appointed, and managed in a business-like,
orderly manner in all respects; the performances
had begun so early as a quarter past
six, and had been then in progress for three-
quarters of an hour.

It was apparent here, as in the theatre we
had previously visited, that one of the reasons
of its great attraction was its being directly
addressed to the common people, in the
provision made for their seeing and hearing.
Instead of being put away in a dark gap in
the roof of an immense building, as in our
once National Theatres, they were here in
possession of eligible points of view, and
thoroughly able to take in the whole
performance. Instead of being at a great
disadvantage in comparison with the mass of
the audience, they were here the audience,
for whose accommodation the place was made.
We believe this to be one great cause of the
success of these speculations. In whatever
way the common people are addressed,
whether in churches, chapels, schools, lecture-
rooms, or theatres, to be successfully addressed
they must be directly appealed to. No matter
how good the feast, they will not come to it
on mere sufferance. If, on looking round us,
we find that the only things plainly and
personally addressed to them, from quack
medicines upwards, be bad or very defective things,
—so much the worse for them and for all of
us, and so much the more unjust and absurd
the system which has haughtily abandoned a
strong ground to such occupation.

We will add that we believe these people
have a right to be amused. A great deal that
we consider to be unreasonable, is written and
talked about not licensing these places of
entertainment. We have already intimated that
we believe a love of dramatic representations
to be an inherent principle in human nature.
In most conditions of human life of which we
have any knowledge, from the Greeks to the
Bosjesmen, some form of dramatic representation
has always obtained.* We have a
vast respect for county magistrates, and for
the lord chamberlain; but we render greater
deference to such extensive and immutable
experience, and think it will outlive the whole
existing court and commission. We would
assuredly not bear harder on the fourpenny
theatre, than on the four shilling theatre, or
the four guinea theatre; but we would
decidedly interpose to turn to some wholesome
account the means of instruction which it has
at command, and we would make that office
of Dramatic Licenser, which, like many other
offices, has become a mere piece of Court
favour and dandy conventionality, a real,
responsible, educational trust. We would
have it exercise a sound supervision over the
lower drama, instead of stopping the career
of a real work of art, as it did in the case of
Mr. Chorley's play at the Surrey Theatre,
but a few weeks since, for a sickly point of
form.

* In the remote interior of Africa, and among the North
American Indians, this truth is exemplified in an equally
striking manner. Who that saw the four grim, stunted,
abject Bush-people at the Egyptian Hall—with two natural
actors among them out of that number, one a male and the
other a female—can forget how something human and imaginative
gradually broke out in the little ugly man, when he
was roused from crouching over the charcoal fire, into giving
a dramatic representation of the tracking of a beast, the
shooting of it with poisoned arrows, and the creature's
death?

To return to Mr. Whelks. The audience,
being able to see and hear, were very attentive.
They were so closely packed, that they
took a little time in settling down after any
pause; but otherwise the general disposition
was to lose nothing, and to check (in no choice
language) any disturber of the business of the
scene.

On our arrival, MR. WHELKS had already
followed Lady Hatton the Heroine (whom we
faintly recognised as a mutilated theme of the
late THOMAS INGOLDSBY) to the ' Gloomy Dell
and Suicide's Tree,' where Lady H. had
encountered the ' apparition of the dark man of
doom,' and heard the 'fearful story of the
Suicide.' She had also 'signed the compact
in her own Blood;' beheld ' the Tombs rent
asunder;' seen ' skeletons start from their
graves, and gibber Mine, mine, for ever! '
and undergone all these little experiences,
(each set forth in a separate line in the bill)
in the compass of one act. It was not yet over,
indeed, for we found a remote king of England
of the name of 'Enerry,' refreshing himself
with the spectacle of a dance in a Garden,
which was interrupted by the ' thrilling
appearance of the Demon.' This ' superhuman
cause ' (with black eyebrows slanting up into
his temples, and red-foil cheekbones,) brought
the Drop-Curtain down as we took possession
of our Shower-Bath.

It seemed, on the curtain's going up again,
that Lady Hatton had sold herself to the
Powers of Darkness, on very high terms, and
was now overtaken by remorse, and by jealousy
too; the latter passion being excited by the
beautiful Lady Rodolpha, ward to the king.
It was to urge Lady Hatton on to the
murder of this young female (as well as we
could make out, but both we and MR.
WHELKS found the incidents complicated) that
the Demon appeared 'once again in all his
terrors.' Lady Hatton had been leading a
life of piety, but the Demon was not to have
his bargain declared off, in right of any such
artifices, and now offered a dagger for the
destruction of Rodolpha. Lady Hatton
hesitating to accept this trifle from Tartarus, the
Demon, for certain subtle reasons of his own,
proceeded to entertain her with a view of the
' gloomy court-yard of a convent,' and the
apparitions of the ' Skeleton Monk,' and the
' King of Terrors.' Against these super-
human causes, another superhuman cause, to
wit, the ghost of Lady H.'s mother came into
play, and greatly confounded the Powers of
Darkness, by waving the 'sacred emblem ' over
the head of the else devoted Rodolpha, and
causing her to sink into the earth. Upon this