wanting. A friend of mine, an American, who marched in the procession as one of the deputation of foreign commerce, has diverted me exceedingly by contrasting the real appearance of it, with the idea one would conceive from a view of the programme. Thus what are called " the troops of the garrison" who were to assemble on the Champ de Mars to receive the procession, was composed of about two or three hundred negroes with arms, "some without coats hats and shirts, and others even destitute of culottes." The public teachers, conducting a great number of their pupils, "consisted of an old negro pedagogue, followed by about a dozen dirty children half clothed or naked." The deputation of the body of artizans," was composed of a few ragged mechanicals." The deputation of agriculturists" was made up of eight or ten plantation negroes who had been sent for to the country to act their part, and who appeared like the Laplanders, in bear-skins. Upon the whole, except the officers, the Americans, and a few other individuals, there was never before so shabby a set of ragamuffins called a procession. On their arri val upon the public square, they found " the amphitheatre in the midst of which was a throne," to be nothing more than a stage made of the roughest boards, in the centre of which was a kind of table. One of the officers mounted this rostrum and read aloud the act announcing the nomination of the emperor, after which he delivered a kind of oration, and the procession then moved to the church where a Te Deum was sung in thanksgiving for this memorable day. At the conclusion of this the procession returned to the house of the general, where it was dismissed. It appears that after the Te Deum had been appointed as part of the duties of the day, no one could be found capable of performing the service, and it is an actual fact that a detachment of soldiers was sent into the Spanish part of the island to catch some priests. In this curious employment they succeeded, and returned to Port au Prince with two, who regulated the religious exercises of the day. The firing of cannon, which was answerd from the American vessels in the harbour, was repeated several times in the course of the ceremonies, and the festivities of the occasion were closed by a general illumination. The emperor was him

self at Port au Prince, and after the procession, which he beheld from his window, had been dismissed, he received the gratulations of all who went to pay their respects to him. In this tribute of regard, our countrymen were not backward. They waited upon him in a body to congratulate his majesty upon what they humorously termed, his accession to the throne of his ancestors, and were very graciously received. R.

FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

Shakspeare vindicated from the aspersions of Voltaire.

VOLTAIRE's inveterate hostility against Shakspeare is notorious. He seized every occasion to vent his malignant spite against the first of poets. Such was his wretched vanity, that while it was willing to submit him to be the buffoon of a capricious tyrant; the "washer of his dirty linen;" the slave on whom he sometimes cracked jokes and sometimes laid stripes, it could not bear the blaze of superior genius. He sickened in its heat; he was delirious when it shone upon him. But although these degrading feelings principally induced Voltaire to become the reviler of Shakspeare, I would charitably hope that his imperfect knowledge of our language may be charged with some of the sin. He was incapable of comprehending that sublimity and beauty which consists in simplicity and nature; in plain and unadorned expressions of feeling. He was delighted with the rant of Caesar, which he says is "incredibly sublime," when he exclaims

"Danger knows full well,

That Cæsar is more dangerous than he.
We were two lions littered in one day,
And I the elder and more terrible."

and ridicules this reflection in the soliloquy of Hamlet,

"Frailty thy name is woman!

A little month; or e'er those shoes were old,

With which she followed my poor father's body

O heaven! a beast that wants discourse of reason

Would have mourn'd longer!

Great ideas, splendid figures and high sounding words are more easily translated to another language, than those affecting touches of true nature which are expressed without noise, and melt the heart without storming it. Indeed a Frenchman sees no sublimity but in extravagance; no beauty but in caricature. Every thing is magnified by his optics; nothing has its natural size. Look at a French description of a battle or a ball; of a palace or a horsepond; it matters not what is the subject, every thing is grand and astonishing.

One of these gentlemen was, a short time since examined as a witness in one of our courts of justice. He was, among other things, asked the size of an inconsiderable town in Cuba. His reply was "It is immense-it is infinite."

In a French tragedy, the lord and the peasant, the general and the soldier; the master and the slave, all strut upon stilts, and declaim alike in heroics. Voltaire defends this violation of nature, these gross absurdities, by alledging that although such vulgar personages might, in truth, express themselves in coarse and common phrases, yet that, on the stage, in the presence of persons of distinction, who express themselves nobly, every person should express himself in like manner; as if nature regarded persons of distinction, or would in compliment to their nobility, transform a clown into a courtly gentleman, or an unlettered servant into a dealer in the sublime and beautiful.

