JACK SHEPPARD IN PARIS.

AMONGST the latest succès de théâtre, in Paris, that which occupies the first place is the drama called "Les Chevaliers du Brouillard” (“The Knights of the Fog"), which was produced at the Porte Saint-Martin on the 10th of the present month. It is a French version of "Jack Sheppard," and is founded on Mr. Ainsworth's popular novel, which M. de Goy has very well translated. It has been dramatised by MM. Dumery and Bourges, in five acts and five tableaux, and is preceded by a prologue in action, which tells the story of the hero and his friend Tamise Darrell during the period of their childhood. The piece abounds in emphasis and delirium, with a twinkling of slang and plenty of pistol-shots.

At the opening of the Prologue we are introduced to "Mistress" Sheppard-a veuve éplorée, whose misery for the loss of her husband, who has been hung, touches the Knights of the Fog, at the head of whom are Jonathan Wild and "Bluskine." These worthies undertake to bring up "The Son of the Fog," little Jeck-as Paul Bedford used fondly to call him—and, like the fairies, they propose to endow him with a gift, in shape of a whistle, which he has only to sound to bring them at any moment to his side. Mistress Sheppard, having her husband's fate before her eyes, fears the Danaïdes and their fatal gifts, and would rather have nothing to do with Wild, Bluskine, Quatre Jambes, Quatre Mains, and all the rest of the ubiquitous crew; but fate is stronger than free will, and she, perforce, submits to their friendly decree. But this is not the whole of the Prologue. It also presents the picture of a man rushing into Mistress Sheppard's room with a child in his arms, which he desires to save. The man is Darrell, who has secretly married the sister of Lord Rowland Montaigu; he has been betrayed by Jonathan Wild to Lord Rowland, who has run him through the body. This, with the name of his son, "Tamise," is all the elder Darrell has breath to utter, and then he dies.

The first act introduces Jack and Tamise in Mr. Wood the carpenter's shop, at the age of twelve years, and in developing their respective characters the novel has been followed with sufficient accuracy for the purpose of the antithesis: Tamise is represented as a skilful workman delighting in his profession, Jack as an idle vagabond under the demoralising influence of Bluskine. A mission to the hotel of Lord Rowland, to make some repairs, gives rise to Jack's first exploit. He sees there a miniature, surrounded by brilliants, representing Darrell, the father of Tamise. Struck by the resemblance to his comrade, and attracted no less towards the diamonds, Jack puts the miniature in his pocket. The theft is discovered, and Jack, who has accidentally overheard a conversation between Lord Rowland and Jonathan Wild, in which they propose to make away with Tamise, on account of the enormous fortune to which he will succeed if he one day discovers his origin-conceives the idea of accusing his friend of being an accomplice, in order that the safety of a prison may secure him from the dagger of the assassin. For his own part, supple as an eel, he escapes through the prison window, disguised as a woman, and hurries off to join his friends the Knights of the Fog, longing to

become their captain. On his way to them he plays Jonathan Wild several tricks, whom he finally entraps in a cellar of the tavern called Le Saumon Galant.

Then comes the bustle of the drama. Jack makes his début before his new companions by killing an Irishman in a duel, possessing himself of his property to the extent of a million, (!) and giving it all to the Knights of the Fog. Jonathan Wild is deposed, and Jack is raised to the pinnacle of a Dubsman's greatness by being elected in his place. "Le rhum, le rack, le gin" now flow in torrents, and, in drinking their burning punch, Jack's partisans do not even take the trouble to put out the flame, but swallow outright what Mephistopheles calls "the friendly element," while Jack is mounted on a horse and paraded as their captain through the Old Mint. Suddenly the sound of a drum is heard, the sheriff of London enters with a battalion of the Guards, and declares that, by order of the king, the Old Mint is to be suppressed, and all the houses in it razed to the ground. A revolt ensues; the cut-throats and pickpockets fight with the troops, houses are set on fire, and the lurid blaze reveals the forms of Lord Rowland Montaigu and Jonathan Wild intent on capturing Jack and Tamise, who, by the agency of his friend, has also escaped from prison. Again Jack saves the life of Tamise, but draws on himself a hot pursuit: he reaches the river, seizes a boat, and rows away; but he is followed by his pursuers in another boat, and is on the point of being dashed by the current against the piers of a bridge, when he blows his whistle, and Bluskine, Jack's guardian angel (of darkness), throws him a rope-ladder, and, exhibiting the dexterity of a monkey, he is saved. Lord Rowland, who by this time has reached the spot, also tries to ascend, but Jack cuts the rope, and the noble lord is engulphed. After this follow endless imprisonments and escapes, in which Jack and Bluskine figure as Knight and Squire there is a coup de pistolet at every turn-and finally Jack and Jonathan meet: as a matter of course, the thief-taker is enfoncé, and finds a watery grave, like his patron, Lord Rowland.

