1824.] 



soale,iiidicativeof atmospheric change, 

 might be placed on the top of the 

 inverted flask, to the vessel beneath, 

 or to both. A fall on the lower would 

 occasion a rise on the nppcr scale : 

 they must be graduated accordingly. 

 Perhaps if the water used had boiled, 

 it would do belter ; but, after all, it 

 would be far from a perfect instru- 

 ment. 



Your Totness correspondent is 

 doubtless aware, that to construct a 

 water-barometer would require a tube 

 full thirty-one feet long; a foot of 

 water being about equivalent to an 

 inch of quicksilver in the tube of a 

 common barometer. However, were 

 it possible to make with accuracy a 

 cheap apparatus of the kind, I have no 

 idea, in the present state of society, 

 that it would be required : the aches 

 and pains of the half-starved toil-worn 

 frame of the poor labourer, indicate 

 to him, too sensibly, the changes of the 

 atmosphere; he needs no philosophic 

 scale to consult ; but, should the wea- 

 Hier prevent his fulfilling " his task, his 

 daily task," he must have recourse to 

 the magisterial scale for subsistence, 

 which gives him for a week's mainte- 

 nance the price of a stone of meal, and 

 seven pence for, &c. viz. about three 

 pence per day. Such are the lament- 

 able consequences of misrule. 



Brnckdish, Norfolk ; C. G. D. 



Nov. 23, 1823. 



For the Monthly Magazine. 

 NEWS FROM PARNASSUS. 



NO. XXX. 



Caivs Gracchus, a Tragedy. 



MR. Knowles's tragedy of " Caius 

 Gracchus," it seems, is laid 

 aside : it is gone already, green-room 

 report informs us, "to the tond) of all 

 the Capulets." How has this happen- 

 ed ? Its reception was favourable, and 

 it was sustained by the best eflbrts, 

 perhaps by the cordial zeal, of the 

 actor who performed the principal 

 character; an actor whose extraordi- 

 nary merits, if report may be credited, 

 command the extraordinary remune- 

 ration of twenty pounds a-night. As 

 a dramatic composition, if it rises not 

 above, it sinks not below, the former 

 highly and permanently successful 

 production of the same author, "Vir- 

 ginius.'' In a critical point of view, it 

 is liable, perhaps, to fewer objections. 

 It is not, indeed, exact in all its unities, 

 nor was its predecessor ; but that is no 

 Monthly Mao. No. 392. 



News from Parnassus, No. XXX. 25 



great objection in the e«timation of an 

 English audience. In one of those 

 unities,— the least important, certainly, 

 of them all, that of time, — it is 

 very far from conformable to Aris- 

 totelian dogmas ; for the apparent 

 duration of the action carmot be esti- 

 mated at less than between two and 

 three years. The whole legal term of 

 the questorship of Caius Gracchus 

 passes in the interval between the 

 first and second act; and the year of 

 his tribuneship, which commences iu 

 the second, expires in the middle of 

 the third. In respect to locality, hovv- 

 ever, the variety, required by the habi- 

 tual taste of English play-goers, in tli» 

 shifting of the scene, never trespasses 

 beyond the walls and vicinity of 

 Rome. But what is this to the ad- 

 mirers of that immortal dramatist, 

 whose magic genius transported us, 

 with more celerity than the Jath of 

 Harlequin, over seas and continents, 

 while " panting Time toiled after him 

 in vain?" In the only essential uni- 

 ties, those of interest and action, it is 

 certainly more complete than "Virgi- 

 nius." It commences with the re-ap- 

 pearance of Caius in the assemblies of 

 the people, (after the domestic retire- 

 ment in which he had secluded him- 

 self, from the time when his brother 

 Tiberius had been murdered by the 

 slaves and hirelings of the Patricians,) 

 to vindicate the life and honour of 

 Vettius: — 



Tlie brother of Tiberius for his friend. 



And it terminates with his immolation 

 in that public cause in which that 

 patriotic exertion had re-engaged him. 

 The character is well, if not vigor- 

 ously, sustained ; and justice is done 

 to the sentiments and feelings of the 

 last illustrious friend of Plebeian li- 

 berty in Rome. The character of 

 Cornelia, though not absolutely Shak- 

 spearian, is Roman and matronly ; 

 and dramatic criticism might be satis- 

 fied if the illustrious ornaments of the 

 historic page were never more feebly 

 or more unfaithfully dramatised. Lici- 

 nia, indeed, (the wife of Gracchus,) is 

 far from being as happy a sketch as 

 Virginia. There is too much of the 

 very woman about it, — the mere wife, 

 — nothing but wife, — to consort with 

 our ideas of a Roman matron. She 

 has been educated under good sort of 

 mammas of the present age, and has 

 sucked sentiment from the circulating 

 library. But a successful expedient 

 E was. 



