Once only, in a hundred years, was the skipper allowed to land for this purpose; and this piece runs through four centuries, in as many acts, describing the agonies and unavailing attempts of the miserable Dutchman.Willing to go any lengths in order to obtain his prayer, he, in the second act, betrays a Virgin of the Sun to a follower of Pizarro: and, in the third, assassinates the heroic William of Nassau; but ever before the dropping of the curtain, the angel and sword make their appearance--"Treachery," says the spirit, "cannot lessen thy punishment;--crime will not obtain thy release--A la mer! a la mer!" and the poor devil returns to the ocean, to be lonely, and tempest-tossed, and sea-sick for a hundred years more.
But his woes are destined to end with the fourth act.Having landed in America, where the peasants on the sea-shore, all dressed in Italian costumes, are celebrating, in a quadrille, the victories of Washington, he is there lucky enough to find a young girl to pray for him.Then the curse is removed, the punishment is over, and a celestial vessel, with angels on the decks and "sweet little cherubs" fluttering about the shrouds and the poop, appear to receive him.
This piece was acted at Franconi's, where, for once, an angel-ship was introduced in place of the usual horsemanship.
One must not forget to mention here, how the English nation is satirized by our neighbors; who have some droll traditions regarding us.In one of the little Christmas pieces produced at the Palais Royal (satires upon the follies of the past twelve months, on which all the small theatres exhaust their wit), the celebrated flight of Messrs.Green and Monck Mason was parodied, and created a good deal of laughter at the expense of John Bull.
Two English noblemen, Milor Cricri and Milor Hanneton, appear as descending from a balloon, and one of them communicates to the public the philosophic observations which were made in the course of his aerial tour.
"On leaving Vauxhall," says his lordship, "we drank a bottle of Madeira, as a health to the friends from whom we parted, and crunched a few biscuits to support nature during the hours before lunch.In two hours we arrived at Canterbury, enveloped in clouds:
lunch, bottled porter: at Dover, carried several miles in a tide of air, bitter cold, cherry-brandy; crossed over the Channel safely, and thought with pity of the poor people who were sickening in the steamboats below: more bottled porter: over Calais, dinner, roast-beef of Old England; near Dunkirk,--night falling, lunar rainbow, brandy-and-water; night confoundedly thick; supper, nightcap of rum-punch, and so to bed.The sun broke beautifully through the morning mist, as we boiled the kettle and took our breakfast over Cologne.In a few more hours we concluded this memorable voyage, and landed safely at Weilburg, in good time for dinner."The joke here is smart enough; but our honest neighbors make many better, when they are quite unconscious of the fun.Let us leave plays, for a moment, for poetry, and take an instance of French criticism, concerning England, from the works of a famous French exquisite and man of letters.The hero of the poem addresses his mistress--Londres, tu le sais trop, en fait de capitale, Est-ce que fit le ciel de plus froid et plus pale, C'est la ville du gaz, des marins, du brouillard;On s'y couche a minuit, et l'on s'y leve tard;Ses raouts tant vantes ne sont qu'une boxade, Sur ses grands quais jamais echelle ou serenade, Mais de volumineux bourgeois pris de porter Qui passent sans lever le front a Westminster;Et n'etait sa foret de mats percant la brume, Sa tour dont a minuit le vieil oeil s'allume, Et tes deux yeux, Zerline, illumines bien plus, Je dirais que, ma foi, des romans que j'ai lus, Il n'en est pas un seul, plus lourd, plus lethargique Que cette nation qu'on nomme Britannique!
The writer of the above lines (which let any man who can translate)is Monsieur Roger de Beauvoir, a gentleman who actually lived many months in England, as an attache to the embassy of M.de Polignac.