"It be cruel tempting! Nobody do see I. I wonder
how it would feel in my pocket." (Puts it with
fear into his pocket.) "Wouns! how hot I be! Cruel
warm, to be sure. Who's thot? Nobody. 0, l-l-l-lud!
I ha' gotten such a desperate ague all of a sudden, and
my heart do keep j-jump, jumping. I believe I be
going to die." (Falls into a chair.) "Eh! eh!
mayhap it may be this terrible purse. Dom thee, com
out. (Throws it down. After a pause—) "Ecs, now I
is better. Dear me, quite an alteration. My head
doan't spin about soa, and my heart do feel as light,
and do soa keep tipputing, tipputing, I can't help
crying."

And with that he falls to a-blubbering in
the spasmodic repulsive fashion popular with
his tribe. Again and again give thanks for
his happy removal from off the face of the
stage. His ghost may, even now, be said to
walk on certain remote, unfriendly, solitary,
and slow provincial boards; where he may
still evoke the feeble sympathies and milder
laughter of a farming population.

Although this sentimental treatment of the
theatre-loving public may be taken to be
practically extinct, there are certain other
dramatic elements which, by a strange
dispensation, are endowed with a mysterious
vitality. They were in being long before
Morton and Company and their sentimentalities.
They enjoy a healthy but
unaccountable existence up to this hour: and
it is not improbable that the theatrical
voyager, hot from New Zealand or other
flourishing dependency, when taking that
uncomfortable seat of his upon the broken
arch of London Bridge, with purpose of
sketching in the ruins of old Drury or
Covent Garden, will have left behind him
in his own country, these old sentiments
still ever green and flourishing. No other,
indeed, than the sulphuric, blue fire,
terrifically combative, sanguineous, agonising
composition, known as the Melodrama. The
melodrama transpontine, or over-the-water!
It still lives, and is racy of the soil. Still
flourishes in the dark, gloomy forest where
young noblemen, returning from their studies
at the college of Salamanca attended by
comic valets, are perpetually losing their way.

Still flourish, undeterred by fear or law
or of the civil arm, those unlicensed brigands
in pointed hats and green velvet jackets,
whose chief proves eventually to be the
eldest son of a noble house, but who
unhappily can never come into his property,
being shot just as the discovery is made.
The misguided youth is usually made to
give up his ghost in the palace of his
noble father, the marquis, surrounded
semicircularly by his next of kin. They have
fired at him through the sliding panel. "He
is hit! He staggers! He falls!" says
the aged steward of the house. "What
have you done?" say two bystanders, to
the noble marquis. "My duty," answers
that person. "Society is avenged." "So
is Olympia!" loudly remarks a bystander,
pointing to the picture. "Olympia!"
the noble marquis answers. "She was his
mother!" bystander says, impressively.
Marquis, with a cry of horror: "My son!
my son! " (Falls into the arms of his
servants, R.C. Re-enter ex-brigand, wounded,
from the garden, C.F.—he attempts to rush
forward with a dagger in his hand—he staggers
and sinks—two or three of the bandits
appear among the trees at the back—the
soldiers point their muskets—tableau!!!)

Still flourishes that treacherous edifice,—to
the eye, a peaceful windmill, whose sail's
gyrate innocently to the music of "When the
wind blows, then the mill goes." but whose
millers are no other than bloody-minded
highwaymen. You may see them in their
millers' frocks, bending under their sacks—
of flour? and of rich spoils, jewels, plate,
and, horrible! perhaps a lifeless victim!
Terrible caverns under ground, where they
have a maiden lady locked up, now for many
years back. She is distraught, poor soul! and
is a great inconvenience to the captain miller,
who has had no experience in treatment of the
insane. "Avenging powers!" says the
distraught woman, at the close of the piece,
being now about to fire the train and blow
up the whole institution. "Avenging powers,
I thank yer! R-r-r-r-ev-venge at last is
mine." (Laughs fiendishly.) "Tea-remble,
tyrant and oppressor, and think of Lucinda,
the betrayed, the lost one!" (About to apply
the match, when the miller captain rushes
in.) "Hold, traitress!" says that desperado,
catching her by the arm. "She-devil, what
would you be at?" "MONSTAR! Fiend!
'Ellound!" rejoins the distraught woman,
which becomes instant signal for unseemly
struggle, in the course of which the miller
is pistolled, and mill blown up. Tableau!
Still flourishes that near connection of his—
the gentleman who was given in early life to
stopping folk on the king's highway, but was
afterwards reformed, and became so successful
in his agricultural pursuits as to be
known in the neighbourhood as the Golden
Farmer: which soubriquet he would have
undoubtedly retained until the hour of his
death, had he not in an evil hour suffered
himself to be seduced into a night's sport, to
oblige a gentleman of the same profession.
The unfortunate man is taken, and just
before the curtain falls, passes across the
stage on his way to execution. Not,
however, without a sentiment and improving of
the occasion. Awful warning, as the farmer
testifies with bitter compunction, against the
danger of being led astray and yielding to
those small beginnings, which only too surely
prove the road to final destruction!

Still flourishes that mysterious music which
always strikes in when melodramatic emotion
is waxing strong. What more natural, when
the lion-hearted sailor (who is so droll all
through, so ready at theory of female distress),
when he engages in that truly terrific combat,