546 Notes of the Month on QMAY, 



per night). Mrs. Jordan's salary, in her meridian, amounted to thirty guineas 

 per week. John Kemble, when actor and manager at Covent Garden, was 

 paid thirty-six pounds per week ; George Cooke, twenty pounds ; Lewis, 

 twenty pounds, as actor and manager ; Edwin, the best buffo and burletta 

 singer that ever trod the English stage, only fourteen pounds per week ; and 

 Mrs. H. Siddons, by far the best representative of Juliet I ever saw, nine 

 pounds per week. After this, may we not exclaim* Ye little stars, hide your 

 diminished heads !' " 



It is hard to stand up against such a whirlwind. But still we may 

 ask, why do managers give such salaries now ? Certainly not for love 

 of the actors. The true answer is, they find it worth their while. 

 Why do actors demand such salaries ? Because every man has a right 

 to sell his talents as high as he can, and the few years during which an 

 actor can be secure of popularity, make it necessary for him to make 

 the most of his time. The lower salaries of the Kembles, &c. thirty 

 years ago, were not so much under the present rate, when we consider 

 the enormous rise of price in every thing necessary for human support. 

 And lastly, because a well conducted theatre is able to pay any salary 

 that can be fairly equal to the ability of any performer. The fact is 

 that the decline of theatrical profits is altogether owing to the decline of 

 theatrical writing. During the period when the theatres were supplied 

 with a constant succession of new performances, various as they were 

 in point of merit, and even in point of success, the theatres throve. 

 Sheridan's theatre was the first to exhibit symptoms of ruin, because 

 Sheridan was at once a genius and an idler, rendered too fastidious by 

 the former to make use of the talents of inferior men, and by the latter 

 never taking the trouble to make any exertion of his own. The plan 

 of this man, who was made to be undone, was to employ great per- 

 formers, at great salaries, of course. The time soon arrived when the 

 public grew weary of seeing the same performances for the hundredth 

 time, deserted the theatre, left the great salaries to be looked for in empty 

 benches, and walked over in a body to old Harris, who gave large 

 prices to authors, and had of course every thing that was worth having, 

 paid his actors moderately but punctually, and finally made his fortune, 

 by his slight comedies, moderate actors, and small theatre. But the 

 moral of the tale receives its full confirmation from the subsequent fate 

 of Harris himself. In his old age he abandoned his system, lavished 

 his money on shew, and a theatre twice too large for convenience or 

 productiveness, ventured on the Sheridan maxim, of " away with 

 authois, give me the scene-painter and the carpenter ;" and finished in a 

 few years by losing every shilling of his fortune, and leaving his theatre 

 under a load of debt, from which it has never recovered. 



It seems to be an established fact in the history of medicine that there 

 is no disease which is not capable of a cure; though undoubtedly 

 there remain some of which the cure is so rare, that the disease may, 

 in our present state of knowledge, be generally considered all but 

 desperate. Of those, all the maladies which attack the nervous system 

 seem still the farthest from hope, partly because our ignorance of the 

 nervous system is the most remarkable, and partly because its maladies 

 have the most rapid and violent influence on the frame. Hydrophobia 

 has hitherto baffled all regular treatment, and " locker-jaw," when 

 arrived at a certain height, seems to bid defiance to medicine. How- 