But I am passing from my object, which is merely to expose the undignified petulance and low scurrility with which the French critic assails the English poet.

Some, who have a respect for the extraordinary talents of Voltaire, and know the contempt in which he held Shakspeare, might be disposed to give some importance to the testimony of such a witness against our bard: but when they see the manner of the attack, and how entirely destitute it is of the principles of fair and liberal criticism, as well as of the duties of decency and good breeding, they will no longer hold a prejudice founded on such a basis. I have never hesitated to give full credit to the brilliant wit and ge

nius of Voltaire; I hold them in high admiration, and really wish he stood as fair in the account of religion, philosophy and literary candour: but he was grievously tormented with three devils; with "envy, hatred, and malice" towards every man whose reputation moved in the same orbit with his own.

Monsieur le comte de Catuelan, Monsieur le Tourneur, and Monsieur Fontaine Malherbe, had undertaken a translation of the works of Shakspeare into French, and published a commendation of their author. This stirred up the wrath of Voltaire to its very dregs. One of his letters on the subject was addressed to Monsieur D'Argenteuil, and is as follows:

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Ferney, July 19, 1776.

I hear that Monsieur de St. Julian is just arrived in my desert with Le Kain. If this news be true, I am quite surprised and quite overjoyed. But I must also tell you, how angry I am, for the honour of the gang, against one Tourneur, who is said to be secretary to a set of book-makers, but who does not appear to be a secretary of taste. Pray have you read two miserable volumes, in which he would have us look upon Shakspeare as the only perfect model of tragedy? He calls him the god of the theatre; he sacrifices all the French dramatists, without exception, to this idol, as they formerly used to sacrifice hogs to Ceres. He does not deign to name Corneille or Racine: these two great men are only enveloped in the general proscription, without their names being pronounced. There are already two volumes printed of this Shakspeare; which one would take to be pieces composed for Bartholomewfair two hundred years ago. This rascal has found means to engage the king, the queen, and all the royal family, to subscribe to his work.

Pray have you read this abominable conjuring book of which here are to be five volumes more? Do you feel sufficient hatred against this impudent blockhead? Can you bear the affront which he throws on the whole French nation? You and monsieur de Thoubeville are too milky. There are not in France enough of foolscaps, enough of pillories for such a knave! The blood boils in my veins when I speak of him; if he has not put you in a passion, I hold you to be incapable of feeling. The worst of it is, that the monster has a party in France; and what is peculiarly unfortunate, 'twas I that formerly talked of this Shakspeare; 'twas I that shewed the French some pearls which I found on his enormous dunghill. I little thought that I should help to tread under foot the crowns of Racine and Corneille, to adorn the head of a buffoon and a barbarian.

I beg you would endeavour to be as much in a passion as I am, otherwise I feel myself capable of committing some desperate deed. monsieur Gilbert, I wish he may go full gallop to the pillory.

As to my friend,

I have the honour to be, &c. &c.

Now would any body imagine that this is the letter of a scholar and a gentleman? Is it not rather the raving of a madman, the anger of a fish-woman? And what is the offence that brings forth this torrent of abuse? An attempt to introduce to the knowledge of the French people, the works of Shakspeare; of whom Voltaire himself has condescended to talk. The truth is that this vain, irascible Frenchman had been in the habit of stealing pearls from this "enormous dunghill," and could not bear that the source of his wealth should be discovered. Like Ali Baba, in the tale of the Forty Thieves, he wished to have the exclusive knowledge of this cave of inexhaustible treasures; into which he might enter in secret, and then astonish the world with a display of his magnificence. The contemplated translation would have brought the works of the English dramatist into a general acquaintance in France, where certainly very little was known of them even among the learned. In another letter of Voltaire upon this subject to the French academy, he says "some of you, gentlemen, know that Shakspeare wrote a tragedy called Hamlet." If only some of this learned body knew that Shakspeare had written such a tragedy, it is probable that his very name was unknown to the nation in general. I do not believe Voltaire indulged all this passion merely for the disrespect he thinks is shown to Racine and Corneille. He will be better understood if wherever these names occur in the letter we blot them out, and write Voltaire in their place, or at least add it to them. He was particularly fond of considering himself at the head of dramatic poetry; and raged at the approach of a rival. It was not the crown of Corneille or Racine he was so anxious about; but he knew that his own was studded with the pearls of Shakspeare. It has been asserted that Voltaire afterwards repented of this disgraceful animosity, and did homage to the genius of the English dramatist.