1830.] Affairs in General. 333 



If English landholders will carry over their incomes to Paris, and make 

 a flourish there, while their countrymen are struggling with cold and 

 hunger, the sooner and the more severely they suffer for it the better. 

 If all the houses of those nobles, who run away to revel among 

 foreigners, leaving the poor people round them to get through the 

 worst season of the year without help, abandoning their natural station 

 among the gentry of their neighbourhood, and exhibiting nothing but 

 closed doors in return for the enormous rents poured into their coffers, 

 were burned down ; we should only think that the calamity was retri- 

 bution, and that we might easily dispense with the houses, when they 

 were good for nothing to the nation. 



The unfortunate close of Lord Graves' s life has excited long and 

 furious controversy in the papers. The result has been, the withdrawal 

 of all charge against the Duke of Cumberland. The grounds of the self- 

 murder are to be looked for partly in the weakness of a temperament, 

 enfeebled by nervous disease ; but probably much more in the pernicious 

 self-will inculcated and inflamed by all the habits of high life. To a 

 man reared in the perpetual indulgence of all his inclinations, the first 

 shock of adversity is generally fatal; and even the most trivial perplexity 

 is exaggerated by this unthwarted and unexercised self-will, into the 

 most irresistible affliction. The history of suicides is seldom more than 

 the history of a pampered mind, suddenly disturbed by some vexation, 

 which a more familiar experience with the rough work of life, would 

 look upon as too trifling to be thought of. Lord Graves's pistol is the 

 natural resource of those Sybarites, whom we see lounging about the 

 world, borne by the labour of others, living in a languid anticipation of 

 every natural appetite, and urged into a fever of impatience from the 

 mere misfortune of never having been contradicted ! 



But the merits of those who were involved in public calumny by his 

 death, are of more importance to us ; and it is only due to " The Age" 

 (a paper which is rapidly compelling the attention deserved by vigorous 

 writing and sound politics), to say, that it was among the very first to 

 set the public mind right upon the subject, and strikingly to sustain the 

 truth of the case by the force and manliness of its vindication. 



The destruction of the English Opera House afforded one of those 

 instances, which have so frequently occurred in the case of theatres, 

 that we can scarcely call them otherwise than providential. The fire 

 broke out at two in the morning. Two hours before, the theatre was 

 crowded, and many persons of high rank were present The conse- 

 quences of alarm must have been dreadful. But the confusion would 

 have been still greater behind the scenes, a place which towards the close 

 of the performance is generally filled with the theatrical attendants, &c., 

 and where the first burst of the conflagration would have cut off all 

 escape. 



The fire was probably commencing while the audience were in the 

 house. And from the complicated state of the avenues to the boxes, 

 pit, and galleries, the alarm must have occasioned a dreadful loss of 

 lives by the trampling of the people upon each other, and not improbably 

 by the enclosure of some part of the audience in the intricate passages 

 of the burning theatre. We regret Arnold's losses, as he is a very 

 respectable man ; obliging and honest in his general transactions, and a 



