what they please to eat or drink, and of smoking
as well, at any period of the evening's amusements,
from their beginning about seven o'clock
to their end a little before twelve.

Of the kind of entertainment provided for the
public, under these curious conditions, and of
the behaviour of the audiences during the
performance, we can speak, in some degree, from
personal experience. Not very long since, we
visited one of the largest and most notorious of
these places of amusement—Weston's Music
Hall, in Holborn—on a night when the attendance
happened to be unusually large, and when
the resources of the establishment for preserving
order were necessarily subjected to the severest
possible test.

The size of the Hall may be conjectured,
when it is stated that on the night of our visit,
the numbers of the audience reached fifteen
hundred. With scarcely a dozen exceptions,
this large assembly was accommodated with
seats on the floor of the building, and in a
gallery which ran round three sides of it. The room
was brightly lighted; tastefully decorated with
mural painting; and surprisingly well ventilated,
considering that the obstacle of tobacco-smoke
was added to the ordinary obstacles interposed
by crowded human beings and blazing gas-light
to check the circulation of fresh air. At one
end of the hall was a highly-raised stage, with
theatrical foot-lights, but with no theatrical
scenery; and, on this stage (entering from the
back) appeared, sometimes singly, sometimes
together, the male and female performers of the
night—all, with the exception of the comic
singers, in evening dress. It is not easy to
describe the variety of the entertainments. There
was a clever nigger vocalist with a blackened
face, and nimble feet at a jig. There was
another comic singer, preserving his natural
complexion—a slim inexhaustible man, who
accompanied himself (if the expression may be
allowed) by a St. Vitus's Dance of incessant
jumping, continued throughout his song, until
the jumps were counted by the thousand: the
performer being as marvellously in possession of
his fair mortal allowance of breath at the end
of the exhibition as at the beginning. There
was instrumental music played by a full band of
wind instruments. There was a little orchestra,
besides, for accompaniments; there was a young
lady who sang "serio-comic" songs; there
were ladies and gentlemen who sang sentimental
songs; there was a real Chinaman, who tossed
real knives about his head and face, and caught
them in all sorts of dangerous positions with a
frightful dexterity—and who afterwards
additionally delighted the audience by thanking
them for their applause in the purest "Canton-
English." Lastly, there was an operatic
selection from the second act of "Lucia di
Lammermoor," comprising not solo-singing
only, but concerted music and choruses, and
executed in a manner which (considering the
resources at the disposal of the establishment)
conferred the highest credit on the ladies and
gentlemen concerned in the performance, and
on the musical director who superintended it.
These entertainments, and others equally
harmless, succeeded each other at the shortest
intervals, throughout the evening; the audience
refreshing itself the while with all varieties of
drinks, and the male part of it smoking also
with the supremest comfort and composure. At
the most crowded period of the performances
not the slightest disorder was apparent in any
part of the room. The people were quietly and
civilly conducted to their places by clean and
attentive waiters; the proprietor was always
present overlooking the proceedings. Not a
single case of drunkenness appeared anywhere;
no riotous voices interrupted the music. The
hearty applause which greeted all the entertainments,
comic and serious, never degenerated
into disturbance of any kind. Many colder
audiences might be found in this metropolis—
but an assembly more orderly and more decorous
than the assembly at the Holborn Music-Hall
we have never seen gathered together at any
place of public entertainment in any part of
London.

Such is our experience of one of these music-
halls, which may be taken as a fair sample of the
rest. Canterbury Hall, which happens just now
to be the special object of prosecution by
theatrical managers, is simply another large
concert-room, with a raised stage—possessing,
however, it is only fair to add, an attraction
peculiar to itself, in the shape of a gallery of
pictures. In other respects, it may be at once
conceded that if portions of the performances at
Canterbury Hall represent an infringement on
assumed theatrical privileges, portions of the
performance at the Holborn Hall fall within the
same category. The pantomine entertainment at
one place may be, to all technical intents and
purposes, matched by the operatic entertainment
at the other. Both are exhibited on a stage;
both are illuminated by foot-lights; both involve
the interchange of dramatic dialogue—spoken in
one case, sung in the other. If the managers of
our two operas contemplate asserting their
interests, as the managers of the other theatres
have done, the performance from Lucia di
Lammermoor, in Holborn, is as open to attack as the
performance of pantomine which is the subject
of complaint against Canterbury Hall. With
scenery or without it, with costume or without
it, the grand dramatic situation in Donizetti's
opera, interpreted by solo singers, chorus, and
orchestra, is a dramatic performance, and carries
the vocalists as well as the audience away with
it. Our own ears informed us, on the evening
of our experience, that Edgardo delivered his
famous curse in trousers, as vigorously as if
he had worn the boots of the period. The
Lucia of the night could not have sung the
lovely music of her part with greater earnestness
and emphasis, if her father's halls had opened
behind her, in immeasurable vista, on a piece
of painted canvas—and Colonel Ashton was as
pitiless a gentleman in an unimpeachable dress
coat, as if he had worn the most outrageous
parody on Highland costume which the stage