DESCRIPTION OF PORTRAIT.

SOPHIE ARNOULD in a hoop, a train, lappets, and a powdered pow withal, was as appropriately dressed for the part of the Lion, as for the Grecian Thisbé. Nor do we think that Master Snug the Joiner could have looked more absurdno, nor Wall, nor Moonshine either, than our heroine climbing the wall to court her Pyramus in a good earnest serious French Opera, with costumes worn by the other characters to correspond. Thisbé is preserved to us by the pencil of Carmontelle, when he painted the portrait of Sophie in her favourite character; but oh! what imagination can do justice to the petit-maître with a pigtail, who played Pyramus to a Thisbe in a hoop petticoat? Shakspeare has taken infinite pleasure in burlesquing this classic story, but he could not imagine such fun as this opera would be, played in the French court dresses.

3 G-VOL. XI.-DECEMBER.

Our Thisbé is in the high fashion of the time of Louis XV., and is a fair model for ladies who wish to assume the costume of that age for fancy balls. We were lately in company with a court dress that walked at the coronation of George II., and it was very near the style of the present costume.

The hair is combed up from the roots, and fixed in stiff cannon curls all over the head, with powder and pomatum; two hateful tresses, plastered with the same vile ingredients, depend on each shoulder. A plume, like a bottle-brush, is stuck on the top of the head; a loop of pearls and some very artificial roses repose on the powder, and a lappet handkerchief hangs down the back; a black throat collar completes the resemblance to the head of the Grecian maid. The gown is of white lutestring, properly called lustring; the sleeves are in the modern style of this present year, tight

to the shoulder, with white point ruffles at the elbow, from thence tight to the wrist, with large French beads wound from the wrist to the elbow by way of bracelets; there are likewise point wrist ruffles. The dress is trimmed with furbelows of pink lutestring cut and crimped at the edges. The corsage of the dress is trimmed with Brussels-point, and a fal-bal-la of white lutestring puffs crosses from the right shoulder to the left; each puff clasped by an agrafe of pearls and sapphires; and terminates in a sort of sash which reaches to the knees. Meantime the pink furbelow crosses the corsage from the left shoulder to the right, and from thence meanders about the person round the train, round the flounce, and among too many garnitures and ovals for a modern pen to describe, save that in each of these droll pink flourishes is hung a knot of huge French beads headed with a brooch. If the robe were let down which is now draped round the "wide circumference of the hoop," there is reason to suppose that Thisbe's train would be at least six yards long; it is now, we may presume, packed up for flight, or for the better convenience of climbing up the wall which occupies so important a feature in the story of Pyramus and Thisbé. The high-heeled shoes that formed part of this costume are not seen, owing to the length of the draperies.

In dress, talents, life, and conversation, our Sophie may be considered as the very personification of artifice.

At the age of seventeen, Sophie Arnould assumed the theatrical sceptre as prima-donna of the French Opera. She made her début at the Académie Royale de Musique, on the 15th of September, 1757, and her singing and style of acting were pronounced inimitable by the best critics of the parterre. The celebrated Mademoiselle Clairon had given her lessons in declamation, and her singing she was taught by Mademoiselle Fel.

But Sophie's task of acting did not cease when she was off the stage, she had a still more difficult part to perform in society; she was a female wit, and to the day of her death was considered the best sayer of smart speeches and bonmots in Paris. Both as an actress and a bel esprit, she was adored by the French

savans. Marmontel wrote verses to her honour and glory, as did Dorat, Bernard, Rhulières, and Laujohn.

The brilliant sayings of this lady were in constant circulation through the salons of Paris; at last, there was a collection made of her bon-mots by M. Albéric Deville, who published a work entitled “Arnoldiana.” In such collections of witticisms we are always disappointed; the arch look, the smile of the lips, the fire of the eyes, are wanting, and above all, the apt occasions which first gave rise to them are sadly wanting. A poet called Poinsinet got into the circle where Sophie sat surrounded by her admirers, and set them all yawning, by repeating his own dull verses. Her admirers grumbled loudly at this intrusion.

"The verses of Poinsinet," observed Sophie, "are a sort of spoiled children; it is only their parent who loves them."

