, and is, in the absence of most
of the opulent owners of private picture-galleries and the closing of
the National Academy, almost our only artistic amusement at present.
But the first of December will throw open many hospitable doors, and
the new pictures and statues which have been accumulated during
the past summer will become in one sense the property of the gazing
public.

MARGARET CLAYSON.

NOTES.

Amongst the traditional scenes of the drama probably none plays a part
more useful than the village festival. This merrymaking appears twice
or thrice in an ordinary pantomime, regularly adorns the melodrama, is
almost an essential of the opera, could not be dispensed with in the
plays of the _Fanchon_ type, and may even relieve the sombre tints of
dire tragedy. We all know the charming spectacle: peasant youths and
maidens, clad in all the wealth of the dramatic wardrobe, are skipping
around a Maypole; presently Baptiste and Lisette are discovered
kissing behind a pasteboard hedge, and are drawn out with universal
laughing, in the midst of which enters the recruiting-sergeant with
his squad and whisks off poor Baptiste to the wars. It is a pleasing
scene--a trifle monotonous now with repetition; and for this latter
reason it might be well to vary it by substituting the rural Feast of
the Onion, which a 'correspondent of the Cambrai _Gazette_ witnessed
in the suburbs of Gouzeaucourt. Every year, between June 24th and July
2d, the inhabitants of the two neighboring villages of Gouzeaucourt
and Gonnelieu perform the ceremony of "turning the onion"--that is to
say, they dance in a circle, joining hands, on the village green of
one or the other hamlet. Thanks to this ancient custom, the two French
communes raise the finest onions in the department, this vegetable
never failing, as carrots are apt to do in that locality: on the
contrary, the onions are well-grown, finely rounded, and in short,
magnificently "turned." On this festive occasion three or four hundred
persons of every age and condition dance around a well in Sunday best,
rigged out in ribbons and with smiling faces. The more they hop the
bigger the crop of onions; and naturally they skip and sing till out
of breath, always repeating the popular song, "Ah! qu'il est malaise
d'etre amoureux et sage." Surely, all this would form a pleasant
variety on the ordinary festal scene of the stage; and we hasten
to remind the fastidious that though this ceremony