wagging my head in insane dreams, | Ah, Ronzi de Begnis, thou lovely

one! Ah, Caradori, thou smiling angel! Ah, Malibran! Nay, I will come to modern times, and acknowledge that Lablache was a very good singer thirty years ago (though Porto was the boy for me): and then we had Ambrogetti, and Curioni, and Donzelli, a rising young singer.

But what is most certain and lamentable is the decay of stage beauty since the days of George IV. Think of Sontag! I remember her in Otello and the Donna del Lago in '28. I remember being behind the scenes at the opera (where numbers of us young fellows of fashion used to go), and seeing Sontag let her hair fall down over her shoulders previous to her murder by Donzelli. Young fellows have never seen beauty like that, heard such a voice, seen such hair, such eyes. Don't tell me! A man who has been about town since the reign of George IV., ought he not to know better than you young lads who have seen nothing? The deterioration of women is lamentable; and the conceit of the young fellows more lamentable still, that they won't see this fact, but persist in thinking their time as good as ours.

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, thickankled old thing, cutting dreary capers, coming thumping down on her board out of time that an operadancer? 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, à 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 Bayadère, 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 1 Kaled used to say to the Sultan, "My lord, a troop of those dancing and singing gurls called Bayadères approaches," and, to the clash of cymbals, and the thumping of my heart, in she used to dance! There has never been any thing like it-never. There never will be-I laugh to scorn old people who tell me about your Noblet, your Montessu, your Vestris, your Parisot pshaw, the senile twaddlers! And the impudence of the young men, with their used to divide the applause with the music and their dancers of to-day: I tell you the women are dreary old creatures. I tell you one air in an opera is just like another, and they send all rational creatures to sleep.

Bless me when I was a lad, the stage was covered with angels, who sang, acted, and danced. When I remember the Adelphi, and the actresses there: when I think of Miss Chester, and Miss Love, and Mrs. Serle at Sadler's Wells, and her forty glorious pupils of the Opera and Noblet, and the exquisite young Taglioni, and Pauline Leroux, and a host more! One much-admired being of those days I confess I never cared for, and that was the chief male dancer a very important personage then, with a bare neck, bare arms, a tunic, and a hat and feathers, who

ladies, and who has now sunk down a trap-door for ever. And this frank admission ought to show that I am not your mere twaddling laudator temporis acti―your old fogy who

can see no good except in his own time.

They say that claret is better nowa-days, and cookery much improved since the days of my monarch of George IV. Pastry Cookery is certainly not so good. I have often eaten half a crown's worth (including, I trust, ginger beer) at our school pastrycook's, and that is a proof that the pastry must have been very good, for could I do as much now? I passed by the pastrycook's shop lately, having occasion to visit my old school. It looked a very dingy old baker's; misfortunes may have come over him those penny tarts certainly did not look so nice as I remember them: but he may have grown careless as he has grown old (I should judge him to be now about ninety-six years of age), and his hand may have lost its cunning.

was

"Scottish Chiefs, "didn't we weep over you! O "Mysteries of Udolpho," didn't I and Briggs Minor draw pictures out of you, as I have said? Efforts, feeble indeed, but still giving pleasure to us and our friends. "I say, old boy, draw us Vivaldi tortured in the Inquisition," or "Draw us Don Quixote and the windmills, you know, amateurs would say, to boys who had a love of drawing. "Peregrine Pickle we liked, our fathers admiring it, and telling us (the sly old boys) it was capital fun; but I think I was rather bewildered by it, though "Roderick Random" and remains delightful. I don't remember having Sterne in the school library, no doubt because the works of that divine were not considered decent for young people. Ah! not against thy genius, O father of Uncle Toby and Trim, would I say a word Not that we were not great epicures. in disrespect. But I am thankful to I remember how we constantly live in times when men no longer grumbled at the quantity of the food have the temptation to write so as to in our master's house which on my call blushes on women's cheeks, and conscience I believe was excellent would shame to whisper wicked aland plentiful-and how we tried lusions to honest boys. Then, above once or twice to eat him out of house all, we had WALTER SCOTT, the kindand home. At the pastrycook's we ly, the generous, the pure-the com may have over-eaten ourselves (I have panion of what countless delightful admitted half a crown's worth for my hours; the purveyor of how much own part, but I don't like to mention happiness; the friend whom we recall the real figure for fear of perverting as the constant benefactor of our the present generation of boys by my youth! How well I remember the monstrous confession) we may type and the brownish paper of the have eaten too much, I say. We did; old duodecimo "Tales of My Landbut what then? The school apothe-lord "! I have never dared to read cary was sent for: a couple of small globules, at night, a trifling preparation of senna in the morning, and we had not to go to school, so that the draught was an actual pleasure.

