ing all the way down from Drury
Lane to the Britannia at Hoxton. Bob and I went to two pantomimes. One
was at the Theatre of Fancy, and the other at the Fairy Opera, and I
don't know which we liked the best.

At the Fancy, we saw "Harlequin Hamlet, or Daddy's Ghost and Nunky's
Pison," which is all very well--but, gentlemen, if you don't respect
Shakspeare, to whom will you be civil? The palace and ramparts of
Elsinore by moon and snowlight is one of Loutherbourg's finest efforts.
The banqueting hall of the palace is illuminated: the peaks and gables
glitter with the snow: the sentinels march blowing their fingers with
the cold--the freezing of the nose of one of them is very neatly and
dexterously arranged: the snow-storm rises: the winds howl awfully along
the battlements: the waves come curling, leaping, foaming to shore.
Hamlet's umbrella is whirled away in the storm. He and his two friends
stamp on each other's toes to keep them warm. The storm-spirits rise
in the air, and are whirled howling round the palace and the rocks. My
eyes! what tiles and chimney-pots fly hurtling through the air! As
the storm reaches its height (here the wind instruments come in with
prodigious effect, and I compliment Mr. Brumby and the violoncellos)--as
the snow-storm rises, (queek, queek, queek, go the fiddles, and then
thrumpty thrump comes a pizzicato movement in Bob Major, which sends
a shiver into your very boot-soles,) the thunder-clouds deepen (bong,
bong, bong, from the violoncellos). The forked lightning quivers through
the clouds in a zig-zag scream of violins--and look, look, look! as the
frothing, roaring waves come rushing up the battlements, and over
the reeling parapet, each hissing wave becomes a ghost, sends the
gun-carriages rolling over the platform, and plunges howling into the
water again.

Hamlet's mother comes on to the battlements to look for her son. The
storm whips her umbrella out of her hands, and she retires screaming in
pattens.

The cabs on the stand in the great market-place at Elsinore are seen
to drive off, and several people are drowned. The gas-lamps along
the street are wrenched from their foundations, and shoot through the
troubled air. Whist, rush, hish! how the rain roars and pours! The
darkness becomes awful, always deepened by the power of the music--and
see--in the midst of a rush, and whirl, and scream of spirits of air
and wave--what is that ghastly figure moving hither? It becomes bigger,