Monthly Theatrical Report, 



[JAN. 



congealed in furs and torpidity until the sun 

 and St. James's come round again. 



Yet the manager is as enterprizing, 

 spirited, and well-intentioned entrepreneur 

 us any at the head of an army of singers 

 and dancers on the face of the dramatic 

 world ; and we honour him for the gallantry 

 of the adventure. His company, with a few 

 additions, would be fully adequate to 'popu- 

 larity and profit. We are convinced that 

 the true policy would he, to make the com- 

 pany generally equal. There is no worse 

 policy than that of indulging the caprice 

 and avarice of some exibitious signer or 

 signora, by a price which no talent can 

 repay, which disgusts the other performers, 

 at once throws them down in the public 

 scale, and ultimately impoverishes the 

 theatre. There are a dozen singers on the 

 Continent, at this hour, who could execute 

 any thing that music ever made, and 

 execute it most pleasingly. But a Pasta 

 comes, and the whole corps are ab- 

 solutely stinted to fill her salary. She 

 bravuras for a few months, and then 

 walks away with a purse that breaks down 

 the diligence, calling us English Mtcs all the 

 way to the Apennines. With her the sea- 

 son is slain at once. Who will go to hear 

 the Opera, when the only singer heard of 

 during the season is gone? None but a 

 country gentleman, overtaken by a tavern- 



dinner. We have no doubt that if the ma- 

 nager could persuade those noble persons, 

 who, having no occasion for advice in their 

 respective callings, honour him with so 

 much, to let him follow the dictates of his 

 common-sense in this case, he would have 

 a more productive Opera than all the Pas- 

 tas, present or to some, would ever make 

 for him. The actual difference between 

 singers, or dancers either, is not so much as 

 that the second class of both might not sup- 

 ply very sufficient theatrical attraction. The 

 true secret would be in having pretty operas 

 not long-winded bravuras; and pretty 

 ballets not the solitary jumps or twistings 

 cf an Albert or a Paul, at fifty pounds a 

 dance. Let him choose good composition 

 in both. There are, in the repertoirs of the 

 foreign theatres, ten thousand operas and 

 ballets that have been popular in their day 

 and country but which we have not ever 

 seen here. What we have not seen is to 

 us of as much value as if it had come wet 

 from the pen of Rossini. Let him give us 

 the^c, and punish petulance of composers, 

 and bring down the " stars," or put an ex- 

 tinguisher on them. 



The only performance of the Opera- 

 House has been Spontini's La Vf stale a 

 clever performance, but which destroys a 

 pleasanter thing, by destroying the ballet. 



VARIETIES, SCIENTIFIC 



New Inflammable Substance. The fol- 

 lowing singular fact is stated in the Bulletin 

 Universel. At Doulens, near Amiens, is a 

 large manufactory for spinning cotton, 

 which is lighted by oil-gas ; this gas, on its 

 return from the cast-iron cylinder filled with 

 red hot coal, where it is formed, traverses 

 a reservoir of oil, in which it deposits a 

 white liquid matter, which can be taken 

 away by means of a spigot situated at the 

 lower part of the reservoir. The workmen 

 employed in this duty having dropped some 

 of it to the ground upon water, the matter 

 took fire spontaneously, and, having run to 

 a neighbouring rivulet, it spread itself upon 

 the surface of the water, which appeared to 

 be on fire. The proprietor of the factory 

 intends to send a bottle of this singular sub- 

 stance to M. Gay Lussac, to have it che- 

 mically analyzed. 



Improved Melting Pots. The last volume 

 of the Transactions of the Society of Arts 

 contains the following direction for the 

 composition of melting-pots, which will 

 bear a higher degree of heat than others 

 without softening, and will therefore de- 

 liver the iron in a more fluid state than the 

 best Birmingham pots. Take two parts of 

 fine ground raw Stourbridge clay, and one 

 part of the hardest gas coke, previously pul- 

 verized and sifted through a sieve of one- 

 eighth of an inch mesh ; if the coke be 

 ground line, the pots are very apt to crack. 



AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



Mix the ingredients together with a proper 

 quantity of water, and tread the mass well : 

 the pot is then moulded by hand on a 

 wooden block. 



Figure of the Earth. Mr. Ivory, whose 

 name will ever be associated with those of 

 the first mathematicians of which Europe 

 can boast, has inserted in the Philosophical 

 Journal a paper on this subject, of which 

 the following is an abstract. The number 

 of stations at which experiments with the 

 pendulum for ascertaining the figure of the 

 earth have been made, is now thirty-nine : 

 of these, twenty-eight concur in giving the 

 same ellipticity 3^7, with very small dis- 

 crepancies ; but, if we take the whole in- 

 discriminately, and make certain combina- 

 tions of them, we may obtain any ellipticity \ 

 we choose. Now if it can hereafter be in- 

 disputably proved by experiments, so con- 

 ducted that it shall be impossible to enter- 

 tain a doubt of the correctness of the re- 

 sults, that inequalities so great as the pre- 

 sent experiments indicate take place in the 

 distribution of gravity, we can hope to gain 

 little in point of accuracy by employing the 

 pendulum for investigating the figure of the 

 earth. This objection of Mr. Ivory's to 

 the use of the pendulum for the determina- 

 tion of the earth's ellipticity, is considerably 

 strengthened by the unavoidable physical 

 and mechanical difficulties which must ever 

 stand in the way of ascertaining such very 



