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56 THE TWO SISTERS. VOLTAIRE'S PRIVATE THEATRICALS.

THE highest gratification which I derived from Voltaire's residence at Lausanne, was the uncommon circumstance of hearing a great poet declaim his own productions on the stage. He had formed a company of ladies and gentlemen, some of whom were not destitute of talents. A decent theatre was framed at Monrepos, a country house at the end of a suburb; dresses and scenes were provided at the expense of the actors; and the author directed the rehearsals with the zeal and attention of paternal love. In two successive winters his tragedies of Zaire, Alzire, Sulime, and his sentimental comedy of the Enfant Prodigue, were played at the theatre of Monrepos. Voltaire represented the characters best adapted to his years Lusignan, Alvarez, Benassar, Euphemon. His declamation was fashioned to the pomp and cadence of the old stage; and he expressed the enthusiasm of poetry, rather than the feelings of nature. Life of Edward Gibbon.

WHEN We are in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things their good opinions, and our improvement; and disclose one thing which had better have been concealed our self sufficiency; for what we have to say we know, but what they have to say we know not.

ASPARAGUS.

If a patient, suffering from excessive action of the heart, eat asparagus, M. Broussais assures us, he will experience considerable relief. Syrup of the green ends of asparagus, like the plant itself, he says, has the power of diminishing the action of the heart and arteries, without annoying the stomach. There is, says Dr. Ryan, a popular, and, perhaps, even professional opinion, that asparagus acts as a diuretic. The asparagus, affording, on distillation, an essential terebinthinate oil, we are disposed to consider the plant a diuretic. If it produces, as Broussais says, a sedative effect on the heart and arteries, it is an excellent article of diet, during the inflammatory stage of pulmonary affections. A mild sedative nutrient article of diet is a great desideratum in a variety of inflammatory diseases, particularly the early stages of pulmonary consumption, scrofula, & c. Gazette of Health.

NAZARETH.

From Fuller's Tour in the Turkish Empire, we extract the following: -

THE Conventual church of Nazareth is handsome, though inferior to that of St. Giovanni.— From the centre of the western entrance, a broad flight of steps leads down to a grotto, and on each flank is another flight leading up to the high altar. In the grotto, or rather just at its entrance, is reported to have stood the memorable house of the Madonna, which was miraculously removed to Loretto; and some holes in the rock are point- ed out as the places in which the beams rested. Though the house itself has disappeared, yet the exact spot in which the Incarnation took place is still preserved with religious accuracy. Two broken pillars indicate the place where stood the announcing angel; and the seat of the Virgin is occupied by an altar, on which blazes, in letters of gold, the awful inscription: -

HIC verbum caro factum est.

ENGLISH SOCIETY.

WHAT unimaginable aristocrats the English are! they firmly believe that all their plebeians come hideous from the hands of nature; then the solemn frivolity of their distinctions, and the solemn pedantry with which they are displayed; would not the stoic laugh to read that the use of the fork in eating, and the disuse of cheese, are deemed the surest tests, not only of gentility, but of all the finest qualities, and this from authors of learning and reputation. What exquisite specimens in their Tremaines and De Lisles what an assumed contempt of France, and proud devotion to the minutest of her customs and then the perpetual rivalries, and tasteless struggles for pre eminence through every branch of societythe author of Pelham and Vivian Grey, has some faint glimpses of the truth, which he announces with the tone of a first discoverer but surely the story of these novels is every way unnatural.

For the Lady's Book.

LINES

ON WITNESSING THE INTERMENT OF TWO SISTERS.

Who died within the same hour, and were committed to the same grave, amid the terrors of a thunder storm.

The day was low'ring darkly, and the clouds were big with rain,

The howling blast with fury swept across the parched plain; The long grass bent in terror, as the airy current past, And the hoarse sea gull pour'd its cry upon the shrieking blast.

Amid the din they laid them in the cold and quiet grave, Nor cared that wild above them, the dark'ning tempests rave Two lovely rosebuds parted from their drooping parent stem, That trembled if the summer's gale too rudely breathed on them.

The pall that veiled the coffins, as they sought their narrow home,

Was the lightnings ' crimson banner, wide floating o'er their tomb;

And the groan was hush'd in silence, as the thunder burst

above,

The Heaven's awful requiem o'er the objects of their love. While gazing on their sepulchre, each trembling lid was dry,” For grief had drunk the off'ring, e'er it reached the glassy eye;

But the sky rain'd down its sorrow, as the yawning cavern

cast

Its black shade o'er their resting place, the stillest and the last.

“I am the resurrection,” the stoled priest had said, And crumbling earth and ashes had knelled the silent dead— The earth had heav'd its bosom in a twin mound of sodWe turn'd away in silence — and left them with their God.

S.