couple of tall black figures, who seem to have been placed there for the purpose of keeping watch upon die master, and especially upon those who might come too closely into contact with him. From that moment my whole attention was riveted upon the group, and! acquired the conviction that! was not mistaken.
The grey domino came up to a very handsome lady, loaded with diamonds; she was seated at a very short distance from me. His majesty kept his eyes fixed upon her for some moments, with his arms behind his back, and without uttering a single word; she blushed, became greatly agitated, and ended by saying in a tremulous voice to her troublesome observer, that slit was not conscious of knowing him. Not a word was uttered in reply by the stranger,
who appeared fixed to the spot in frold of the disconcerted lady. She sud- denly rose from her seat in the utmost haste' and exclaimed in a terriled voice:
"That look is peculiar to the emperor ! how I repent having cone to this place." She speedily left the palace, and the rumour spread arould us, that this lady who had acquired some celebrity by a notable adventure, vhich was
followed by a divorce, had not been invited ; that she had, with unaccountable boldness, obtained admission to the fête by the ticket of one of hr friends. Napoleon, whose once ardent attachment for her had degenerated into hatred, compelled her, in this manner, to quit an assembly to which he hal refused her admittance. The emperor's silence had revealed his meaning to ter guilty conscience, in as forcible a manner as a peremptory order could hive dune. Memoirs °like Empress Josephine. Vol. II.
GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS ; KOTZEBUE HUNG IN CHAINS.—The German Parnassus, as one of its own denizens remarks, has a rather broad summit ; yet only two dramatists are reckoned, within the last half century, to have mounted thither—Schiller and Goethe ; if we are not, on the strenrth of his Minna von Barnhelm and Emilie Galotti, to account Leasing of thenumber. On the slope of the mountain, may be found a few stragglers of the some bro- therhood; among these, Tieck and Maier Miiller, firmly enough statoned at considerable elevations ; while, far below, appear various honest persons climbing vehemently, but against precipices of loose sand, to whom we wish all speed. But the reader will understand that the bivouac we speak of and are about to enter lies not on the declivity of the hill at all ; but on tie level ground close to the foot of it : the essence of a playwright being that he works not in poetry, but in prose, which more or less cunningly resembles it. And here pausing for a moment, the reader observes that he is in a civilized coun- try for there, on the very boundary. line of Parnassus, rises a gallows with the figure of a man hung in chains ! It is the figure of August von Kotzelne, and has swung there for many years, as a warning to all too audacious play- wrights, who nevertheless, as we see, pay little heed to it. Ill-fated Kotzebue, once the darling of theatrical Europe! This was the prince of all playwrights, and could manufacture plays with a speed and felicity surpassing even Edit,- burgh novels. For his muse, like other doves, hatched twins in the month; and the world gazed on them with an admiration too deep for mere words. What is all past or present popularity to this ? Were not these plays trans- lated almost into every language of articulate-speaking men ; acted, at least, we may literally say, in every theatre from Kaintschatka to Cadiz ? Nay, did they not melt the most obdurate hearts in all countries ; and, like the music of Orpheus, draw tears down iron cheeks ? We ourselves have known the flintiest men, who professed to have wept over them, for the first time in their lives. So was it twenty years ago : how stands it to-day? Kotzebue, lifted up on the hollow balloon of popular applause, thought wings had been given him that he might ascend to the immortals : gay he rOsi4, soaring, sail- ing, as with supreme dominion • but in the rarer azure deep, his Windbag burst asunder, or the arrows Of keen archers pierced it; and so at last we find him a compound-pendulum, vibrating in the character of scarecrow, to guard from forbidden fruit! 0 ye playwrights, and literary quacks of every feather, weep over Kotzebue, and over yourselves ! Know that the loudest roar of the million is not fame ; that the windbag, are ye mad enough to mount it, will burst, or be shot through with arrows, and your bones too shalt act as scarecrows.—Foreign Review.
MORAL TRAINING.—Our first writ of life is under the influence of the pri's. mitive feelings : we are pleased, and we laugh; hurt, and we weep : we vent our little passions the moment they are excited ; and so much of novelty have we to perceive, that we have little leisure to reflect. By-and-by, fear teaches us to restrain our feelings : when displeased, we seek to revenge the displea- sure, and are punished : we find the excess of our joy, our sorrow, our anger, alike considered criminal, and chidden into restraint. From harshness we become acquainted with deceit: the promise made is not fulfilled, the threat not executed, the fear falsely excited, and the hope wilfully disappointed: we are surrounded by systematized delusion, and we imbibe the contagion. From being forced into concealing the thoughts which we do conceive, we begin to affect those which we do not : so early do we learn the two main tasks of life, to suppress and to feign, that our memory will not carry us beyond that period of artifice to a state of nature when the twin principles of veracity and belief were so strong as to lead the philosophers of a modern school into the error of terming them innate.— The Disowned.
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