400 The Theatres. [APRIL, 
ruined, and we wish him the benefit of his experience, and his sub- 
scribers handsome dividends. 
Catalani, the Catalani, the queen of song, is now waving her sceptre 
for the “last” (tenth) “time” over the souls of the Irish amateurs. And 
this— 
“ Creature, 
< Of a glorious feature,” 
as Wordsworth, the great poet of namby-pamby, sublimely names 
his muse, is shouting Rule Britannia, and God Save the King, four 
times a night, and not a verse left out, for the loyalty and English sym- 
pathies of the “ Hereditary bandsmen.” 
The King’s Theatre we mention last, because we feel no great rapture 
on the subject. While the English stage is become a fashionable 
“horror” to the dandies of one sex, and the high-bred “ dubious” of 
another ; while no woman of ton can endure to be seen within the walls 
of the theatre of Shakspeare and Sheridan ; and, while the silliest per- 
formances of the very vilest portion of society, the danseuses and chan- 
teuses, of the foreign stage, are patronized, profusely paid for, and extra- 
vagantly worshipped, we shrink a good deal from giving our assistance 
to the general tastelessness and folly. We have no objection to 
Mr. Laporte. He is probably as fit to manage the King’s Theatre as 
any body else. We care not about Mr. Bochsa, or the memory of his 
foreign exploits, but we think that Madame Pasta has made quite as 
much money as she deserves, if she carried off 17,000/. by her last year’s 
singing in London. We think, too, that we might make better use of 
our purses than in giving Madame Sontag 10,000/. for three months of 
solfaing, or 5001. for a couple of songs at a charity meeting. We have 
no delight in hearing of the purchase of a villa by Mademoiselle Noblet, 
nor of Mademoiselle Brocard’s exhibiting the handsomest equipage in 
Paris. When all the world know the habits of the foreign stage, the 
resources of those showy personages, with which their dancing and 
singing have nothing to do—the notorious system of their lives, and the 
system into which they lead the whole tribe of the brainless young men, 
and old men, too, that have a few thousand pounds, or pence, on 
hands, we honestly and heartily wish that our nobility could afford to 
dispense with the light fantastic toe ; the display of the female figure in 
silk pantaloons ; the mixture of grossness, avarice, baseness, and intrigue, 
that belongs, in every instance, to the continental stage ; and that the 
whole of its exports should be met at Dover by an order, like the Old 
Bailey order, for their instant return “to the place whence they came.” 
The “ Messicani,” a dull opera; the “ Conte Ori,” a still duller, and 
one or two ballets of no interest, have been hitherto the chief efforts of 
the King’s Theatre. Pisaroni is the prima donna still, if donna she be 
at all. 
