the Demon, losing his temper, fiercely invited
Lady Hatton to ' Be-old the tortures of the
damned! ' and straightway conveyed her to a
' grand and awful view of Pandemonium, and
Lake of Transparent Boiling Fire,' whereof,
and also of 'Prometheus chained, and the
Vulture gnawing at his liver,' MR. WHELKS
was exceedingly derisive.

The Demon still failing, even there, and
still finding the ghost of the old lady greatly
in his way, exclaimed that these vexations had
such a remarkable effect upon his spirit as to
' sear his eyeballs,' and that he must go ' deeper
down,' which he accordingly did. Hereupon
it appeared that it was all a dream on Lady
Hatton's part, and that she was newly
married and uncommonly happy. This put
an end to the incongruous heap of nonsense,
and set MR. WHELKS applauding mightily;
for, except with the lake of transparent rolling
fire (which was not half infernal enough for
him), MR. WHELKS was infinitely contented
with the whole of the proceedings.

Ten thousand people, every week, all the
year round, are estimated to attend this place
of amusement. If it were closed to-morrow
—if there were fifty such, and they were all
closed to-morrow—the only result would be
to cause that to be privately and evasively
done, which is now publicly done; to render
the harm of it much greater, and to exhibit
the suppressive power of the law in an
oppressive and partial light. The people who
now resort here, will be amused somewhere.
It is of no use to blink that fact, or to make
pretences to the contrary. We had far better
apply ourselves to improving the character
of their amusement. It would not be
exacting much, or exacting anything very difficult,
to require that the pieces represented in
these Theatres should have, at least, a good,
plain, healthy purpose in them.

To the end that our experiences might not
be supposed to be partial or unfortunate, we
went, the very next night, to the Theatre
where we saw MAY MORNING, and found
MR. WHELKS engaged in the study of an
' Original old English Domestic and
Romantic Drama,' called 'EVA THE BETRAYED,
OR THE LADYE OF LAMBYTHE.' We proceed
to develope the incidents which gradually
unfolded themselves to MR. WHELKS'S
understanding.

One Geoffrey Thornley the younger, on a
certain fine morning, married his father's
ward, Eva the Betrayed, the Ladye of
Lambythe. She had become the betrayed, in
right—or in wrong—of designing Geoffrey's
machinations; for that corrupt individual,
knowing her to be under promise of marriage
to Walter More, a young mariner (of whom
he was accustomed to make slighting mention,
as 'a minion'), represented the said More
to be no more, and obtained the consent of
the too trusting Eva to their immediate
union.

Now, it came to pass, by a singular
coincidence, that on the identical morning of the
marriage, More came home, and was taking
a walk about the scenes of his boyhood—a
little faded since that time—when he rescued
'Wilbert the Hunchback' from some very
rough treatment. This misguided person, in
return, immediately fell to abusing his
preserver in round terms, giving him to
understand that he (the preserved) hated ' manerkind,
wither two eckerceptions,' one of them
being the deceiving Geoffrey, whose retainer
he was, and for whom he felt an unconquerable
attachment; the other, a relative, whom,
in a similar redundancy of emphasis, adapted
to the requirements of MR. WHELKS, he
called his ' assister.' This misanthrope also
made the cold-blooded declaration, 'There
was a timer when I loved my fellow keretures
till they deserpised me. Now, I live only
to witness man's disergherace and woman's
misery! ' In furtherance of this amiable
purpose of existence, he directed More to
where the bridal procession was coming
home from church, and Eva recognised
More, and More reproached Eva, and there
was a great to-do, and a violent struggling,
before certain social villagers who were
celebrating the event with morris-dances. Eva
was borne off in a tearing condition, and
the bill very truly observed that the end of
that part of the business was ' despair and
madness.'

Geoffrey, Geoffrey, why were you already
married to another! Why could you not be
true to your lawful wife Katherine, instead of
deserting her, and leaving her to come
tumbling into public-houses (on account of weakness)
in search of you! You might have known
what it would end in, Geoffrey Thornley!
You might have known that she would come
up to your house on your wedding day with
her marriage-certificate in her pocket,
determined to expose you. You might have
known beforehand, as you now very
composedly observe, that you would have 'but
one course to pursue.' That course clearly is
to wind your right hand in Katherine's long
hair, wrestle with her, stab her, throw down
the body behind the door (Cheers from MR.
WHELKS), and tell the devoted Hunchback to
get rid of it. On the devoted Hunchback's
finding that it is the body of his ' assister,'
and taking her marriage-certificate from her
pocket and denouncing you, of course you
have still but one course to pursue, and that
is to charge the crime upon him, and have
him carried off with all speed into the ' deep
and massive dungeons beneath Thornley
Hall.'

More having, as he was rather given to
boast, ' a goodly vessel on the lordly Thames,'
had better have gone away with it, weather
permitting, than gone after Eva. Naturally,
he got carried down to the dungeons too, for
lurking about, and got put into the next
dungeon to the Hunchback, then expiring
from poison. And there they were, hard and