Do not suppose I am going, sicut est mos, to indulge in
moralities about buffoons, paint, motley, and mountebanking. Nay, Prime
Ministers rehearse their jokes; Opposition leaders prepare and polish
them; Tabernacle preachers must arrange them in their minds before they
utter them. All I mean is, that I would like to know any one of these
performers thoroughly, and out of his uniform: that preacher, and why
in his travels this and that point struck him; wherein lies his power of
pathos, humor, eloquence;--that Minister of State, and what moves him,
and how his private heart is working;--I would only say that, at a
certain time of life certain things cease to interest: but about SOME
things when we cease to care, what will be the use of life, sight,
hearing? Poems are written, and we cease to admire. Lady Jones invites
us, and we yawn; she ceases to invite us, and we are resigned. The
last time I saw a ballet at the opera--oh! it is many years ago--I
fell asleep in the stalls, wagging my head in insane dreams, and I
hope affording amusement to the company, while the feet of five hundred
nymphs were cutting flicflacs on the stage at a few paces' distance. Ah,
I remember a different state of things! Credite posteri. To see those
nymphs--gracious powers, how beautiful they were! That leering, painted,
shrivelled, thin-armed, thick-ankled old thing, cutting dreary capers,
coming thumping down on her board out of time--THAT an opera-dancer?
Pooh! My dear Walter, the great difference between MY time and yours,
who will enter life some two or three years hence, is that, now, the
dancing women and singing women are ludicrously old, out of time, and
out of tune; the paint is so visible, and the dinge and wrinkles of
their wretched old cotton stockings, that I am surprised how anybody can
like to look at them. And as for laughing at ME for falling asleep, I
can't understand a man of sense doing otherwise. In MY time, a la bonne
heure. In the reign of George IV., I give you my honor, all the dancers
at the opera were as beautiful as Houris. Even in William IV.'s time,
when I think of Duvernay prancing in as the Bayadere,--I say it was a
vision of loveliness such as mortal eyes can't see now-a-days. How well
I remember the tune to which she used to appear! Kaled used to say to
the Sultan, "My lord, a troop of those dancing and singing gurls called
Bayaderes approaches," and, to the clash of cymbals, and the thumping
of my heart, in she