d Death appear. Several devils enter and tear him in
pieces, some sink, some fly out, each bearing a limb of him. The last,
which is the grand scene, is the most magnificent that ever appeared on
the English stage--all the gods and goddesses discovered with the
apotheosis of Diana, ascending into the air.

The tricks that formed part and parcel of the Pantomimes, in causing
surprise and wonderment, placed Harlequin, for his extraordinary feats,
in the first rank of magicians. Oftentimes, however, they were the cause
of many accidents.

Chetwood--William Rufus Chetwood--who had, in the eighteenth century, a
bookseller's shop in Covent Garden, and was, for twenty years, prompter
for Drury Lane, a writer of four plays, and a volume of sketches of the
actors whom he had met, says:--"A tumbler at the Haymarket beat the
breath out of his body by an accident, and which raised such vociferous
applause that lasted the poor man's life, for he never breathed more.
Indeed, his wife had this comfort, when the truth was known, pity
succeeded to the roar of applause. Another accident occurred in the
Pantomime of 'Dr. Faustus' (previously referred to), at Lincoln's Inn
Fields Theatre, where a machine in the working threw the mock Pierrot
down headlong with such force that the poor man broke a plank on the
stage with his fall, and expired; another was sorely maimed that he did
not survive many days; and a third, one of the softer sex, broke her
thigh."

Vandermere, the Harlequin, one of the most agile that ever trod the
stage, on one occasion, in the pursuit by the Clown, leaped through a
window on to the stage, a full thirteen feet. Performing at the Dublin
theatre one night, having a prodigious leap to make, the persons behind
the scenes not being ready to receive him in the customary blanket, he
fell upon the stage and was badly bruised. This accident occasioned him
to take a solemn oath that he would never take another leap upon the
stage; nor did he violate his oath, for when he afterwards played
Harlequin another actor of his size, and of considerable activity was
equipped with the parti-coloured habit, and when a leap was necessary
Vandermere passed off on one side of the stage as Dawson--Vandermere's
understudy--entered at the other, and undertook it.

How little do we know of the tragic ending of these poor unhappy
Pantomimists' lives. Their names even have not been handed down to us,
and they, like probably many more with