M. de Murville, a cousin of Sophie's, one day said to her, "If at the age of thirty I do not belong to the Académie Française, I mean to blow out my brains." "Hold your tongue, and consider your brains already blown out," replied Sophie, who had a good critical appreciation of her kinsman's literary powers.

A coxcomb, who had a mind to lower Sophie in her own self-esteem, wanted to depreciate the dignity of a wit. "Now-a-days," he said, “wits are forced to walk the streets."

"Nay," replied Sophie, "but I have heard that fools go full gallop." "Mademoiselle Carton,' says Baron de Grimm, "has been replaced by Sophie Arnould, in the department of uttering smart things, who besides charms us all on the stage by the gracefulness of her figure and her fine action; and she sings, though without a voice, the most soporific music in Europe." The Abbé Galianibeing one day present at the theatre at court, when every body round him was in ecstasies at Mademoiselle Arnould's singing, being asked his opinion, answered, "It is the finest asthma I ever heard.”

Mademoiselle Arnould was an excellent judge of theatrical literature. When some of her contemporaries were foretelling the entire condemnation of M. de Beaumarchais' Figaro-for she was in the midst of all the uproar that attended its introduction to the French boardsSophie showed her critical tact, by de

claring "that it was a piece which would be condemned for fifty nights successively."

Till the representation of Figaro, Beaumarchais had been respected as a clever watchmaker, but laughed at as a dull play-writer; he wrote the opera of Zoroaster the house was very thin the third night she said to the author, "When all the strangers at Paris have seen the house we shall have nobody."

Her preceptress, Mademoiselle Clairon, had a squabble with the court; she withdrew for a season from the theatre, saying, with declamatory emphasis, "that the King was master of her life and property, but not of her honour." are in the right, Madame," replied Sophie; "where there is nothing, the King must lose his rights."

"You

After Rousseau had thrown off the Armenian dress, and got permission once more to appear at Paris, his first appearance was at the celebrated suppers of Sophie Arnould. There he met his usual array of opponents and enemies; for at her suppers was collected the most brilliant talent in Paris.

"That Mademoiselle Arnould," says Baron de Grimm, "that Sophie, so touching on the stage, so full of mirth in company, so formidable behind the scenes for her bon-mots, commonly employs the most pathetic moments of her performance, when she is making a whole audience weep or tremble, in saying all manner of ridiculous things to her fellow actors on the stage *. For instance, when she falls, dying or despairing, into the arms of her lover, and the whole house is weeping, she will say to the hero who holds her, looking up in his face, Ah, my dear Pillot, what a fright

you are!""

guais was among her numerous lovers. On his return from exile, he found the Prince de Henin in close attendance on Sophie; he was enraged and shut himself up for a month. At the end of that time he sent the following case to the Paris Board of Physicians: — "The gentlemen of the faculty are requested to give, in due form, their opinion upon all the possible consequences of ennui * on the human health, and to what point the life of a person may be affected by it?" The Faculty replied, " that ennui might occasion obstructions of digestion, prevent the circulation of the blood, and by long continuance even produce marasmus and death."

Furnished with this document, Lauraguais laid an information against the Prince de Henin, as a wilful murderer. And when the commissary inquired into the grounds of this denunciation, he deposed that, by the authority of the first physicians, the life of Sophie Arnould was in imminent danger, as the Prince de Henin (allowed to be the dullest and most tiresome man in France) had not quitted her for an hour for the last five months. This whimsical accusation went the round of the Paris periodicals, and occasioned great mirth at the expense of the enamoured prince.

Sophie hated La Harpe, whom she thought a pretender. He was taken ill with a leprosy; he comforted himself, saying, that it was an antiquarian disorder. Yes," she said, "and it is all he has ever gained from the ancients."

At one of Sophie's famous petits-soupers some of her guests were discussing the subject of a duel that had been lately fought by the Prince of Nassau and M.

The question is very ably and very philosophic

The ballet of the Devils in Castor and Pollux had been very ill managed, the devils dancing in each other's way, and every way but the right. Sophie told them "they ought to be ashamed of themselves, for they did not dance like devils mon sense."

the tale of the Mutilated, by the unfortunate Gaetana: see page 419. We have more than once touched upon the subject; and, in urging to our friends to cheer the couch of the sick and gloomy by lending or reading to them a light and, we trust, agreeable work like this magazine, we feel confident

good

The wild and witty Count de Laura