e broadest and most grotesque quiz of the "grand genre
classique et heroique," and was almost the first of an order of
entertainments which have gone on increasing in favor up to the present
day of universally triumphant parody and burlesque, by no means as
laughable and by no means as unobjectionable. Indeed, farcical to the
broadest point as was that mythological travesty of "The Danaides," it
was the essence of decency and propriety compared with "La grande
Duchesse," "La belle Helene," "Orphee aux Enfers," "La Biche au Bois,"
"Le petit Faust," and all the vile succession of indecencies and
immoralities that the female good society of England in these latter
years has delighted in witnessing, without the help of the mask which
enabled their great-grandmothers to sit out the plays of Wycherley,
Congreve, and Farquhar, chaste and decorous in their crude coarseness
compared with the French operatic burlesques of the present day.

But by far the most amusing piece in which I recollect seeing Poitier,
was one in which he acted with the equally celebrated Brunet, and in
which they both represented English _women_--"Les Anglaises pour Rire."

The Continent was then just beginning to make acquaintance with the
traveling English, to whom the downfall of Bonaparte had opened the
gates of Europe, and who then began, as they have since continued, in
ever-increasing numbers, to carry amazement and amusement from the
shores of the Channel to those of the Mediterranean, by their wealth,
insolence, ignorance, and cleanliness.

"Les Anglaises pour Rire" was a caricature (if such a thing were
possible) of the English female traveler of that period. Coal-scuttle
poke bonnets, short and scanty skirts, huge splay feet arrayed in
indescribable shoes and boots, short-waisted tight-fitting spencers,
colors which not only swore at each other, but caused all beholders to
swear at them--these were the outward and visible signs of the British
fair of that day. To these were added, in this representation of them by
these French appreciators of their attractions, a mode of speech in
which the most ludicrous French, in the most barbarous accent, was
uttered in alternate bursts of loud abruptness and languishing drawl.
Sudden, grotesque playfulness was succeeded by equally sudden and
grotesque bashfulness; now an eager intrepidity of wild enthusiasm,
defying all decorum, and then a sour, severe reserve, full of angry and
terrified suspicion of im