by the sedentary presence of any Austrian
general of high rank who happened to be
an amateur of Legs. High-handed as were
the proceedings of the Tedeschi in Italy,
they were wisely reluctant to interfere with
the social habits of the people.

Just before the great French
Revolution, it became the fashion to place
arm-chairs close to the orchestra of
the academy of music for the use of noble
visitors, who came down from their boxes
to take a closer survey of the coryphées;
but these were fauteuils at large; they were
few in number, and could be shifted from
place to place at will. Veritable stalls are
those which, albeit they are fitted with
armrests, are still immovably screwed to the
floor; and such stalls, old playgoers will
bear me out, are things of very recent
introduction in our theatres. The pit of Her
Majesty's Theatre was once the resort of
the grandest dandies in London. Going
over the new structure the other day, I
observed that the pit proper had been almost
entirely suppressed, and that stalls
monopolised seven-tenths of the sitting room of
the ground area. In English theatres a
similar monopoly has been from year to
year gradually gaining strength. The most
rubbishing little houses have now numerous
rows of stalls, from which bonnets are of
course banished; and the pit is being
quietly elbowed out of existence. The
"third row of the pit " was once a kind
of bench of judgment—I don't say of
justice—on which those tremendous
dispensers of dramatic fame and fortune, the
critics, sat. Our papas and mammas did
not despise the pit of old Drury; and I
have heard tell of a lady of title who paid
to the pit to see Master Betty, and who
took with her a bag of sandwiches, and
some sherry in a bottle. I think I heard
tell that she lost her shoe in the crowd
before the doors were opened.

Should this remarkable extension of the
stall system be considered as a blessing or
evil? Has it not tended to the vast
increase of selfishness, superciliousness,
and the pride of place? Dear sir, if I
were a Professor of Paradoxes, I might tell
you that the more selfish, the more
supercilious, and the prouder of our places we are,
the likelier will be the attainment of
universal happiness. I might whisper to you
that virtue is only selfishness in a sublime
degree. But I am a professor of nothing;
and I dread paradoxes—having had a
relative once who was afflicted with them,
and died. So I go back to stalls.

The stalled ox, and the stalled cows in
the byres of Brock, in Holland, with their
tails tied up to rings in the rafters, I leave
to their devices, for my talk is of men and
not of beasts. Just lovingly do I glance
at the cobbler in his stall—a merry man
with twinkling eyes, a blue-black mazzard,
and somewhat of a copper nose, for ever
cuddling his lapstone, smoothing his
leather with sounding thwacks, drawing out
his waxed string, working and singing,
and bandying repartee with the butchers'
boys and the fishwives passing his hutch.
I would Mr. Longfellow had sung of that
cobbler; for as many tuneful things could
be said about Crispin, as about the Village
Blacksmith. That he has been left unsung,
I mourn, sincerely; for times change and
types of humanity vanish, and I am
beginning to miss that cobbler. Metropolitan
improvements are unfavourable to him;
our pride and vanity militate against him;
for somehow we don't care about seeing
our boots mended in public, now-a-days.
In old times the cobbler's stall was
permitted to nestle in the basement of mansions
almost aristocratic in their respectability;
but, at present, no architect would dream
of building a new cobbler's stall in a new
house, and the old ones are fast disappearing.
Crispin has risen in the world. He
has taken a shop, and "repairs ladies' and
gentlemen's boots and shoes with
punctuality and despatch."

The term " stall," as applied to the board
on tressels, or supported, perchance, by a
decayed washing-tub, laid out with apples,
sweetstuff, or oysters, and presided over by
an old Irishwoman with a stringless black
bonnet flattened down on a mob cap,
I consider a misnomer. It lacks tho idea
of exclusive possession which should attach
to a stall. The apple, or sweetstuff, or
oyster woman, is but a tenant at will. She
has no fee simple. She may be harried by
the police, and petitioned against by churlish
shopkeeping neighbours, jealous of her poor
outdoor traffic. Drunken roysterers may
overturn her frail structure; a reckless
Hansom cab-driver may bring her to
irretrievable crash and ruin. Rival apple-
women may compete with her, at the opposite
street corners, and passing coster-
mongers, with strong-wheeled barrows, may
gird at her, and disparage her wares. 'Tis
not a stall, at which she sits, but a stand,
a mere thing of tolerance and sufferance:
here to-day and gone to-morrow, if the
Road Man chooses despitefully to use poor
Biddy. But once give me sitting room in