ng carried out
over the heads and shoulders of the audience ere the performance had
well begun--a movement that would have insured us the unfeigned thanks
of all whom we had rescued from their distressing situation under
pretence of bearing us off, splashing us with cold water, causing doors
to bang impressively during our exit, and the various other _petit
soins_ requisite to the conducting a "faint" with dignity.

But it could not be accomplished. We made several awkward attempts, so
little like, that their only result was our being threatened with a
policeman it we made any more disturbance; so, after a hasty glance
round had assured us of the impracticability of making our escape in any
more everyday style, we sat down with a stern resolution of
endurance--lips firmly compressed, eyes fixed in a stony gaze on the
orchestra, whence issued by turns groans, shrieks, and screams, from
sundry foully-abused instruments of music; accompanied by equally
appalling sounds from flat, shrill signorinas, quavering to distraction,
backed by gigantic "basses," (double ones surely,) who, with voices like
the "seven devils" of the old Grecian, bellowed out divers
sentimentalisms about dying for love, when assuredly their most
proximate danger was of apoplexy.

Well, the affair came to an end, as, it is to be hoped, will every other
evil in this wicked world; in a spasm of thankfulness we extricated
ourselves from the crush, and reached our home, where, under the genial
influence of quiet and a cup of coffee, we can afford to laugh at the
past, (our own vehement indignation included,) and ruminate calmly on
the "how" and the "why" of the nuisance, which appears to us as well
worthy of being put down by act of parliament, as the ringing of muffin
bells and crying "sweep!"

It is a perfect puzzle to us by what process the standard of music has
become so lowered, as to make what is ordinarily served up under that
name be received as the legitimate descendant of the harmony divine
which erst broke on the ear of the listening world, when "the morning
stars sang together;" and, in the first freshness of its
creation--teeming with melody--angels deigned to visit this terrestrial
paradise, nor turned an exile's gaze to that heaven whose strains were
chanted in glad accordance with the murmuring stream, and music of the
waving forest--which, in its greenness and beauty, seemed but "a little
lower" than its celestial archetype, for