An episodical scene, while Jack is in prison and condemned to die, gives rise to some admirable pathetic acting between Madame Guyon, the representative of Mistress Sheppard, and Madame Laurent, who personates Jack with a degree of vigour and fidelity to the original unsurpassed by Mrs. Keeley herself. Let this be the place also for naming the amusing talent displayed by M. Boutin, who represents Bluskine. It will be seen that in this Parisian version of "Jack Sheppard" a general idea of the original story has alone been carried out. The catastrophe is altogether different. Instead of the finale at Tyburn, the hero's life is saved. It is effected in this wise: Tamise Darrell, who recovers his fortune and marries "the carpenter's daughter, fair and free," acquires a high position and great influence, by the exercise of which he obtains Jack's pardon, and he leaves England, with his mother, for India, to become-no doubt—a nabab. The scene of his departure for the East, with the bright sun dispersing the material fog of London-as the honesty and good conduct of Tamise have risen above the moral fog of Bluskine et Compagnie-is a very fine one. The City, St. Paul's, the river, its forest of masts and clouds of canvas, are bathed in golden light, and the curtain falls on "Les Chevaliers du Brouillard."

Mingle-Mangle by Monkshood.

RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWALS:

IV. NARCISSUS LUTTRELL'S DIARY.*

[FIRST NOTICE.]

THE general practice is, with general practitioners in the art of Diarywriting and their name is Legion-to be mainly concerned with their proper selves; to dilate and dilute their objective array of facts, with a washy subjective stuff, a thin stew of egotism, insipid enough to other tastes. They take care that the Diary shall savour of the individuality of the writer. They ever write Me and Mine with a capital M, in the spirit if not in the letter. They embody themselves in their narrative, identify themselves with their chronicles, stamp their personality on the record. Sometimes the effect on the reader is simply disagreeable; he would escape this gratuitous presence, and confine himself to facts, but is baffled by the haunting persistency of the spirits he cannot lay. Sometimes it is piquant and amusing, imparts a special attraction to what is written, and thus engages multitudes of readers who otherwise would not think of reading. An example of this, perhaps, may be named in the person of Mr. Pepys, whose Diary is so highly flavoured with Pepysian personalities. Contemporary with Samuel Pepys, lived and wrote Narcissus Luttrell, also a Diary-writer, and on a yet more extensive and systematic scale. But the contrast is edifying between the two, in the particular just noticed. Narcissus gives us nothing of himself; keeps himself in the background altogether; abjures the use of that multum-inparvo monosyllable, that big little word, I; and restricts himself to the province of a copying machine, entering day by day in his well-kept journal whatever authentic fact makes the news of that day, without reference to any impression it may or may not have made upon himself, without comment, gloss, suggestive speculation, or attendant conjecture. His Diary was his hobby, and now, to us who consult it, his Diary is become himself. Though he is not personally in it, we know next to nothing of him out of it; by and in it alone he survives-lives, moves, and has his being.

Survives to some purpose too. Witness the drain upon his resources by our historians of the period he illustrates. Glance at Macaulay's foot

*A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, from September, 1678, to April, 1714. By Narcissus Luttrell. In Six Volumes. Oxford: at the University Press.

1857.

"The Diary of Narcissus Luttrell is printed from a MS. in seventeen volumes 8vo, preserved in the Library of All Souls' College. It was bequeathed to that College at the close of the last century by Luttrell Wynne, D.C.L., a relation of the writer, and a former Fellow of the society.-The Diary terminates abruptly, and as the writer of it lived several years after the last date recorded in it, other and later volumes may have been written, and be still in existence. But in the volumes now printed it has reached a period of our history when the information it contains abates in its interest, and can more easily be supplied from other sources."Editor's Advertisement, p. 3.

