it us now and then to discern the momentary
glitter of some gaudy form, or the spangles of some sandalled
foot, which trips lightly within: Then the light, brilliant as
that of day; then the music, which, in itself a treat sufficient
in every other situation, our inexperience mistakes for the very
play we came to witness; then the slow rise of the shadowy
curtain, disclosing, as if by actual magic, a new land, with
woods, and mountains, and lakes, lighted, it seems to us, by
another sun, and inhabited by a race of beings different from
ourselves, whose language is poetry,--whose dress, demeanor, and
sentiments seem something supernatural,--and whose whole actions
and discourse are calculated not for the ordinary tone of
every-day life, but to excite the stronger and more powerful
faculties--to melt with sorrow, overpower with terror, astonish
with the marvellous, or convulse with irresistible laughter:--all
these wonders stamp indelible impressions on the memory. Those
mixed feelings, also, which perplex us between a sense that the
scene is but a plaything, and an interest which ever and anon
surprises us into a transient belief that that which so strongly
affects us cannot be fictitious; those mixed and puzzling
feelings, also, are exciting in the highest degree. Then there
are the bursts of applause, like distant thunder, and the
permission afforded to clap our little hands, and add our own
scream of delight to a sound so commanding. All this, and much,
much more, is fresh in our memory, although, when we felt these
sensations, we looked on the stage which Garrick had not yet
left. It is now a long while since; yet we have not passed many
hours of such unmixed delight, and we still remember the sinking
lights, the dispersing crowd, with the vain longings which we
felt that the music would again sound, the magic curtain once
more arise, and the enchanting dream recommence; and the
astonishment with which we looked upon the apathy of the elder
part of our company, who, having the means, did not spend every
evening in the theatre."[46]

[Footnote 46: _Miscellaneous Prose Works_, vol. xx. p. 154.]

Probably it was this performance that first tempted him {p.074} to
open the page of Shakespeare. Before he returned to Sandy-Knowe,
assuredly, notwithsta