ays a part, and as he is never mistaken for an actor on the stage, tries
when off to look as much like one as possible.

The boxes are nothing but a gallery, and are generally visited by a
certain class of ladies who resemble angels, at least, in one particular,
for they are "few and far between."

But what are the entertainments? A miscellaneous concert, in which the
first tenor, habited in a _surtout_, with the tails pinned back, to look
like a dress-coat, apostrophises his "pretty Jane," and begs particularly
to know her reason for looking so _sheyi_--_vulgo_, shy. Then there is
the bass, who disdains any attempt at a body-coat, but honestly comes
forward in a decided bearskin, and, while going down to G, protests
emphatically that "He's on the C (sea)." Then there is the _prima donna_,
in a pink gauze petticoat, over a yellow calico slip, with lots of jewels
(sham), an immense colour in the very middle of the cheek, but terribly
chalked just about the mouth, and shouting the "Soldier tired," with a
most insinuating simper at the corporal of the Foot-guards in front, who
returns the compliment by a most outrageous leer between each whiff of his
tobacco-pipe.

Then comes an _Overture by the band_, which is a little commonwealth, in
which none aspires to lead, none condescends to follow. At it they go
indiscriminately, and those who get first to the end of the composition,
strike in at the point where the others happen to have arrived; so that,
if they proceed at sixes and sevens, they generally contrive to end in
unison.

Occasionally we are treated with Musard's _Echo quadrilles_, when the
solos are all done by the octave flute, so are all the echoes, and so is
everything but the _cada_.

But the grand performance of the night is the dramatic piece, which is
generally a three-act opera, embracing the whole debility of the company.
There is the villain, who always looks so wretched as to impress on the
mind that, if honesty is not the best policy, rascality is certainly the
worst. Then there is the lover, whose woe-begone countenance and unhappy
gait, render it really surprising that the heroine, in dirty white
sarsnet, should have displayed so much constancy. The low comedy is
generally done by a gentleman who, while fully impressed with the
importance of the "low," seems wholly to overlook the "comedy;" and there
is now and then a banished nobleman, who appears to have entirely
forgotten everything in the shape