sitting down by himself, at 7 o'clock in the evening, to dinner, barricadoed by four thick wax candles, and hemmed in by a bottle of each, fish sauces, and six smoking covers! What a brilliant triumph must that be, where the only spectators are a grinning waiter and a waggish butler! To be sure, there is a consolation in reflecting that some one knows how one's money goes.

8. THE dressy Beau is a gentleman of measured step, swinging gait, bright boots, trimmed whiskers, and composed features: this is his morning costume. In the evening, he puts on a thinner dress because it is colder; the tip of his handkerchief hangs out of his pocket, and under his arm is preserved, with the same care that a mother protects her infant, a thin, semicircular, elongated, black, beaver ornament, projecting about six inches beyond each side of the profile of the body. This is meant for a hat, but is rarely used as such: or, when it assumes its natural character, has an appearance as monstrous and grotesque as

any part of the dress of a gentleman of the Sandwich or Friendly Islands.

THE dressy Beau is an harmless animal; he rarely bites-or, when he does, the bite is not attended with the same pain as is that of the literary or political Beau.

9. THE delightful Beau is, of all his tribe, the most difficult to delineate correctly. He laughs, he talks, he plays, he sings delightfully: nothing can be more delightful than his repartees, and his anecdotes give a zest to every fashionable entertainment. Go with him to a play, his critiques are delightful-join with him in a glee, his bass is second only to Bartleman's. Who can speak, declaim, discourse on belles-lettres subjects equal to this delightful creature? He is born for the instruction of posterity: his genius is intuitive: he is a walking library, without ever having perused twenty volumes.

10. THE old Beau. We come now to the tenth and last class, into which the

modern Beau has been divided. This gentleman is instantly recognised as well by his faded looks, as by his dirty finery, and affected sprightliness. The aged Beau is the most incorrigible of his species : he has become old in crime, and infirm from debauchery. Tottering from one rendezvous to another, he makes an effort (like the sun gleaming through the purple clouds of evening-though the simile is much too good for him) to shine with his wonted splendour, and congratulates himself that he still succeeds. He enters into all the wild schemes of youth, but executes them with the indecision of age: he meets with contempt, where he expected applause. His heart, however, still beats at the call of pleasure-his pulse still flutters at the prospect of some novel gratification-but he dies ere it be realised-he is stretched in his grave, ere his morrow of happiness arrive! No sculptured bible decorates his tomb; no flattering epitaph-not even a stone marks where his ashes rest.

Alive ridiculous, and dead forgot!

240

ON

THE STRUCTURE OF OUR THEATRES.

SIR,

To the Director.

In the first short series of observations which I took the liberty of addressing to you, on the internal structure of our theatres, I merely considered some of the defects prevailing in the form of the house, or of that part destined to receive the audience. I shall now proceed to consider some of the defects prevailing in the mode in which the house is connected with the stage, or that part intended to exhibit the performance.

EVEN the smallest picture, bassorelievo, or other production of the imitative arts, when situated in a frame which insulates it from more distant surrounding objects, and which affords an interval of

repose between its own immediate boundary and these objects, strikes the eye more distinctly and more forcibly-displays greater effect, and produces stronger illusion.

Now, if the entirely motionless and entirely imitative productions of the chissel or the pencil, require the assistance of a frame to insulate them from more distant surrounding objects, and to prevent them from being confounded with these objects-how much more must the mixture of partly motionless and partly moving exhibitions-of partly imitative and partly real beings, which together form the large picture on the stage-require the relief of such a frame? Without its intervention to mark their respective limits, the painting of the scenes must confound itself with the architecture of the house; the business of the stage, with the bustle of the audience: the sight must be distracted, the theatrical effect diminished, the splendour and the dig