03 Monthly 



The average value of these 159 livings 

 tlien, proves to be .245; 101 are below 

 that average, 80 are below 150, 49 below 

 jfelOO, and 19 not exceeding .50, which 

 means very considerably below that paltry 

 $um. Nearly two-thirds of the tithes are 

 in lay hands ; and very nearly one-half of 

 the parishes are without parsonage-houses. 

 Under these circumstances, can more, in 

 the way of residence and attendance, be ra- 

 tionally expected from the clergy ? Let the 

 Saddle be placed on the right horse. The 

 existing clergy, at least, are not to blame. 

 Some measures are loudly demanded for 

 equalizing church property. 



<>f Literature. 



[JAN. 



The object of the second charge is to en- 

 force education, by calling upon the clergy 

 to promote the extension of national schools, 

 and themselves to superintend them : not so 

 much for the diffusion of knowledge, of 

 which he justly speaks contemptuously, for 

 the mass of the people, as of religious edu- 

 cation ; and he replies to those who so re- 

 peatedly allege the Scotch as proofs of the 

 advantages of the " diffusion of knowledge," 

 by affirming/that the cause of the sober and 

 industrious habits of that people is to be 

 looked for rather in the attention paid by 

 the clergy to their religious education, than 

 to that vaunted "diffusion of knowledge." 



MONTHLY THEATRICAL REVIEW. 



THIS is proverbially a month of theatrical 

 nonentity. No author would produce a 

 piece on the boards in December on pain of 

 death, and that which follows ; no actress 

 would study a new part ; no manager would 

 frame a bill, containing any thing better 

 than the obsolete fare which has run 

 through the season. The very tailors 

 would be surprised by an order for a new 

 pair of pantaloons, even for Jones, who 

 delights in " that sort of thing," and who 

 has notoriously the best legs and the best 

 taste in exhibiting them of any man alive. 

 In short, all before the curtain is much of 

 the same fashion with all in the street : 

 dulness, frigidity, and fog. Even the Ameri- 

 can manager, who passes over oceans with 

 the agility of the time when witchery and 

 broomsticks were the instruments of navi- 

 gation, has found it difficult to get over this 

 month gives us in his despair two farces 

 and a Dutch dance for a night's subsis- 

 tence, and bids us live on the promise of 

 " II Turco in Italia " metamorphosed into 

 an English opera. 



Covent- Garden is In exactly the same 

 condition. It has indulged itself during 

 the month with a remarkably dry succession 

 of performances, and disdaining to take an 

 unfair advantage of its gilt and burnished 

 rival, has seemed to enter into a compact, 

 as vigorous against novelty of performance 

 as against novelty of actors. For all this, 

 however, we are to be consoled by the 

 glories of pantomime. If heroes and heroines 

 are asleep before the curtain, all is life 

 behind. Every chisel and brush, every 

 artificer in drapery and automatons, every 

 manager of screws and wires, and every 

 genius of tumbling and grimace, is in daily 

 and nightly activity in.every lamp-lit cavern, 

 in every square foot of the theatre and its 

 appurtenances. Harlequin is rotatory, 

 from dusky morn to foggy eve ; clowns 

 pursue him with never-ceasing awkward- 

 ness, and gibes uncheered by a smile 

 through walls of canvas and ships of paper ; 

 Pantaloons neither " lean nor slippered," 

 but fugatory and ferocious beyond the lot of 

 man, are in perpetual spring, and Colum- 



bines all unkerchiefed, and as unfitted for 

 the eye as a Frenchwoman at her breakfast, 

 learn new tricks of toilsome captivation, 

 and, like the ladies at Almack's, dance 

 with a desperate and indefatigable toe, till 

 they tire down their partner into matri- 

 mony. Of the result we must live in 

 hope. In the mean time we must live how 

 we can, for managers have shut up their 

 granaries ; and, unless we chuse to be 

 bored by eternal repetition a thing which 

 ought to be taken into consideration in 

 coroners' inquests as a handsome plea for 

 departing this life summarily there is no 

 reason why a man, in possession of seven 

 shillings and his senses, should employ 

 either in theatres during this present month 

 of December. We could pledge ourselves 

 that all this management is the twin brother 

 to bad policy, and begotten of a mistake, 

 in its turn begotten of the dead and gone 

 habits of London. 



Fifty years ago, and in every fifty years 

 preceding, it is true, that the month before 

 Christmas was busied in other things than 

 looking at the best of all possible plays. 

 The men were all plunged ears deep in 

 ledgers and will-making. London was a 

 general scene of retribution, winding up ac- 

 counts, claiming good debts, extracting bad 

 by those legal screws whose ailing absorbs 

 so much of the material extracted; or re- 

 ceiving the little exiled branches of the fa- 

 mily at home, plumed in all the honours of 

 those schools in which the rising generation 

 of our forefathers and mothers learned 

 cyphering and cross-stitch. 



The ladies of London were plunged in 

 cares equally overwhelming. Plumb-cake 

 and mince pies in a proud profusion that 

 shames the narrow provisionally of our de- 

 generate day, siit heavy on their souls. 

 The matron's thoughts were up early and to 

 bed late, in council with her cook, a kind of 

 she-chancellor, and not the less fitted for 

 the office by reason of her sex or antiquity ; 

 who kept her receipt-book and her con- 

 science ; and set herself against all culinary 

 innovation with the vigour of an irrefra- 

 gable principle. This was the day of the 



