and, after a few nights' performance, vanished,
leaving no trace behind, save in their unpaid
gas bills. One morning, mankind read in the
favourite journal that the house had been taken,
and would shortly be opened by Mr. Frank
Likely, with the assistance of a talented
company. I walked down to the theatre to
satisfy myself, and saw in a minute that the
announcement was true. A chaos reigned in
the interior of the old theatre; all the worm-
eaten pit benches, under which the rats had
so often enjoyed a healthy supper of sandwich
fragments and orange-peel, were piled up in a
heap in a corner of the outside yard; stalls
covered with Utrecht red velvet were being
screwed down in their place; Leather-lane
had emptied itself of mirrors, which paper-
capped men were fixing all along the passages;
one set of bricklayers was tearing to pieces the
old dwelling-house, another was building the
portico; pendent from the roof, and straddling
across planks supported by flimsy ropes, sat
deep-voiced Germans, decorating the ceiling in
alternate layers of blue and gold, and issuing
guttural mandates to assistants hidden in the
dome; carpenters were enlarging the private
boxes, scene-painters were looking over the old
scenes, and in the midst of all the confusion
stood Mr. Frank Likely himself, dressed in a
dark-blue frock-coat, with a camellia of price
in the button-hole, lavender trousers, amber-
coloured gloves, and smoking a choice cigar as
he superintended the preparations. Under the
Likely management the Cracksideum was
something like a theatre: none of your low
melodramas or funny farces, but choice little
vaudevilles, torn up like mandrakes with shrieking
roots from the Boulevards, and transplanted all
a-blowing to the Strand; comediettas of the
utmost gentility, and burlesques teeming with
wit and fancy, and giving opportunities for the
display of the series of magnificent legs belonging
to a picked corps de ballet, and to such
brilliancy of scenery as only the great genius of
the accomplished Scumble could invent and
execute. Filling the house with the great
names in which the fashionable world rejoices,
princes of the blood, blue ribands, and gold
cordons, heavies of the household troops, wicked
wits, old gentlemen living with and on young
gentlemen, a few lovely ladies with very brilliant
eyes and pearly complexions, but the audience
principally of the male sex, and generally to be
described as loose. Behind the curtain, and
filling the elegantly appointed green-room, the
literary staff of the theatre; Horsely Codaridge,
the young burlesque writer, ragged, hoarse,
dirty, and defiant; Smirke, the veteran
dramatist, serene, calm, and polished from the top
of his bald head to the sole of his evening boots;
Lovibond and Spatter, critics who dined on an
average three times a week with Likely, and spent
the remainder of the evening receiving theatrical
homage; little Dr. Larynx, medico in ordinary
to the profession; and a sprinkling of the
aristocracy, who had panted for his distinction
ever since they left Eton, but who, having
achieved it, found themselves not quite so happy
as they had anticipated. Grand days, glorious
days, but not calculated to last; the entertainment
was soon found to be of too light and
airy a description for the old audiences of the
Cracksideum, and the new audiences ran into
debt at the librarian's for their stalls and boxes,
and very little ready money found its way
into the pockets of the management.
Nevertheless, Mrs. Frank Likely still kept up her
gorgeous bouquets, still put on two new pairs of
lavender gloves per diem, and still kept up her
Sunday evening parties at that cottage on
Wimbledon Common, which was the envy of the
civilised world; likewise, Mr. Frank Likely
still betted highly, smoked the best Havannahs,
dressed in the best taste, and drove in his
curricle the highest-stepping pair of greys in
London. But Black Care soon took up her
position in the back seat of the curricle; behind
the high-stepping greys, gentlemen of Hebraic
countenance were frequent in their inquiries for
Mr. Likely; little Mr. Leopop, of Thavies Inn,
had a perpetual retainer for the defence; the
manager darted from his brougham to the stage
door through a double line of stalwart carpenters,
who sedulously elbowed and kept back any evil-
looking personages; and finally Mr. Likely,
after playing a highly eccentric comic character,
with a bailiff waiting at each wing, and one
posted underneath the stage to guard against
any escape by means of trap-door, was carried
from his dressing-room to a cart in the hollow
of the big drum, and the advertisement just
quoted appeared in the favourite journal,
announcing the Cracksideum as again To Let.

"Wanted, for an entertainment, a professional
gentleman, of versatile powers, age not over thirty.
Characters to be sustained: a Young and an
Elderly Gentleman, a Modern Fop, a Frenchman,
and a Drunken Character in Low Life." Can I
not check off on my fingers twenty gentlemen
who could undertake this responsibility? Young
Gentleman: blue coat, wrinkled white trousers,
stuffed and grimy at the knees, Gibus hat, and
brown Berlin gloves; carries an ebony cane with
a silver top, and smacks therewith his leg
approvingly; talks of his club and his tiger; of
Julia and his adoration for her, sings a ballad to
her beauty, and regards her father as an "Old
Hunks." Elderly Gentleman—"Old Hunks,"
aforesaid: hat with a curled brim, iron-grey
wig, with the line where it joins the forehead
painfully apparent, large shirt frill, Marsala
waistcoat, blue coat with brass buttons, nankeen
pantaloons fitting tight to the ankle, ribbed
stockings with buckle, thick stick with crutch
handle; very rich, very gouty, loves his
stomach, hates young gentleman, speaks of
everybody as a "jackanapes," is unpleasantly
amorous towards lady's maid, whom he pokes
in ribs with stick, and carries all his wealth
(which is invariably in notes, to "double the
amount" of any named sum) in a fat pocketbook,
which he bestows as a reward to virtue at
the finale. Modern Fop: brown coat with basket
buttons, enormous peg-top trousers, whiskers