rve, for hiring Madam Catalani at the enormous salary of four
thousand pounds sterling and a free benefit for the season, with a
provision annexed, which is thought insolent, degrading, and unjust; no
less than that of her French husband putting what fiddlers he pleases
into the orchestra. The public prints are filled with remonstrances to
the people, whose attention is directed to the storm which was raised on
a similar occasion in 1755 and 1756, and which burst with such
tremendous mischief on the head of Garrick. One writer thus vehemently
expresses himself: "Shall a judge of the land be required to exercise
the faculties of his vigorous mind, which have been cultivated and
matured by an expensive education and the most laborious study; shall he
be continually employed in discriminating between right and wrong, in
the adjustment of individual differences, and in protecting the persons
and properties of the honest and peaceable part of his majesty's
subjects from the assaults of violence and the stratagems of fraud;
shall his sensibility be wounded, and his heart pierced by the painful
necessity to which he is frequently reduced of passing on his fellow-man
those awful sentences which the nature of their crimes, and the voice of
Justice imperiously demand; shall he, in short, be compelled to
discharge the duties of an office which necessarily renders his nights
anxious and restless, and subjects him in the day to the most irksome
fatigue--and shall he, for all this fatigue of body and unremitting
solicitude of mind, receive a salary scarcely exceeding _half_ the sum
given to an ITALIAN CANTATRICE for the display of her vocal powers for a
few nights?"

The fact is that the robust and vigorous appetite of the English has
been worn down by the intemperate use of German dramas, and is so
vitiated and enfeebled that it can swallow nothing but hot spiced trash,
or water gruel spoon-meat. Are the French wrong in calling John Bull
_stupide barbare_ when they see him pouring thousands into the laps of
foreign singers--and for what?--why, to sing such songs as this:

Tom Gobble was a grocer's son,
Heigho! says Gobble;
He gave a ven'son dinner for _fun_,
And he had a belly as big as a _tun_,
_With his handy dandy, bacon and gravy_,
Ah, hah, says alderman Gobble.

The servants ushered the company in,
Heigho! says Gobble;
The dinner is ready, quoth Tom, with a grin,
So he tucked a napkin und