might honestly think what he would not have thought had he possessed our layman's advantage of hearing the whole case without disguise.

Having rid yourself, if you ever harboured it, of such objection in limine to your profession, beware of another much more serious error, and one which will prove a very lion in the path if you quell it not at the outset. Beware of the notion of buckling-to by-and-by. That by-andby will never come. Act clean contrary to any such dawdling. Let the first six months be your hardest; work as if you had but that before you, and, when it is over, take it easy, if you think fit. If, however, you are fit for anything, you will not think fit, but, having the habit of work on you, go on, and, with somewhat of surprise, find that, though the difficulties be many, they will never accumulate on any one point with the dogged" stir-me-if-youcan" aspect that greeted you at the first.

XXXV.

ON DRAMATIC ENTERTAINMENTS.

HAT large class of persons who love the cheap rhetoric of arguing against a thing from its abuse, may talk as they will, but there are few amusements, open to large numbers, that are more pleasant or more instructive than a well-presented good play.

"The play's the thing" for occasional and pregnant recreation. With a companion 'twere best, provided it be one that goes there for the sake of the play, and not

erely to escape from himself, or he may trouble you with t self to the prejudice of what is going on behind the

foot-lights. My friends are not play-goers, and, therefore, when they do go, make it a matter of preparation and forecast, the precise thing that, with me, would strip the pleasure of half its zest. Amusement I hate to be fixed for, and, where possible, would always prefer its being improvised. With regard to this particular amusement, my custom is to go just when I am moved, which is not very often, but always in the best possible mood for enjoying it, viz. when out of sorts for anything else, and wanting a fillip. Then, if the weather be promising for walking there and back, or at least back—for a walk after a play is a positive luxury-I consult the papers for the Thespian bill of fare, and choose either something new, and said to be popular, or something that I may have seen before, and could see again with pleasure. I am usually early, and like to be at the pit door, with my back against it, where a sort of prefatory dumb comedy is enjoyable in observing the people as they collect up. In that posture, what with watching their faces, and various demeanour, and their remarks, and, perhaps, occasionally exchanging a word or two with some who may be near you, and of the likely sort, the time passes much quicker than some of the impatient find, whose very impatience often, by its fidgetiness and peevish expression, tends to while away the time to those who are not so angry with the clock for going no faster.

Before the doors of the theatre, therefore, for those who can find it, there is amusement not set down in the bills, and when those doors are open, and you rush to your seats, it is the same, and especially if you are brisk enough to get a forward place. Next the stalls (for in the changes which have come the worst part of the pit is allotted to the élite) is best in most cases; but at the Haymarket, one of the prettiest and snuggest theatres in London, commend me to the fourth or fifth bench from the stalls. The

first and second from them let no man venture on who is not proof against a draught of wind from the opening right and left, and has no relish for rheumatism, bronchitis, or catarrh.

Seated there in the fourth or fifth row, or in the first elsewhere, your enjoyment, if you be an amusable man, commences. In that case you will not be impatient for the rising of the curtain for seeing the actors, when, before it, there is a house full of actors-in one scene of the great drama of human life—a multitude met together for common enjoyment of a common pleasure. And, although they meet without any purpose of such community, and only for his or her own individual liking, yet will there be few of them but are more or less affected by the mere fact of a full house. The fact makes itself felt before the curtain rises, and continues afterwards, and the play will be received with very different sentiments by each to what it would if he were one of half a dozen spectators, even if the actors could present it with equal spirit.

When the curtain rises, if it be a pregnant play, and the actors suitable, a high treat you have in the presentment of the piece; and, if you have seen it frequently, as a good play will bear that, an additional and philosophic and human enjoyment is open to you by turning round and observing how certain passages that affect you are found to operate on the sea of human faces before you. In this you will have occasion to observe on two very different matters, but alike illustrative of our nature, viz. how some passages and points will carry the whole of that mass imperiously along, without respect to difference of culture among them (those excepted, of course, who think it clever to resist the influence of whatever is presented to them); and, again, how other points will depend for their effect upon that very culture, and, consequently, take with some, be dead with others, and move a few, perhaps, in a

diametrically opposite way to that in which you are affected. Of the last I had an instance in the play of "The Unequal Match." The fainting scene, in which, to my mind, Miss Sedgwick showed consummate skill, and reached a real pathos, elicited a loud laugh from one or two women, apparently wives of operatives, a seat or two behind me, and who thoroughly enjoyed the play, and had expressed their pleasure frequently, but who mistook this for something comic, and felt tickled.

The difference was such as to set me thinking of the cause. It was scarcely in their nature, which seemed appreciative of other parts, and open to pathos, but rather, I should say, in their culture and mode of life. It was no natural insensibility to the dignity of ceremonial observances, or want of largeness in making allowance for difference of manners that made that elaborate piece of court étiquette so trying to the gravity of our gracious Sovereign when the Siamese Ambassadors approached her on all-fours, and retired from the presence in the same posture, backing out with their faces still towards her. The different sensations in the breast of each individual of the English Court and in that of these Siamese Chesterfields is due to the difference of culture and modes of life. This difference will probably account for the mistake of the women alluded to. In their class they seldom faint; and, on hearing of supposed infidelity of their husbands, would more probably be roused to angry pursuit of the offending parties, and, therefore, with sympathies no larger than their actual experience, they would individually as little realize the situation as our Court could the gravity of the Siamese all-fours ceremony.

So much for the actors on the audience-side of the curtain. In the actors behind the foot-lights it is the business of the piece alone that amuses me. Deficiencies in the actors themselves, however ludicrous, give me absolute

pain, because one cannot forget that it is a feed-or-starve thing with them, and too serious a matter for failure in it to amuse. Sometimes, however, instances occur that amuse without the drawback of having to reflect on the consequences to the performer. I was present at one such. The piece was "As You Like It." The part of Jacques was sustained by a competent actor, whose presentment would have been excellent but for the comicality of having to sustain the part also of the first lord; not alternately lord and Jacques, but Jacque's solely, with the lord's part melted into it. So that the fine piece of declamation, in which Jacques is described in his absence, was seized on by Jacques himself, who presented the strangest figure in describing his own doings in terms only suitable in the mouth of a third person. The Duke, as a necessary consequence, addresses to Jacques, very inappropriately, what was pertinently said of him in his absence to the suppressed lord. But the climax of absurdity is reached when the Duke, speaking of the locality where the lord would have described Jacques as being at the very time of the dialogue, addresses Jacques, altering the phrase to suit the droll occasion, with-"Show me the place; I love to cope you in these sullen fits, for then you are full of matter."

Why not have coped him on the spot? What stage exigencies may have prompted this unconscious burlesque I know not; but it is treating Shakespeare very badly, and reminds one of the grotesque and greedy versatility of Bottom that comes out so tellingly in his naïve readiness to undertake any number of parts in the play.