674 Notes of Ihe Month on [^Dkc. 



hour, and 6cl. for every quarter of an hour after. One-horse carriage, 

 two-thirds of the above. Back fare to be paid for carriages driven into 

 the country four miles or more; if discharged between eight in the 

 evening, and five in the morning, at the full rate of fare, to the nearest 

 coach-stand or limits of the metropolis ; if discharged by da}', at the 

 rate of 6d. a mile to such place. The limits of the metropolis to be 

 three miles from the General Post-office." 



We have now given our readers the whole substance of this effort 

 of legislation. We confess that all we can see in it is the finance. 

 Why hackney-coaches should have four plates when one would serve 

 the purpose ; or, why five pounds should be paid for a license, except 

 that every thing in this world must be taxed ; or why ten shillings a week 

 should be paid after 1833, except for the reason that taxation is always 

 privileged to increase, and that England is going on so prosperously, 

 trade swelling so rapidly, and every man's pocket filHng so fast, that 

 five and twenty pounds a year will then be as easily paid as five now, are 

 questions which we must leave to the philosophers to answer. Or why 

 the hackney-coaches will be made more a matter of public convenience 

 by being limited to 1,200, when, on the ordinary principle in those 

 matters, monopoly makes the monopolists impudent, the commodity 

 bad, and the price dear, we presume not to say — but this we say, 

 that from London to Lima there is not a more scandalous exhibition of 

 public vehicles than those which figure before the public eye of the 

 metropolis ; and that plated and licensed as they may be, we only wish 

 that the makers of the law were confined for an hour a day in the most 

 accomplished of them. 



The British theatre has done nothing since the last month, exCejit 

 bringing out two of Auber's operas, which shew that Massaniello 

 is not likely to disappear behind the future fame of Auber. The 

 " Love Charm," and the " Fra Diavolo," are both clever, though there 

 is a desperate affectation of German difficulties in the composition of 

 both, and an equally desperate dearth of melodies, which we conceive 

 to form in all cases the excellence of opera. Auber is all chorus, and as 

 all chorus is all clamour, and we can have clamour enough in the streets 

 for nothing, Auber is chorused to empty benches. A tragedy " trans- 

 lated," and " from the French," of course— alas! that we should go to 

 the French for tragedy ! while nature intended them to supply us with 

 nothing but perriwigs — was announced, rehearsed, fixed for the night, 

 and then vanished. Charles Kemble's illness was the cause in the bills. 

 But those bills have so little to do with bills of mortality, that we 

 should not be surprised to hear of his rapid recovery. As certainly we 

 wish that nothing, not even " Catherine of Cleves" herself, should keep 

 almost our only good actor from the stage. 



But in the mean time we have news across the Atlantic. Mr. Ander- 

 son, it seems, has not yet found the art of concihating the Yankees, and 

 the friends of nationjil amity in New York appear to dread that the 

 events of his reception may be put into the preliminaries of a new war. 

 " On the night on which ]\fr. Anderson was to make his first appear- 

 ance (as Berlranu in Guy Manjierivg), at the Park Theatre, New York, 

 the house was filled by a crowded audience, who evidently went there 

 for the express purpose of hooting him off. The moment he made his 

 entrance he was greeted with groans, hisses, missiles, and cries of indig- 



