many a long day's march—entreats me, with
many bows and complimentary adjurations, to
enter. We cross a vestibule—the stage door-
keeper's den—and see the rusty nails whence
once hung the keys of the dressing-rooms, and
the places of the racks where the perfumed
billets once rested. It is inexpressibly dingy,
and smells of lamp-oil a hundred years old. The
nasty old man has kindled a rushlight, and, by
its pale glimmer, guides us up a damp stone
staircase. Then we go down some steps, then
mount again, then pass through a narrow
corridor. I remember that, some months ago, a
guide as old and as nasty led me up and down
the stone staircases in the palace of the Escorial.
He was a sexton, and took me to the sepulchre
where the kings and queens of Spain are buried
in stone boxes, resting on shelves, and where
there are yet some empty boxes waiting for the
kings and queens of Spain that are to die.

We emerge into a dim area, and stand on the
stage of an enormous theatre. The sconces of
the footlights seem to mark the boundaries of
another world, and all beyond them yawns the
dark vasty gulf of pit. From a window in
the topmost gallery darts, sharp and clear, one
transverse ray of light, and I am enabled to make
out at last five tiers of boxes, all perfectly empty.
The woodwork of the stage is half decayed.
There are as many inequalities on its surface as
in the mosaic pavement of St. Mark's church.
Can this rotten and grimy expanse, whose
stiffened traps might be the "drops" on which
doomed wretches stand, the ropes round their
necks secured to the timbers of the flies
above, be the same boards on which Ellsler,
Cerito, Taglioni, have danced, in the midst of a
sea of gas, and a shower of bouquets and a storm
of plaudits? Can this be the place where
Billington and Catalani, Pasta and Malibran,
have sung? Yes; look behind you; piled pell-
mell against the stark damp walls, rigid and
faded, like the mummies of Titans, are the
"flats" and "wings" and set pieces of the place.
There are Norma's altar, and Amina's bridge, and
Zerlina's boudoir, and Don Giovanni's villa, and
Ninus's tomb, and Marta's spinning-wheel, and
the supper-table of Lucrezia Borgia. I follow
the nasty old man up and down more dark
staircases and through more dark corridors, and
now he unlocks a door, and I stumble into a
kind of cell, which, the rushlight being held up
and waved around, turns out to be a proscenium
box, with a frescoed ceiling, and walls brave
with mirrors and damask hangings. I have
nearly broken my shin over an antique fauteuil
once splendid in carving, gilding, and velvet, but
which, on inspection, turns out to have but three
legs; and my foot is caught, to my almost over-
throw, in one of the holes of a once gorgeous
Turkey carpet. As we pass from the box, the
nasty old man holds his rushlight to the central
panel of the door, and there I see a flourishing
coat of arms, with as many quarterings as there
were in scutcheon of the Princess Cunegonde,
  beloved of Candide,. But marked with
the stigmata of desolation is all that heraldry.
The blazonry has faded, or has turned from sable
and gules to grubbiness. I cannot make out the
motto beneath, but it should be "Resurgam,"
seeing how remarkably like the whole affair is to
the hatchments set up by cheap undertakers,
who strive to persuade the natives of Soho or
Tottenham-court-road in far-off London to allow
them to conduct their funerals, by heraldically
hinting in their windows that they have already
buried half Boyle's Court Guide.

This proscenium box, and the next, and the
next, all round, from the P. S. to the O. P. side,
belong to the proudest families of the Venetian
nobility. The house, indeed, belongs to a
proprietary, and three-fourths of the shareholders
are Venetian nobles. On many, many box doors
are their spectral achievements of arms and their
antique titles. Tier above tier, vasty gulf of pit,
stately crush-room with mirrors yet uncracked,
and settees of velvet, and ceiling of fresco, and
flooring of gesso, but all obscure and faded;
corridor, and lobby, and ante-chamber, and grand
staircase, and vestibule, are haunted by pallid
spectres, calling themselves Foscari and Falier,
Grimani and Contarini, Pesaro and Grani,
Papadopoulo and Nani-Mocenigo. I return to the
stage, and peer into the cavern of shadows,
sharp sected by that transverse ray from the
topmost gallery, when, all at once, the empty
boxes fill! Yes; there they are, fair women and
brave men, in veils, and lace, and silk, and satin,
and broidered stuffs, with swords, and fans, and
flashing gems. The great theatre is lighted a
giorno. The huge chandelier blazes up with
countless crystals, in the midst of a frescoed
firmament; and then the orchestra fills too, and
I see the conductor, white-gloved, waving his
bâton. I hear the loud bassoon, and the crash
of the cymbals, and the scraping of many fiddles.
The footlights flash up, like the demon lights in
the Freischütz. A vision in gauze and silk
and artificial flowers bounds by me. It is
Mademoiselle Taglioni. Why not? The Queen of
Dance is alive still, and it would do her old bones
good to come and foot a final jig in this place.
For this is the famous Opera House of LA
FENICE. Yonder, in his box of state, is the King
of Italy. Around him are the nobility and the
beauty, not alone of Venice, but of his whole
magnificent kingdom—There's no such thing;
at least, not yet. There is nothing but darkness,
and desolation, and empty boxes. If I can find
e'er a ghost to tenant the state box, it will be a
phantom in a white coat the–Cavaliere Toggenburg,
indeed Luogotenente, or civil governor of
Venice, representing the Austrian Kaiser. I see
this ghost of Toggenburg continually squabbling
with the noble shareholders of La Fenice, worrying
and baiting them, and they, it must be
owned, rendering him as good as he gives; for
the Italians are eminently skilled in the art of
ingeniously tormenting, and these fifty years
past the Venetians, if they have groaned under
tyranny, and suffered misery from the presence
of the stranger, have at least succeeded in making