MR. VAN AMBURGH'S PUBLIC ENTRY.
Nomura has of late excited such a sensation as Mr. Vex AMBURGH'S announcement that he intended to make a public entry into London on Friday. " Under the patronage of her Majesty," ran the advertisement, the Lion King was about to open the English Operabouse, as his Patroness opens Parliament, by a procession. Some, who were critically disposed, muttered, that by making his performers, brute and human, appear in his train, whereas the Queen's wait for her at their houses—and by driving eight cream-coloured horses himself, whereas the Queen has hers driven before her by coachman and postilions—he was disloy- ally attempting to outshine Majesty. But goodnatured people, more disposed to see the show than find fault, hoped that he meant no harm, and hinted that the Queen might make every thing square by mounting the box herself the next time she opened Parliament, and making the Duke of WELLINGTON and Lord MEL- BOURNE, Lord JOHN RUSSELL and Sir ROBERT PEEL, Mr. Homo and Colonel SIBTHOBP, Mr. O'CONNELL and Lord STANLEY, Mr. FERRAND and Mr. COBDEN, walk arm in arm behind her,—an ex- ploit in the taming line far beyond any thing Mr. VAN Amnuacut has ever achieved.
" Redeunt Saturnia regna," sighed some, not so much at the thought of the lion thus being seen to walk arm-in-arm with the lamb, as at the thoughts of days when, in unsophisticated country- towns, Mr. VAN AMBURGH'S predecessors in the branch of art he professes, announced their arrival, not by placards and advertise- ments, but by parading the streets. Would he, it was anxiously inquired, drive his steeds himself in a natty gentleman-coachman costume, followed by his rope-dancers and equestrians in their spangled dresses, and by his clowns in all the grotesque of trunk- hose and plastered faces, as the tumblers used to do of old ? Or would he be preceded by a dozen trumpeters with awful din and puffed-out cheeks, arrayed in the coats of Beef-eaters, with huge bearskin caps ? For VAN Astauaust has united both callings m his own person.
The extremes of sated luxury and extreme simplicity meet. After running the round of all kinds of devices, from the town- crier's drum and bell up to the advertisement in the newspaper, those who wish to attract attention, having tried in vain the effect of their pictures on omnibuses, like Sir EDWARD Lyrros BULWER, or on huge placards on the walls, like the prize-ox about to figure in the Illustrated News—having in vain sent colossal hats, peristrephic towers, gothic monuments with stuffed-out dresses, and obelisks consecrated to "washable wigs," drawing on cars through the length and breadth of the Metropolis—are about to return to the primitive device of exhibiting their own pretty persons as their own best advertisement.
The palmy state of " ground and lofty tumbling " and wild-beast exhibitions, as contrasted with the condition of the "legitimate drama," is ominous. Year after year is the public made to prick up its asinine ears by reports that MACREADY is going to restore the drama, or that VESTRIS is going to make Covent Garden the most delightful of resorts, or that the reign of KEMBLE has been restored; and year after year is this blast of trumpets followed by a confession that they cannot get on. The days of the drama are past : the circulating libraries have superseded it. All this annual puffing is no better than heaping some musty sticks over a glow- worm's tail and blowing for bare life with broken-winded bellows to kindle a flame. Theatricals are defunct or moribund ; but Astley's is immortal—growing daily in vigour and importance. The funeral procession of poor Ducaow made the carriage of the Speaker pause till it passed, and follow some way in its train, as that dignitary wended to the Palace with the Address of the Commons of England: and Docaow's craft is not interred with him—as the ovations of the new Caesar trode upon the heels of the apotheosis of the old, so quick the triumphal entry of the Lion King follows the funeral-procession of the Tamer of Horses.
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