For our amusements, besides the games in vogue, which were pretty much in old times as they are now (except cricket, par exemple and I wish the present youth joy of their bowling, and suppose Armstrong and Whitworth will bowl at them with light field-pieces next), there were novels-ah! I trouble you to find such novels in the present day!

O

"The Pirate," and "The Bride of Lammermoor,' or "Kenilworth," from that day to this, because the finale is unhappy, and people die, and are murdered at the end. But "Ivanhoe," and "Quentin Durward!" Oh! for a half-holiday, and a quiet corner, and one of those books again! Those books, and perhaps those eyes with which we read them; and, it may be, the brains behind the eyes! It may be the tart was good; but how fresh the appetite was! If the gods would give me the desire of my heart, I should be able to write a story

which boys would relish for the next | Rapturous bliss the opera itself!

and then perhaps to Temple Bar, to knock down a Charley there! There are Jerry and Tom, with their tights and little cocked hats, coming from the opera very much as gentlemen in waiting on royalty are habited now. There they are at Almack's itself, amidst a crowd of high-bred personages, with the Duke of Clarence himself looking at them dancing. Now, strange change, they are in Tom Cribb's parlor, where they don't seem to be a whit less at home than in fashion's gilded halls: and now they are at Newgate, seeing the irons knocked off the malefactors' legs pre

few dozen of centuries. The boy critic loves the story: grown up, he loves the author who wrote the story. Hence the kindly tie is established between writer and reader, and lasts pretty nearly for life. I meet people now who don't care for Walter Scott, or "The Arabian Nights;" I am sorry for them, unless they in their time have found their romancer- their charming Scheherazade. By the way, Walter, when you are writing, tell me who is the favorite novelist in the fourth form now? Have you got any thing so good and kindly as dear Miss Edgeworth's Frank? It used to belong to a fellow's sisters general-vious to execution. What hardened ly; but though he pretended to despise it, and said, "Oh, stuff for girls!" he read it; and I think there were one or two passages which would try my eyes now, were I to meet with the little book.

ferocity in the countenance of the desperado in yellow breeches! What compunction in the face of the gentleman in black (who, I suppose, has been forging), and who clasps his hands, and listens to the chaplain ! Now we haste away to merrier scenes : to Tattersall's (ali, gracious powers! what a funny fellow that actor was who performed Dicky Green in that scene at the play!); and now we are at a private party, at which Corinthian Tom is waltzing (and very gracefully, too, as you must confess) with Corinthian Kate, whilst Bob Logic, the Oxonian, is playing on the piano!

As for Thomas and Jeremiah (it is only my witty way of calling Tom and Jerry), I went to the British Museum the other day on purpose to get it; but somehow, if you will press the question so closely, on reperusal, Tom and Jerry is not so brilliant as I had supposed it to be. The pictures are just as fine as ever; and I shook hands with broad-backed Jerry Hawthorn and Corinthian Tom "After," the text says, "the Oxonian with delight, after many years' ab- had played several pieces of lively sence. But the style of the writing, music, he requested as a favor that I own, was not pleasing to me; I Kate and his friend Tom would even thought it a little vulgar- well! form a waltz. Kate without any heswell! other writers have been con- itation immediately stood up. Tom sidered vulgar — and as a description offered his hand to his fascinating of the sports and amusements of Lon-partner, and the dance took place. don in the ancient times, more curious than amusing.

