ghost of Farinelli in Bow Street, and,
from Mr. Lacy's shop, in Wellington
Street, the indignant voices of Colman,
Sheridan, Kenny, and O'Keefe, seem to be
crying to Bellini and Donizetti, Meyerbeer
and Mozart, "What do ye here?" What
have the traditions of maestri and macaroni,
violins and Vellutis, bassi and ballet-girls
to do with a locality hallowed by the memory
of the Great Twin Brethren, the two mighty
English theatres of Covent Garden and
Drury Lane? I can fancy, drawn up in
shadowy line opposite the grand entrance
and sadly watching the carriages disgorging
their aristocratic tenants, the by-gone
worthies of the English stage. Siddons thrilling,
O'Neill melting, Munden exhilarating,
Dowton convulsing, Kemble awing, Kean
astounding, Wellington enchanting, Young
soothing, and Macready — not dead, haply, nor
forgotten, nor unthanked, but gone for all
that — teaching and elevating, and humanising
us. About such a scene might flit the
disembodied spirits of the O. P. row; of
those brave days of old, when people went
to wait for the opening of the pit door, at
three p.m., and took sandwiches and case
bottles with them; when the engagement
or non-engagement of a public favourite
weighed as heavily in the balance of town
curiosity, as the siege of a fortress, or the
capture of a fleet; when Shakespeare's scenes
found gorgeous reflections in Stanfield's
magic mirror; when actors (though rogues
and vagabonds by act of parliament) were
wonderfully respected and respectable, and
lived in competence, and had quiet, cosy houses
in Bloomsbury and Marylebone, paying rates
and taxes, serving on juries, and when they
died found no mortuary eulogium in the
columns of some slang Sunday newspaper,
but were gravely alluded to in the decent
large type of a respectably small sized
newspaper, with a fourpenny stamp, as at his
house in Buskin Street, "Mr. So-and-so,
many years of the Theatre Royal, Covent
Garden, and one of the overseers of the
parish of Saint Roscius. Universally lamented.
An attached husband and a tender father."
No! The opera cannot be in Covent
Garden to my mind. The opera should, and
can only be in Haymarket, over against
palatial Pall-Mall. Come back then, Mr. Costa,
whom I honor, to those cari luoghi. Come
back bâton, soutlleurs' cavern, loud bassoon,
and all. Let us have, once more, the linkman
with his silver badge, and the guard of
grenadiers (I mind the time when it was a
subaltern's guard, and the officer had a free
admission to the pit, and lounged tremendous
in Fop's Alley in his bearskin and
golden epaulettes). Come back to the
Haymarket, carriages that stopped the way, and
struggling footmen, and crowded crush room!
Come back, and let not the walls of the grand
opera be desolate, or the spider weave her
web in the yellow satin curtains — though I
believe they were taken down and sold in
the last disasters!

Only one section of the musical world,
however, was on view in the audience part of the
opera. Its working members were to be
found behind the footlights; nor could you
learn much of their private or social habits
even there. There are few duller, prosier, more
commonplace scenes than the green-room of
a theatre; and the artist's foyer at an opera
house is ordinarily the dullest of the dull. A
prima donna swallowing sherry-negus with
an egg in it preparatory to her grand scena;
a basso stretching himself on the cushions of an
ottoman, and yawning in an eestacy of fatigue;
a tenor sulking in a corner because his aria has
not been encored; a baritone suffering from
hoarseness, and expectorating and swallowing
cough lozenges with distressing pertinacity;
a crowd of mysterious, snuffy, musty old
Frenchwomen with handkerchief's tied round
their heads, pottering in corners with second-
hand foreigners, who snuff more than they
speak, and spit more than they snuff: these
are the principal features of an operatic green-
room. Yet, in the palmy days of opera-hats
and opera-tights, there were few privileges
more valued by the distinguished frequenters
of the omnibus-box than that of the entrée
behind the scenes. A door of communication
used to exist between the omnibus-box and the
penetralia of the coulisses; and an attempt
to lock it once caused a riot of the most
fashionable description, in the time of
manager Laporte, and the demolition of the
door itself by a prince of the blood. There
are dandies yet who would give — not exactly
their ears, but still something handsome — for
the estimable privilege of wandering in a
dingy, ruinous desert of wings and set pieces
and cobwebby rafters; of being hustled and
ordered out of the way by carpenters and
scene-shifters in their shirt-sleeves; of
stumbling over gas pipes, tressels, and pewter
pots; and of being uncomfortably jammed
up among chairs and tables, supernumeraries
bearing spears and banners at one shilling per
night, property men with blazing pans of red
and blue fire, and pets of the ballet gossiping the
flattest of flat gossip, or intent upon the salutary
but, to a near bystander, rather
inconvenient exercise known as "pumping," which,
for the benefit of the uninitiated, I may
mention consists in standing upon one
leg, while another pet of the ballet pulls the
other leg violently up and down — such
pumping giving strength and elasticity to the
muscles.

Hie we away, therefore, to where we can
see the operatic world to greater
advantage. Here is Messrs. Octave and
Piccolo's Music Warehouse. Let us enter and
behold.

In Regent Street is Messrs. Octave and
Piccolo's establishment, the great Bourse or
High Change of the Ars Musica. Hard by, on
one side, is Messrs. Rowdeypoor, Cutchempoor