notes, and scrutinise his text, if you would know the amount of obligation under which an all-popular modern may lie to an almost impersonal and anonymous antique. And now that six large volumes of this Diary are issued from the Oxford University press, to which an Advertisement is prefixed relating to the scope of the work and the history of the workman, we learn of the latter, from this source, no more than the following: that in June, 1732, there died at Little Chelsea, after a tedious indisposition, Narcissus Luttrell, Esq., "a Gentleman possessed of a plentiful estate, and descended from the ancient family of the Luttrells of Dunstar Castle in Somersetshire;" the said Narcissus being, by the testimony of Hearne's MS. Diary (in the Bodleian) well known for his curious diary, "especially for the number and scarcity of English history and antiquities which he collected in a lucky hour, at very reasonable rates." The same authority indeed imputes to him an over regard for reasonable rates, a miserly and churlish as well as recluse habit of life. "But though he was so curious and diligent in collecting and amassing together, yet he affected to live so private as hardly to be known in person; and yet for all that he must be attended to his grave by judges and the first of his profession in the Law, to whom (such was the sordidness of his temper) he would not have given a meal's meat in his life. As a recommendation of his collection of books, we are told it was preserved in that place, where Mr. Lock and Lord Shaftesbury studied, whose principles it may be he imbibed. No doubt but it is a very extraordinary collection. In it are many MSS., which, however, he had not the spirit to communicate to the world, and 'twas a mortification to him to see the world gratified with them without his assistance." This one fragment from Hearne's Diary, strongly tinged to all appearance with spleen, contains more materials, of a positive kind, for estimating the temperament and character of Hearne, than do the six thick octavos of Luttrell's Diary, for an acquaintance with the man Narcissus Luttrell. As a man, he is content that posterity should give him the go-by. Which, accordingly, posterity hitherto has done.

In our first notice of this "Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs," we shall select, in a continuous series, a number of entries illustrative of the decline and fall, facilis descensus, of James II.; reserving for another paper any examples of that omniumgatherum fulness, in matters miscellaneous, multifarious, and heterogeneous exceedingly, which distinguishes the collection at large. A very large portion of these relates to foreign affairs; but the author's contributions to the home department will naturally claim our preference-his details of English life and manners during the reigns of Charles II. and his brother, of William of Orange, and Queen Anne. In the extracts we now proceed to make, it will be more convenient, on the whole, not to retain the old-fashioned spelling, in his use of which, by the way, our Narcissus is apt to be irregular enough.

It is interesting to trace in a work of this character the progressive signs and countersigns of royal policy and public feeling-what in Lord Lindsay's phrase may be called progression by antagonism-from the beginning to the end of James II.'s eventful reign. Luttrell jots down in the driest, dullest way,-as indifferently as he chronicles a high-tide at London-bridge or the death of a county magistrate,-marks and

tokens of popular opinion, facts and events in political history, which to us, who, unlike him, know the end from the beginning, and can see the completed chain of which he could only observe the contributory links, are significant and important in the highest degree. We see the graduated scale of the reaction in the form of an ascending series. What the historian gives us as a coherent whole, we gather from the diarist in scraps and strays, with breaks and intervals, here a little and there a little. "The 6th [February, 1684-5], being Friday, his majesty King Charles II. died at Whitehall about three-quarters after eleven at noon; the news of which put the town in a great consternation, and the gates of Whitehall were shut up, and the guards drawn out: the privy council met, where his majesty King James II., at his first sitting there, was pleased to declare that he would maintain the government as established both in church and state; that he would preserve his prerogative and the rights and liberties of his subjects, and would endeavour to follow his brother's example, especially in that of his clemency and tenderness." On the 11th we come to the following entry-(the brief interval containing, by the way, two noticeable intimations: one, that "'tis said her majesty is with child :" the other, of the same date, that "his majesty hath discharged Mrs. Sedley, to see her no more, since his coming to the crown;" whereby James involved himself in the curse of a father who, as he gazed on Catherine,

cursed the form that pleased a king,—

a curse which, if Sir Charles is to be credited, now begins to work as a let and hindrance in the monarch's path,-now letteth, and will let, until he be taken out of the way): "The same day also Dalby and Nicholson, Oates' two men, convicted for speaking seditious and scandalous words against his late majesty and the present king, were sentenced each to pay 101. fine, find sureties for life, and to stand in the pillory in all the remarkable parts of the town." Anon comes the announcement: "On Sunday, the 15th and 22nd, his present majesty (as is very confidently reported) was at mass at Whitehall or St. James's." Followed immediately by this entry: "There is a discourse as if there were some commotion in the north of Scotland; and some speak as if the Earl of Argyle were amongst them." Then: "There is a great discourse as if there was a toleration to be, but time must show." To the contemporary, time must show; to us, time has shown,-this, and many another then contingency, conjectured or unconjectured, likely and most unlikely, probable and seemingly impossible, anticipated by the philosophic or utterly undreamt-of in their philosophy. Strangely suggestive it is, in many respects, thus to read history backwards as it were, in the de die in diem notes of a journal like this.-Again, a paragraph in March, stating that "Dangerfield, the late evidence of the popish plot, is apprehended and committed to Newgate," is speedily succeeded by another which reports that "there are lately come over from beyond sea many Romish priests, and the papists appear more boldly than ever." A statement of the royal coronation (April) is followed by the ominous memento, "the day of the coronation his majesty lost some jewels from his crown and sceptre." Early in May we hear of persons very busy in elections of M.P.s for the new parliament: "great tricks and practices used to bring