inted sheets of small figures,
representing all the characters of certain popular pieces, which we
colored, and pasted on card-board and cut out, and then, by dint of long
slips of wood with a slit at one end, into which their feet were
inserted, moved on and off our small stage; the coloring of the scenery;
and all the arrangement and conduct of the pieces we represented, gave
us endless employment and amusement. My brother John was always manager
and spokesman in these performances, and when we had fitted up our
theatre with a _real_ blue silk curtain that would roll up, and a _real_
set of foot-lights that would burn, and when he contrived, with some
resin and brimstone and salt put in a cup and set on fire, to produce a
diabolical sputter and flare and bad smell, significant of the blowing
up of the mill in "The Miller and his Men," great was our exultation.
This piece and "Blue Beard" were our "battle horses," to which we
afterwards added a lugubrious melodrama called "The Gypsy's Curse" (it
had nothing whatever to do with "Guy Mannering"), of which I remember
nothing but some awful doggerel, beginning with--

"May thy path be still in sorrow,
May thy dark night know no morrow,"

which used to make my blood curdle with fright.

About this time I was taken for the first time to a real play, and it
was to that paradise of juvenile spectators, Astley's, where we saw a
Highland horror called "Meg Murdoch, or the Mountain Hag," and a
mythological after-piece called "Hyppolita, Queen of the Amazons," in
which young ladies in very short and shining tunics, with burnished
breastplates, helmets, spears, and shields, performed sundry warlike
evolutions round her Majesty Hyppolita, who was mounted on a snow-white
_live_ charger: in the heat of action some of these fair warriors went
so far as to die, which martial heroism left an impression on my
imagination so deep and delightful as to have proved hitherto indelible.

At length we determined ourselves to enact something worthy of notice
and approbation, and "Amoroso, King of Little Britain," was selected by
my brother John, our guide and leader in all matters of taste, for the
purpose. "Chrononhotonthologos" had been spoken of, but our youngest
performer, my sister, was barely seven years old, and I doubt if any of
us (but our manager) could have mastered the mere names of that famous
burlesque. Moreover, I think, in the piece we chose there were only four
princ