r Royalties. Can't see them. They're seated.
Enter, in front, tall young men in coloured tunics, knicker-bockers,
and turn-down collars. What are these? The Backward Pupils of Gray's
Inn? No. The Orchestra. It commences. There are fiddles, and basses, and
a second-hand cracked piano, suggestive of having been hired from
itinerant Minstrels on Margate Sands. My neighbour asks me if the band
is "COOTE and TINNEY?" My reply is evident--"More Tinny than Coot."
Neighbour informs me that the cracked piano is really a very old
instrument, in use about the time of Queen ELIZABETH. Exactly: just what
I should have thought. The Benchers ought to have been rich enough by
now to have bought a new one. When a thing is to be done, do it well.
No cracked pianos. Not worth fourpence an hour.

Curtain up. Low arch representing entrance to Old Gray's Inn. Enter a
Giant with a long white beard. I think he is Great Grandfather Christmas
off Gog and Magog's twelfth-cake. He solemnly salutes the audience in
military style. Why military? It suddenly occurs to me, "Is a Masque
funny?" I ask my neighbour. He is uncertain. Evidently a cautious man;
he will reserve his reply till he has seen it. Enter a Columbine, like
"My Lady" used to be on a May Day. She talks to Great Grandfather
Christmas, who seems frightened, and tries to back out of it. At present
I don't quite catch the plot. Next neighbour says he doesn't think there
is a plot. I ask him to look at his book. He says he is looking at it;
but it's printed in some dialect he doesn't understand. Enter another
Giant, dressed as a Jester. It appears that Great Grandfather Christmas
has forgotten his part, or left it in the dressing-room, and the Giant
Jester has kindly brought it him. No jokes as yet. No good lines. My
neighbour says this is the sort of thing Queen ELIZABETH liked. Did she!
And the cracked piano, too, for music, which, on the exit of the Giants
and the Columbine, comes out as strong as the poor old thing can when
supported by violins and violoncellos.

Enter "_Silenus_ and his Crew." I hear some one say this. Not a bit like
a crew. Not a sailor among them. Perhaps as this is a Mask, they are
sailors in disguise. _Silenus_ is, of course, supposed to be
intoxicated. If he is intended to represent an ugly old man, dismally
drunk, and making painful efforts to catch a note, he succeeds, to the
life. Not funny, but clever. Splendid pantomimic property in the shape
of a gigantic t