f 04 Notes of the Month, 



by Puzzi, had nothing- in it to recommend it but the talents of the 

 performers. Signora Luini, to whose name is attached the sounding- 

 titles of honorary member of the Academies of Venice and Bergamo y 

 has no pretensions to eminence. Her voice is thin, harsh, and wiry, 

 and she sings most dolefully out of tune ; her person is not engaging-,, 

 and her action overcharged to a degree we seldom before have wit- 

 nessed. With such qualifications the disapprobation she met with 

 can be no cause of surprise to the speculators who have been impru- 

 dent enough to engage so unprofitable a member in their company. 



" Kaidama" was very well acted by Signor Ruggiero, though with 

 the same exuberance of action which was so remarkable in Signor 

 Torri, the representative of*' Dulcamara," in the" Elisir d'Amore.' r 

 This, however, is evidently the practice in Italy, and when we have 

 become a little more accustomed to it, will be relished by us as well 

 as by native Italians who ever ate his first olive with a relish ? 



The " Searamuccia" of Ricci is announced, from which we antici- 

 pate much entertainment, being already acquainted with some very 

 lively and piquant music which is to be found in its score. But of 

 that in our next number. 



NOTES OF THE MONTH. 



Nescis quid meditans nugarum et totus in illis. HORACE. 



LORD DURHAM AND THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS. There are some people 

 i>n this world so assimilated in morals to the great father of lies as to delude 

 themselves with the notion that all their fellow- creatures are or may be ex- 

 pected to be equally unprincipled with themselves. That such an one is 

 the Emperor Nicholas let the following story show. Lord Durham, say some 

 of the Tory journals, has been invested with a Russian order and with the 

 Greek order of St. Saviour : and the slanderous " Portfolio," to improve on 

 the story as well as to show forth its own high principles, insinuates that the 

 Ambassador highly deserved both the above distinctions at the EMPEROR'S 

 hands. The above report, as the "Portfolio" with a small remnant of prin- 

 ciple acknowledges, is an error. We feel inclined to believe that the whole 

 is a malicious lie fabricated by the united energy of the rabid Tories and the 

 soi disant juste milieu, both of whom would like nothing better than the over- 

 throw of the Melbourne administration and the downfal of liberal politics 

 both at home and abroad. We doubt not for a single moment that the arch- 

 tyrant of the North did actually try to corrupt the English Ambassador by 

 the proffer of the highest Russian distinctions, thinking doubtless, that his 

 intended victim was fully within his grasp. The fowler, however, does not 

 always catch his bird; and so the snare of the Czar failed in its purpose. Lord 

 Durham needs no defender. In his diplomatic character he has done more 

 to stem the progress of Russian despotism than all his predecessors have done 

 since the peace of 1815. Let the wretched and degraded Tory faction look to 

 their own deeds and sit in fear of disclosures that their own despairing mad- 

 ness may render necessary. 



MATERIALS FOR MELODRAMA. We remember some years since, that 

 a certain leading newspaper, during the recess, was in the habit of treating its 

 readers to a series of frightful French murders which (it was strange, certainly) 



