moment of suspense, the inebriated soldiery being
every moment about to discharge their pieces.
Yet there is a greater sensation in store. The
perils of a protracted residence in a barrel arc
too fearful to be encountered again; so it is
determined to exchange this domicile for the more
convenient one of a sack. Into one of which
articles is the luckless child of virtue assisted,
and put on a miller's man's back to be carried
away in a regular series of sacks, up the stage,
and up the hill, and so out of sight, making a
picturesque procession.

Yet still even attending this simple process,
what perils! Who could guess that the drunken
or sober soldiery would be here again on duty,
suspicious of treachery, and prodding each sack
as it passes, with a bayonet — still to music. As
the turn of the sack containing the person of the
child of nature came round to be prodded, the
excitement became tremendous. But a happy
device of a friend, who good naturedly took
on him the soldiers duty and pretended to prod,
saved him.

There is a strange and mysterious entry of
soldiers, described as " a march observed at a
distance till they increase in size and cross the
bridge." But this remarkable performance, the
music to which all the genteeler schoolgirls of
the land were busy thrumming on their pianos,
is as nothing to the last scene, where "a mine
is sprung. Part of the castle appears in flames!
Tekeli overcomes Caraffa— he falls— shouts —
'They fly! they fly! Live, live Tekeli! Music.
Re-enter Alexina. He catches her in his arms
— stage fills on all sides— shouts— flourish, &c."
And with this strange hurly-burly the grand
sensation drama of our forefathers closes.

Just as the comic prints of this day make
merry with such stimulants as " headers,"
"bending trees," "old quarries," and the like,
so sixty years ago, the "sensation" incidents
of the barrel and sack were laughed at abundantly;
yet, of course, without thinning the
crowds at Old Drury. Lord Byron found room
for the barrel in his famous satire:

Now to the drama turn. Oh, motley sight!
What precious scenes the wondering eyes invite,
Puns and a prince within a barrel pent.

To which there is a note. " In the melodrama
of Tekeli that heroic prince is clapped into a
barrel on the stage, and Count Evrard in the
fortress, hides himself in a greenhouse expressly
built for the occasion." Later on, he returns to
the subject again metrically:

On those shall Farce display buffoonery's mask,
And Hook conceal his heroes in a cask.

Holcroft's Tale of Mystery was another of the
grand exciting spectacles which drew all London
about the year 1806 for thirty-seven nights. It
leans tremendously on the music, which has to
express the most wonderful variety of emotions.
Thus when Stephano " enters with his fowling-piece,
net, and game," the orchestra works agreeably
at " hunting music;" and when the same
Stephano makes a remark about " Romaldi's
wickedness of heart," there is " music to express
contention." When Francisco enters, " who is
poor in appearance, but clean, with a reserved,
placid, but dignified air," and " Bonamo" remarks
"he has a manly form, a benevolent eye," there
is " music." Then there is " music expressive
of horror," suggested by an allusion to those
who "stabbed me among the rocks; and "music
to express disorder." Another gentleman "exits
in haste" to " confused music."

But this is nothing to the situation when
Montano enters, when " music plays alarmingly,
but piano when he enters and stays." After a
few remarks, " music, loud and discordant at
the moment the eye of Montano catches the
figure of Romaldi." As the interest of the
scene increases, " music pauses, music dies
away," and finally, " music of sudden joy while
they kneel."

The last scene, however, embodies all that
could be conceived of the grand or the exciting,
and if the stage directions were strictly carried
out, must have been impressive in the last degree.
It exhibits " the wild mountainous
country called the Nant of Arpenna (?) with
pines and massy (?) rocks. A rude wooden
bridge on a small height thrown from rock to
rock, a rugged mill-stream (?) a little in the
background, the miller's house on the right, a
steep ascent by a narrow path to the bridge, a
stone or bank to sit on, on the right hand side.
The increasing storm of lightning, thunder, rain,
and hail becomes terrible. Suitable music!"

With this wonderful miscellany, the mind is
at least tolerably well prepared to see Romaldi
"enter from the rocks with terror," pursued as
it were by the storm. " Whither fly?" he exclaims;
"where shield me from pursuit, and
death, and ignominy?" (Falls on the bank.
Then come " more fearful claps of thunder, and
he again falls on his face." Presently, he addresses
the ground: " Cover me, earth; cover
my crimes;" and the whole winds up with general
confusion, chasing up and down along
massy rocks, agitated music again, and stage
directions a page long.

RIDING LONDON.
IN THREE PARTS.

PART THE LAST. OF THE PARCELS DELIVERY
COMPANY AND " PICKFORD'S."

YEARS ago, not merely when " this old cloak
was new," but when this old cloak (which we
never possessed, by the way, and which is a
mere figurative garment to be hung on pegs of
trope or hooks of metaphor) was a short jacket,
ornamented with liquorice marks and fruit
stains, and remarkably puffy in the region of the
left breast with a concealed peg-top, half a
munched apple, and a light trifle of flint-stone
used in the performance of a game called "duck,"
we were presented with a serviceable copy of
Shakespeare, and immediately entered on an
enthusiastic study of the same. In a very little
time we had made such progress as to identify