It is perhaps to the credit of Rouen, that science and learning appear to flourish more kindly than the drama. The theatre of Rouen is quite uncharacteristic of the passion which the French usually entertain for _spectacles_. The house is shabby; the audience, as often as we have been there, has been small; and in this great city, the capital of an extensive, populous, and wealthy district we have witnessed acting so wretched, as would disgrace the floor of a village barn. We have been much surprised by seeing the performers repeatedly laugh in the face of the spectators, a thing which I should least of all have expected in France, where usually, in similar cases, the whole nation is tremblingly alive to the slightest violations of decorum. And yet Corneille, the father of the French drama, was born in this city: the scene that is used for a curtain at the theatre bears his portrait, with the inscription, "_P. Corneille, natif de Rouen_;" and his apotheosis is painted upon the cieling. These recollections ought to tend to the improvement of the drama. The portrait of the great tragedian is more appropriate than the busts of Henry IVth and Louis XVIIIth, which occupy opposite sides of the stage; the latter laurelled and flanked with small white flags, whose staffs terminate in paper lilies. Corneille and Fontenelle are the citizens, of whom Rouen is most proud: the house in which Corneille was born, in the _Rue de la Pie_, is still shewn to strangers. His bust adorns the entrance, together with an inscription to his honor. The residence of his illustrious nephew, the author of the _Plurality of Worlds_, is situated in the _Rue des bans Enfans_, and is distinguished in the same manner. The whole _Siécle de Louis XIV_, scarcely contains two names upon which Voltaire dwells with more pleasure.--Rouen was also the birth-place of the learned Bochart, author of _Sacred Geography_ and of the _Hierozöicon_; of Basnage, who wrote the _History of the Bible_; of Sanadon, the translator of Horace; of Pradon, "damn'd," in the Satires of Boileau, "to everlasting fame;" of Du Moustier, to whom we are indebted for the _Neustria Pia_; of Jouvenet, whom I have already mentioned as one of the most distinguished painters of the French school; and of Father Daniel, not less eminent as an historian.--These, and many others, are gone; but the reflection of their glory still plays upon the walls of the city, which was bright, while they lived, with its lustre;--"nam præclara facies, magnæ divitiæ, ad hoc vis corporis, alia hujuscemodi omnia, brevi dilabuntur; at ingenii egregia facinora, sicuti anima, immortalia sunt. Postremò corporis et fortunæ bonorum, ut initium, finis est; omnia orta occidunt et aucta senescunt: animus incorruptas, æternus, rector humani generis, agit atque habet cuncta, neque ipse habetur."