who could not produce authentic credentials to
prove that he should be able to combine, in
equal parts, the qualities of dulness and
vulgarity; that any one flash of real wit or humour
should involve the expulsion (with ignominy) of
the entertainer; and that any great and remarkable
feats of dulness and boredom should be
rewarded by an increase of salary to the performer.

Unrolling another yard or so of the tightly-
curling parchment, your Eye-witness read, also,
that there should be special seasons of the
year when lures and baits should be held
out by the ogres then in possession of the
institution, for the inveigling and drawing
into the same of youths and even infants of
tender years; that for this purpose Christmas-
trees should be provided, and should be hung
with appalling masks, gaunt and long-legged
dolls, animals of uncouth and previously unknown
formation, and the like engines of terror and
despair; that these should be distributed by lot
among the aforesaid children of tender years.
It is, moreover, specified that an especial
invitation to attend at these juvenile entertainments
be despatched to the married clergyman
who advertises for  "unruly children:" there
being no instance on record of any young person
who has gone out from any one of these festivities
in other than a humbled, crushed, and spirit-
broken condition.

It is furthermore shown in this agreement
that there shall be a general absence of fixtures,
and a cultivation of a certain bareness of
aspect throughout all the rooms, apartments,
saloons, and lobbies, of this edifice; that there
shall at all times be one or more vague and
terrible bird's-eye views of our leading European
capitals on sight—artfully arranged so as to
cause all such persons as had nourished in their
minds intentions of visiting the said capitals to
determine rather to remain in their native
country, in untravelled obscurity; and that
when these have been long enough before the
public eye they shall be withdrawn, and such a
representation of our own capital be substituted
in their stead as shall prove to the wretched
metropolitan that he is actually living in a more
ghastly town than any of those which had
previously awakened his alarm.

Nor shall any cheering or encouraging aspect
of any place or places be permitted, and
whereas there exist in many minds, impressions
in connexion with certain things and places
which are favourable to the same and calculated
to invest them with certain charms and attractions,
there shall be on view in different parts of
the building called the Tristisseum, models or
representations of such places and things, which
shall daunt and scare the beholder, and destroy
in a moment his previous conception of them.
And this shall be especially the case with regard
to a model which shall be erected of a Swiss
cottage—a species of edifice viewed too favourably
hitherto by the human race—and also with
a certain view of a ruin called Netley Abbey,
which has been likewise a favourite with the
English public, but which must be so no longer.
The said Swiss cottage especially, shall be so
instructed as to present a bleak, ghastly, and
forbidding appearance, and shall be generally
very terrible and discouraging to behold, and if
the architect or builder shall be able so to devise
the said cottage as that children of tender years
shall scream on being taken into it, and that
men of a sensitive and melancholic fibre shall
sit down in dark corners of the same, and
inquire wherefore they were born—if the said
builder shall attain these objects, he shall receive
a pecuniary reward, and shall also be permitted
to occupy—rent free—a turn-up bedstead
opposite the waterfall, in the said Swiss cottage itself.

And because the pictures or panoramas
already spoken of as representing the leading
capitals of Europe shall be (however invested
with horror) insufficient to terrify and dismay
some of the bolder and more sanguine persons
who may occasionally visit the Tristisseum,
there shall be provided, in the centre of the
building, a certain small and circular chamber
which shall ascend at certain hours to a gallery
of a dark and terrible nature, commanding a
view of the said pictures or panoramas. And
the said ascending chamber shall be provided
with a seat extending round its whole
circumerence on which the before-mentioned bold and
sanguine persons shall be seated in a ring, and
facing each other, and there shall be six small
and flickering oil-lamps in the ascending chamber
which shall emit a great smell and but little
light, though enough to enable those who are
about to ascend, to distinguish each others'
features and to look in each others' faces for
comfort, but to find none. Moreover, the said
ascending chamber shall, at its first rising, heave,
and sway, and quake, in such wise that those
timid women and infants of tender years, whose
presence is especially solicited, shall cry aloud
with terror, and shall clamour to be liberated,
but in vain. And it shall happen, that this
heaving, quaking, swaying, and rolling of the
ascending chamber shall continue throughout its
ascent, and shall be of such a nature that it
shall cause many nipping and yearning throes
and convulsions in the stomachs of those ascending,
and shall be productive of sensations similar
to those experienced by persons unaccustomed
to the sea, who find themselves on shipboard,
in rough and turbulent waters.

And since it hath been observed that the
presence of sculpture in large quantities and
in plaster, is productive of an effect which is
the reverse of exhilarating, there shall be in
the Saloon a redundancy of casts from such
sculpture—antique and modern—as hath been
remarked to exercise the most chilling influence
on those beholding and examining the same.
And a certain dampness and miasmatic
clamminess having been, as before shown, ordained
to be cultivated in all parts of the institution,
it shall also be discreetly introduced into the
sculpture arrangements even of the above-named
Collection. And this shall be especially
noticeable in the catalogue, which shall in the
very first six items of its numerical list