could anyhow be effected by that description
of fire-arms.

The Theatre was extremely full. The prices
of admission were, to the boxes, a shilling; to
the pit, sixpence; to the gallery, threepence.
The gallery was of enormous dimensions
(among the company, in the front row, we
observed Mr. Whelks); and overflowing with
occupants. It required no close observation
of the attentive faces, rising one above another,
to the very door in the roof, and squeezed and
jammed in, regardless of all discomforts, even
there, to impress a stranger with a sense of
its being highly desirable to lose no possible
chance of effecting any mental improvement
in that great audience.

The company in the pit were not very clean
or sweet-savoured, but there were some good-
humoured young mechanics among them, with
their wives. These were generally accompanied
by ' the baby,' insomuch that the pit
was a perfect nursery. No effect made on
the stage was so curious, as the looking down
on the quiet faces of these babies fast asleep,
after looking up at the staring sea of heads in
the gallery. There were a good many cold fried
soles in the pit, besides; and a variety of flat
stone bottles, of all portable sizes.

The audience in the boxes was of much the
same character (babies and fish excepted) as
the audience in the pit. A private in the
Foot Guards sat in the next box; and a personage
who wore pins on his coat instead of
buttons, and was in such a damp habit of
living as to be quite mouldy, was our nearest
neighbour. In several parts of the house we
noticed some young pickpockets of our
acquaintance; but as they were evidently there
as private individuals, and not in their public
capacity, we were little disturbed by their
presence. For we consider the hours of idleness
passed by this class of society as so much gain
to society at large; and we do not join in a
whimsical sort of lamentation that is generally made
over them,when they are found to be unoccupied.

As we made these observations the curtain
rose, and we were presently in possession of
the following particulars.

Sir George Elmore, a melancholy Baronet
with every appearance of being in that
advanced stage of indigestion in which Mr.
Morrison's patients usually are, when they
happen to hear, through Mr. Moat, of the
surprising effects of his Vegetable Pills, was
found to be living in a very large castle, in the
society of one round table, two chairs, and
Captain George Elmore, 'his supposed son,
the Child of Mystery, and the Man of Crime.'
The Captain, in addition to an undutiful
habit of bullying his father on all occasions, was
a prey to many vices: foremost among which
may be mentioned his desertion of his wife,
'Estella de Neva, a Spanish lady,' and his
determination unlawfully to possess himself of May
Morning; M. M. being then on the eve of
marriage to Will Stanmore, a cheerful sailor,
with very loose legs.

The strongest evidence, at first, of the
Captain's being the Child of Mystery and the
Man of Crime was deducible from his boots,
which, being very high and wide, and
apparently made of sticking-plaister, justified the
worst theatrical suspicions to his disadvantage.
And indeed he presently turned out as ill as
could be desired: getting into May Morning's
Cottage by the window after dark; refusing
to ' unhand ' May Morning when required to
do so by that lady; waking May Morning's
only surviving parent, a blind old gentleman
with a black ribbon over his eyes, whom we
shall call Mr. Stars, as his name was stated
in the bill thus ******; and showing
himself desperately bent on carrying off May
Morning by force of arms. Even this was
not the worst of the Captain; for, being foiled
in his diabolical purpose—temporarily by
means of knives and pistols, providentially
caught up and directed at him by May
Morning, and finally, for the time being, by the
advent of Will Stanmore—he caused one Slink,
his adherent, to denounce Will Stanmore as a
rebel, and got that cheerful mariner carried
off, and shut up in prison. At about the same
period of the Captain's career, there suddenly
appeared in his father's castle, a dark
complexioned lady of the name of Manuella, ' a
Zingara Woman from the Pyrenean
mountains; the wild wanderer of the heath, and
the pronouncer of the prophecy,' who threw
the melancholy baronet, his supposed father,
into the greatest confusion by asking him
what he had upon his conscience, and by
pronouncing mysterious rhymes concerning
the Child of Mystery and the Man of Crime,
to a low trembling of fiddles. Matters were
in this state when the Theatre resounded
with applause, and Mr. Whelks fell into a fit
of unbounded enthusiasm, consequent on the
entrance of ' Michael the Mendicant.'

At first we referred something of the
cordiality with which Michael the Mendicant
was greeted, to the fact of his being ' made up'
with an excessively dirty face, which might
create a bond of union between himself and a
large majority of the audience. But it soon
came out that Michael the Mendicant had
been hired in old time by Sir George Elmore,
to murder his (Sir George Elmore's) elder
brother—which he had done; notwithstanding
which little affair of honour, Michael was
in reality a very good fellow; quite a tender-
hearted man; who, on hearing of the Captain's
determination to settle Will Stanmore, cried
out, 'What! more bel-ood! ' and fell flat—
overpowered by his nice sense of humanity. In like
manner, in describing that small error of
judgment into which he had allowed himself to be
tempted by money, this gentleman exclaimed,
' I ster-ruck him down, and fel-ed in er-orror! '
and further he remarked, with honest pride,
' I have liveder as a beggar—a roadersider
vaigerant, but no ker-rime since then has
stained these hands! ' All these sentiments of
the worthy man were hailed with showers of