But the pictures! oh! the pictures are noble still! First, there is Jerry arriving from the country, in a green coat and leather gaiters, and being measured for a fashionable suit at Corinthian House, by Corinthian Tom's tailor. Then away for the career of pleasure and fashion. The park! delicious excitement! The theatre! the saloon!! the green-room!!!

per

The plate conveys a correct represen-
tation of the 'gay scene' at that pre-
cise moment. The anxiety of the
Oxonian to witness the attitudes of
the elegant pair had nearly put a stop
to their movements.
Ŏn turning
round from the pianoforte and pre-
senting his comical mug, Kate could
scarcely suppress a laugh."

And no wonder; just look at it now, and compare Master Logic's countenance and attitude with the

Now I hall?

through the sleeping house, and feel as though a hushed blessing were upon it.

ON A JOKE I ONCE HEARD
FROM THE LATE THOMAS
HOOD.

THE good-natured reader who has
perused some of these rambling pa-
pers has long since seen (if to see
has been worth his trouble) that the
writer belongs to the old-fashioned
classes of this world, loves to remem-
ber very much more than to prophesy,
and though he can't help being car-
ried onward and downward, perhaps,
on the hill of life, the swift milestones
marking their forties, fifties how
many tens or lustres shall we say ?
he sits under Time, the white-wigged
charioteer, with his back to the
horses, and his face to the past, look-
ing at the receding landscape and the
hills fading into the gray distance.
Ah me! those gray, distant hills
were green once, and here, and cov-
ered with smiling people! As we
came up the hill there was difficulty,
and here and there a hard pull to be
sure, but strength and spirits, and all
sorts of cheery incident and compan-
ionship on the road; there were the
tough struggles (by heaven's merciful
will) overcome, the pauses, the faint-
ings, the weakness, the lost way, per-
haps, the bitter weather, the dreadful
partings, the lonely night, the pas-
sionate grief-towards these I turn
my thoughts as I sit and think in my
hobby-coach under Time, the silver-
wigged charioteer. The young folks
in the same carriage meanwhile are
looking forwards. Nothing escapes
their keen eyes
not a flower at the
side of a cottage garden, nor a bunch
of rosy-faced children at the gate: the
landscape is all bright, the air brisk
and jolly, the town yonder looks
beautiful, and do you think they have
learned to be difficult about the dishes
at the inn?

Now, suppose Paterfamilias on his journey with his wife and children in the sociable, and he passes an ordinary brick house on the road with an ordinary little garden in the front, we will say, and quite an ordinary knocker to the door, and as many sashed windows as you please, quite common and square, and tiles, windows, chimney-pots, quite like others; or suppose, in driving over such and such a common, he sees an ordinary tree, and an ordinary donkey browsing under it, if you like wife and daughter look at these objects without the slightest particle of curiosity or interest. What is a brass knocker to them but a lion's head, or what not? and a thorn-tree with a pool beside it, but a pool in which a thorn and a jackass are reflected?

But you remember how once upon a time your heart used to beat, as you beat on that brass knocker, and whose eyes looked from the window above. You remember how by that thorn-tree and pool, where the geese were performing a prodigious evening concert, there might be seen, at a certain hour, somebody in a certain cloak and bonnet, who happened to be coming from a village yonder, and whose image has flickered in that pool. In that pool, near the thorn? Yes, in that goose-pool, never mind how long ago, when there were reflected the images of the geese and two geese more. Here, at least, an oldster may have the advantage of his young fellowtravellers, and so Putney Heath or the New Road may be invested with a halo of brightness invisible to them, because it only beams out of his own soul.

I have been reading "The Memorials of Hood" by his children,* and wonder whether the book will have the same interest for others and for younger people, as for persons of my own age and calling. Books of travel to any country become interesting to us who have been there. Men

* Memorials of Thomas Hood. Moxon,

1860. 2 vols.