The catastrophe now fast approaches, and we
may hurry on to it with little ceremony. The
queen dies (off the stage, we are happy to say),
and, an insurrection being got up against the
usurper, Macbeth is slain, after a terrific combat
with Macduff, who cuts off his head (behind the
scenes), and brings it in "on a pole!" Mutual
congratulations, flourish, and curtain falls.

And this stuff is called a tragedy! Why, it
is a rank melodrama, of the old Coburg fashion.
Mr. Shakespeare is behind his time. Twenty
years ago, in the days of Hicks and "Winsunt,"
he would have been a powerful rival to the
authors who supplied the late Mr. Osbaldistone
with the dramas of the New Cut. But even
the most uneducated audiences have now
outgrown such vulgar horrors. Does Mr.
Shakespeare imagine for one moment that any theatre
in London or the provinces would produce such
a play as this Macbeth? It would be hissed
off the boards before the end of the first act.
And even should it obtain a temporary success,
would not posterity explode with laughter at
such a specimen of the literature of our epoch?
if, indeed, posterity cared to trouble itself at all
about Mr. Shakespeare and his writings. The
best advice we can give this gentleman is to
turn a deaf ear to his flatterers, and endeavour,
if possible, to compose something quiet, simple,
and natural. Though it is forbidden the genius
of our nation and our language to produce an
Æschylus, we may at least emulate his good
taste in removing murder from the stage; and
though we may never be able to scale the
heights of moral grandeur familiar to the intellect
of Sophocles, we can at any rate refrain
from outraging decency and sense. We say to
Mr. Shakespeare in plain language, "This will
not do. You may think it very fine, and fools
may be found to tell you so; but, however
rough our speech, we are your true friends, and
we repeat that IT WON'T DO!"

CHINESE KITES.

SIR RUTHERFORD ALCOCK. remarks, in his
interesting work on Japan, on the ridiculous
contrariety presented in many of the habits of
the Japanese to those of Western nations; how
they mount their horses on the opposite side;
how their carpenters plane towards the person
instead of from it; how the men fly kites and spin
tops while the boys look on; how their character
runs from top to bottom, and their books read
from right to left, and so on. Sir John Davis
notices a similar peculiarity in the Chinese in
his entertaining work on that people.

Perhaps of all the odd practices thus indulged
in, the one most easily to be accounted for, is
the practice of kite-flying by grown-up men:
which may be better appreciated, when it is
explained that the kites of China and Japan are not
the simple articles we usually know by that
name, but are toys infinitely various in sort,
size, and shape, and often elaborate in construction,
as well as high in price. What man among
ourselves but has had his eyes attracted upward,
and more or less of his interest engaged, by
seeing a fire-balloon sailing in mid-air, or a sky-
rocket bursting in the sky; or, indeed, anything
out of the common happening overhead. And is
the Chinaman or Japanese to be laughed at, if he
relishes the still stranger sight of a huge dragon
or centipede trailing its scaly length on high, a
hideous ogre face roaring as it sails along, a
pretty but immense butterfly flapping its wings
like its living model, birds flying about so
life-like that one can hardly believe them to be
made of paper, a couple of fantastically-dressed
friends walking arm-in-arm in the clouds with
an umbrella over their heads, and many other
similarly curious things, which an Englishman
would scarcely dream of? Yet sights such as
these may be seen in Japanese and Chinese
cities at any time during the kite-flying season;
and, while they cannot fail to attract the attention
of the observant stranger, in common with
the many other novelties he sees about him,
lead him to conclude that the old men and
adults of those countries have, at any rate,
some excuse for the frivolity they are accused
of. The ability to make such extraordinary
kites is mainly owing to the toughness, tenuity,
and flexibility, of the Chinese and Japanese
paper, and the abundant material for ribs and
frames afforded by the bamboo: a plant which
has not its equal for the lightness, strength,
flexibility, and elasticity of its fibrous wood.
With these simple materials, and with the
wonderful neatness and ingenuity the Chinese
and Japanese are famous for, it is astonishing
how rapidly and easily they construct the odd
and complicated figures which they fly as kites.

Let us transport the reader to the line of
low hills which, thickly strewn with the graves
of the dead out of the neighbouring city of
Foo-chow-foo, skirts the picturesque foreign
settlement of that port, and on which some very
pretty kite-flying may be seen during the season.
The first thing to attract his eye (presuming it to
have had its fill of the beautiful scenery to be
seen around) will be the centipede kite: which,
with its scaly joints stretching out some sixty
to a hundred feet in length, its thousand legs,
and slow undulating motion, looks marvellously
like a giant specimen of that horrible creature
creeping down upon one out of the clouds.
Although complicated enough in appearance,
it is very simply contrived; something like
it might, without difficulty, be made by any
ingenious English boy, who would take the
trouble, and use sufficiently light materials.
The Chinaman constructs it thus: He first
prepares from fifty to a hundred hoops of fine
split bamboo, taking care to make one-third the
number he intends to use of equal diameter,
say a foot and a half across, and the rest each
one slightly smaller than the other, until the
last is about the size of a small saucer. On
these he stretches thin white or brown paper,
by pasting the edges down over the hoop with
well ground paste. On two opposite points of
every hoop, he then fastens, with fine twine,