250 
.REVIEWS. 
Nature and Art, December 1, 1866. 
extent, though not in excitement, to the one which made the 
“Streets of London” so popular; but much better are a sunset 
and a moonlight, which have really artistic effects of light and 
shade, truthful and novel. The sunset has moving clouds and 
a changing light, with all the effects of a lurid sunset after 
a spring tempest. The moonlight has very nice gradations 
of tone, and is softly beautiful. Mr. F. Lloyds has a 
glowing imagination and great ingenuity as a scene contriver 
as well as a scene-painter. 
At the Strand, two comediettas have been produced. “ In 
the Wrong Box,” a very trifling piece direct from the French. 
No doubt, in the original, Mons. Ravel plays one of his 
impudent blundering men, who mistakes one woman for 
another, and reveals his own designs. There is nothing in 
it. The other piece is of a far higher order, being an adapta- 
tion and improvement of one of Goldoni’s little comedies, 
called “ Neighbours.” It is cleverly Anglicised by Mr. Oxen- 
ford ; but still the quaint Italian structure peeps through, 
and is indeed predominant. A peppery old father conduces 
to his own daughter’s elopement. The imbroglio is inge- 
nious, the dialogue vivacious, and the characterization, 
though bordering on caricature, is humorous. It has, 
however, a refreshing flavour, from its perfect freedom from 
a French taint of forced ingenuity and sordid vice. 
At Sadler’s Wells a very pretentious drama has been 
produced, called “The Purpose of a Life,” in which the 
Yelverton case is partially dramatized. Miss Marriott, as 
the heroine, is made to declaim as to the power and excel- 
lence of the histrionic art ; an introduction, probably owing 
to the author being an actor. — -Mr. Stephenson, of the 
Adelphi Theatre. 
Her Majesty’s Theatre has been taken possession of by 
Mr. Falconer, who has opened it with a five-act drama 
entitled “ Oonagh ; or, the Lovers of Lisnamona.” It is 
founded on some Irish novels ; but more particularly on 
Carleton’s “ Fardourougha, the Miser.” On the first night 
of its production it was so monstrous in its proportions, 
and so profuse in its dialogue, that it completely wore out 
the audience, which melted away each act, until scarcely a 
fourth of those who hailed it (and a speech of Mr. Falconer’s) 
with good-natured expectation, were left. at midnight; and 
very few indeed at one o’clock, when the green curtain once 
again went down. The story, is intensely Irish, the acting 
fair, the scenery picturesque, and the music tasteful ; but 
the talking so discursive and excessive that it seemed to 
flood everything else. We presume it has been materially 
condensed and curtailed, as it continues to be acted. 
At the Adelphi, the last new drama of “ Ethel ” has been 
suspended, as it is announced, in consequence of the illness 
of Miss Kate Terry. That lady, however, is advertised to 
appear in a new drama, by Mr. Tom Taylor and Mr. A. W. 
Dubourg. In the mean time, a very young actress, of the 
name of Neilson, remarkable for her modest grace, has 
essayed the stagy character of Victorine in the drama of 
that name. The complex ingenuity of subsequent dramas 
makes the old piece seem very bare and crude. 
Those who like to combine exercise with their theatrical 
amusements, may take an evening walk over Westminster 
Bridge, and see the performance of a company under the 
management of Mr. Nation, at Astley’s Amphitheatre. The 
play is a dramatic version of Mr. Dickens’s last novel, “ Our 
Mutual Friend,” and is called “ The Golden Dustman.” 
REVIEWS. 
From Calcutta to the Snowy Range. By an Old Indian. 
(London : Tinsley Brothers.) 
I N times when steam-travelling and we were young, we 
were mostly contented with entertaining a general im- 
pression that British India was excessively hot, that the 
food of its inhabitants principally consisted of rice and 
curry, and that the English there resided in houses called 
bungalows, and were waited upon by numerous servants, 
each of whom performed, only one -species of duty. We 
rarely took the trouble to reflect upon the vastness and 
magnificence of the enormous Asiatic realm of which we 
hold the sovereignty. Until the now almost forgotten 
Waghorn and his followers simplified access to the East, 
the knowledge of its picturesque old cities, with their 
temples and palaces, constructed in the most delicate and 
fancifully-beautiful style of architecture and enriched with 
the most profuse ornamentation, was, with few exceptions, 
confined to the learned and gallant sons of the Old Lady of 
Leadenhall. We had heard but little of its scenery, varying 
from the cold grandeur of the snowy Himalayas to the 
alternating fertility and aridness of the plains and dense 
luxuriance of the tropical forests. However, year after 
year, the men of art and the men of trade laboured together 
to rend the veil and to open the quasi sealed book, until at 
last the Indian mutiny loosed the floodgates of information, 
and terribly brought the country before our notice. Interest 
was excited among all classes in the scenes where those 
horrors were enacted ; and a work like the one before us, 
giving an amusing narrative of progress, and vivid sketches 
of the most prominent places on the grand route from 
Calcutta to Simla, in the hill country, under the snowy 
range of the Himalayas, is still likely to be welcomed, with 
sincere pleasure, by the reading public, as well as by those 
persons about to travel to whom it is specially addressed. 
What a double panorama is suggested to the modern 
Anglo-Indian by the title of this book ! One of its divisions 
raises memories of the matter-of-fact, unpicturesque, yet 
quaint and characteristic Anglo-Indian life ; the other, of 
all the gorgeous, though somewhat dilapidated, romance of 
the East. The first vision presents the English sahib, in 
his helmet of pith, or felt with air-chambers, his light suit 
and white shoes, smoking his Manilla cheroot on a cane 
chair, with his legs elevated in front of him, and drinking 
brandy and lelatee-panee (which is, being interpreted, 
brandy and soda-water) ; or travelling in his comfortable 
first-class railway carriage, constructed so as to admit of 
the formation of couches in the interior ; or riding forth to 
enjoy the sport of pig-sticking in the jungle, or shooting the 
varieties of game offered to him, without the necessity of 
taking out a license, from teal to tigers. The second evokes 
the shaven Hindoo, or turbaned Mussulman, in his gay 
shawls, rich silks, or white and coloured cotton costume, 
sitting, monkey-fashion, on his haunches ; rejecting meat 
altogether in the first instance, and pork in the second ; 
taking- off his red or embroidered slippers when a European 
would remove his hat ; refusing to allow the young and 
lovely among his females to appear in public ; in fact, living- 
in a totally un-English manner, both in aspect and reality. 
The journey from Calcutta to the Snowy Range is no 
longer, as formerly, effected altogether in the dak marry, or 
Indian post-chaise, a one-horsed vehicle of about the dimen- 
sions of a London four-wheeled cab, and made so as to 
admit of the passenger’s reclining at full length in the in- 
terior, but, as far as Delhi, by the railway, which is now 
completed for a distance of 1,019 miles. Of some of the 
railway arrangements our “ Old Indian” complains sadly, 
but good-humouredly ; and we will extract his description 
of a first-class carriage, for the benefit of whom it may 
concern : — 
“ The train, as it stands drawn up by the platform, with 
its bright-polished engine shining brilliantly in the sun, and 
snorting impatiently in puffs of curly steam, is at a first 
glance uncommonly like a railway- train in England or any- 
where else. But a new-comer would soon discover a 
difference. The carriages are, to begin with, very much 
stronger, larger, and loftier, and are protected from the sun 
by a double roof— the upper one a few inches removed from 
the lower, and projecting slightly on either side. Then, to 
every window there are, in addition to the glasses, Venetian 
