"vagrant," and swore they would be sung to
by native nightingales, and not by foreign
screech-owls. Peas were thrown on the stage
to endanger the dancers. Ladies wearing O. P.
medals were cheered. Men dressed as sailors and
middies delivered ribald speeches. Everybody
exulted when Charles Kemble fell by accident
in the very height of a mortal combat with
George Frederick Cooke as Richard Crookback.
A gentleman in the boxes played "Colleen " on
the flute all through the first piece; bitten
apples were thrown at Mrs. Charles Kemble
when she was playing Lucy, in the Beggar's
Opera. Mr. O'Reilly denounced the sort of
ladies who frequented the privileged boxes. In
vain Townsend and his myrmidons dashed into
the pit and galleries, tore off the placards
and banners, or arrested the ringleaders of the
evening, while the indefatigable Brandon had
men taken up for continually coughing or even
crying "Silence " in an aggravating way.

The Times grew more angry, and denounced
Mrs. Siddons for receiving a salary of fifty
pounds a night. Why, the lord chief justice sat
every day in Westminster Hall from nine to
four for half that sum. Hard-lined, high-
coloured, gross caricatures represented Sarah,
John, and Charles Kemble as sturdy, impudent
beggars, with John Philip in front exclaiming,
"Pity our ach-es, and our want-es." The O. P.
dance grew so popular, that even princes of the
blood came to see it. One night a lady who
was seen lending a pin to fasten an O. P.
placard in front of the boxes received an
ovation from the whole house.

Kemble was a man of temper, nerve, and
firmness. The prize-fighters were not his hiring;
but he sometimes bemused himself (in a grave
way) with old port. Cooke, who had received
lectures from his manager, exulted in these
occasional aberrations, and, repeating Black Jack's
own galling words to himself, used to say:

"Kemble, you were very drunk last night.
If I were you, I should avoid it when going on
the stage. You should time it—you should
time it as I do."

Kemble's speeches were, however, often
reasonable, and full of common sense. He proved
to the rioters that even in Queen Anne's time, a
hundred years before, when food was cheaper, the
price to the pit had been three shillings. He told
them the proprietors for ten years past had not
received six per cent on their fluctuating and
precarious investment. He assured them that
actors did benefit by the receipts, and that their
salaries were three times as large as their
predecessors'. He ended by a generous outburst
that ought to have touched the English heart:

"This," he added, " I declare to you upon my
honour—I, who would not tell a lie for all that
this theatre is worth!"

The tumult and riots still went on. The O. P.
rioter had now reduced things to a system. In his
enormous seven-caped great-coat he had nightly
to squeeze himself through the iron hatch under
the jealous scrutiny of Brandon and the money
and cheque takers, his dozen feet of placards
wound round his body, a rattle, a dustman's
bell, a post-horn, drum, or a trombone, and his
white nightcap and short bludgeon pent in
his pocket. He had to "roar himself as hoarse
as a night coachman in winter," to stamp the
fierce O. P. dance, to join in real and sham
combats, and to risk his limbs in the rushes
down to the orchestra. To reward such arduous
service, four hundred and forty-five pounds
were collected.

The chief rioters usually left the theatre in
procession, howling at the offices of the opposition
newspapers, or shouting Horace Smith's song
of "Heigh ho, says Kemble," under the very
windows of the unbending manager. Mr.
Kemble's house was 89, Great Russell-street,
north side—a house pulled down when the
eastern wing of the British Museum was erected.
On one occasion, when the mob had threatened
a visit to the manager's house, the magistrates
ambushed soldiers close at hand, and gave orders
what to do in case the doors were forced or set
on fire.

At last a lull came. The jubilee procession in
honour of George the Third, in which the cars
of the allegorical four quarters of the world
were drawn by scene-shifters in their plain
clothes, drew nobody.

Cooke, in the epilogue to the Grecian
Daughter, alluding to the disaffection as past,
lit up the flames again, and the house shook
with applause when Charles Kemble died as
Dionysius. A fresh cause of offence also
occurred. One of those warm, fussy persons,
who always appear at such times of public
excitement, coming one night into the theatre in
full Whig uniform (blue coat and buff waistcoat,
and with the dangerous letters O. P. in his
hat), was saluted with the familiar and
commendatory address of "Here comes the honest
counsellor!" and way was made for him to the
centre of the pit. Thus encouraged, and it was
thought authorised, the people again gave free
scope to their clamour, and "Old prices" and
"Clifford for ever!" became the rallying words
of the night. Brandon, the box-keeper, got this
Mr. Clifford apprehended outside the theatre as a
rioter, and carried before a magistrate at Bow-
street, by whom, however, he was immediately
discharged. Mr. Clifford then indicted Brandon
for an assault and false imprisonment, in which
indictment Brandon was cast for five pounds.
When the jury came in with their verdict for
the plaintiff, a burst of applause and uproar
broke forth in such a manner as to entirely
destroy the decorum of a court of justice. Cries
of "Huzza!" by hundreds at once were
communicated like electricity to the multitude in the
open hall, and echoed on the instant in Palace-
yard.

In consequence of the issue of this trial, a
dinner of about three hundred people took place on
the 14th of December, at the Crown and Anchor
Tavern, Mr. Clifford in the chair, and a committee
was formed to defend the persons then under
prosecution for the like conduct. These symptoms
of a regularly organised opposition, added