ious wit,
Th' inscription o'er the play-house portals writ,
In a bad sense--'_The entrance to the Pit._'

Among this godly tribe it was my fate
To view a triumph they enjoyed of late,
Which, lest the chroniclers who come hereafter
Omit, and cheat our children of their laughter,
I, a DAGUERRE-like sketcher of the time,
Will faintly shadow as I can in rhyme.

Once these Botolphians, when their boards you trod,
Received you almost as a demi-god;
Rushed to the teeming rows in frantic swarms,
And rained applauses not in showers but storms.
But should you now their fickle welcome ask,
Faint shouts would greet the veteran of the mask;
And ah! what anguish would it be to search
For your old play-house in a bastard church!
To find the dome wherein your hour you strutted,
Altered and maimed and circumcised and gutted;
Become in truth, all metaphor to drop,
A mongrel thing--half chapel and half shop.
Long had the augur and the priest foretold
The sad reverse they doomed it to behold;
Long had the school-boy, as he passed it by,
And maiden viewed it with presaging eye;
Oft had the wealthy deacon with a frown
Glared on the pile he longed to batter down,
And reckoned oft, with sanctimonious air,
What rents 'twould fetch if purified with prayer;[6]
While through the green-room whispered rumors went,
That heaven and earth were on its ruin bent.

[6] At the late opening of the 'Tremont Temple' in Boston, the
new proprietors chanted what they called a 'Purification
Hymn,' of which we give one stanza:

'Satan has here held empire long--
A blighting curse, a cruel reign;
By mimic scenes, and mirth and song
Alluring souls to endless pain!'

Too just a fear! The vision long foreseen
Has come at last; behold the fallen queen!
The queen of passion, stripped of all her pride,
Discrowned, indignant from her temple glide.
With draggling robe, slip-shod, her buskin loose,
She flies a barren people's cold abuse;
Summons her sister, who forbears to smile,
And leaves to rats the desecrated pile,
Which dogs and nags already had begun,
Unless by blows and hunger driv'n, to shun:
For well-bred curs and steeds genteel contemn
A stage which Taste had sunk too low for them;
Whereon the town had seen, without remorse,
A herd of bisons and a hairless horse!

Behind the two chief mourners of the