74 Notes of the Month on [July, 



history, will record that they cannot shelter themselves mider the 

 example of the Bishop of Mayo. He is now fully informed that the 

 people, nemine contradicente, will expect from his hands money enough 

 to answer their present purposes. In other words, the Irish peasantry, 

 wanting money, demand it of the English; and think themselves entitled 

 to take any measures which their wants may suggest, unless the English- 

 man puts his hand in his pocket, and furnishes promptly the sum in 

 question ; Lord Grey, as minister, not being the distributor of a shilling 

 which does not come from the pockets of the people — this people being 

 already burthened to the last shilling, and having as many paupers to 

 support as ten times the amount of the Mayo peasantry. 



Large sums have been already subscribed, though we cannot discover 

 that the subscriptions in Ireland have swelled their amount. It is true 

 that common humanity feels anxious to put a stop to all actual suffering, 

 and the famine of the Irish strongly requires a remedy. But why will 

 the Ii'ish so furiously set their faces against "poor laws?" The very 

 mention of the name makes them all indignant. The truth is, that the 

 landlords find it a much pleasanter thing to make an entry regularly once 

 a year to England for relief to their tenantry, than to provide them 

 with either employment or food. Twelve months never pass without 

 some clamorous declaration of famine, rebellion, or the typhus, and 

 followed by the doctor's bold and ingenious style of writing with the 

 spade ; and the same routine will go on, as long as any thing is to be 

 got by roaring. Poor laws 7nust be adopted. 



Theatres like thrones have had their revolutions to a serious degree 

 during the last quarter. Lee, one of the lessees of Drury Lane has 

 resigned, and the management has devolved into the hands of Captain 

 Polhill, who must carry on his contract for two years more, a formid- 

 able speculation, if conducted in the spirit of last season ; when in an 

 establishment, professing to be almost exclusively operatic, but one 

 opera, and that a remarkably dull one, was brought out. This negligence 

 was the obvious cause of the loss, for the principle is excellent. Any 

 theatre which will confine itself to operas is sure to svicceed, if it 

 but produce good and new operas. No kind of performance is more 

 popular, and by saving the enormous expense of two companies out of 

 three, the tragic, comic, and operatic, the general waste would be 

 changed into the general profit. 



Paganini, after apologizing himself out of the scrape of demanding 

 double prices, and which scrape has left the mark on M. Laporte's 

 shoulders, has given six concerts, all superior to any thing that has been 

 witnessed on the violin. To those who have not had the good fortune to 

 hear him, no description can convey a sense of his powers ; unless it 

 be the fact, that he filled the King's Theatre, pit, gallery, and boxes, to 

 overflowing, for six successive concerts, of which his violin was the sole 

 attraction — the few singers, &c. having been introduced merely to give 

 him a slight breathing-time between his performances ; that the feeling 

 of those immense audiences was unmixed delight ; and that his exqui- 

 site and perfect mastery of the instrument, his brilliant variety of styles, 

 and his profound sensibility, were equally subjects of wonder to the most 

 practised artists, and to the general audience. 



The theatres are pouring out their contents upon the high-roads, and 

 all our delicice, in the shape of actors and actresses, are loading the stage- 



