reign of Queen Anne, although every thing else had risen threefold: secondly, of having let some boxes by the year. The pit demanded the restoration of things to the old footing. The manager insisted. The pit hissed, and made a noise every night. The disturbance increased in violence. Nobody went but the Guelfs and Ghibelins. The pit faction took the name of O. P. (old prices.) Some individuals, who had gone farther than the others, were arrested. The resentment of the O. P.'s knew no bounds; and they proceeded one night to the entire demolition of all that was demolishable in the interior of the house,-lustres, seats, cushions, violins, base and counterbase, &c. Some persons were again arrested by the officers of police, (no bayonets;)-these were young men of good families, and all of them above the common people, who took no share in all this. These gentlemen had to pay the fiddlers. But the manager's situation was not the better for that. He had to yield, after having held out six weeks; and was obliged to ask pardon for having done what he had a right to do, and for what, as to the private boxes, was no loss to the public, as they were the worst places in the whole house; but the public thought they saw in it that aristocratic pride which wants to be apart from the multitude. The contagion spread, and ran the round through the country theatres. The O. P.'s committed the same depredations everywhere, and had to pay for them as in London, but gained the victory over the managers.

This despotism of the public over those who administer to their pleasures is the same, I believe, all over Europe. The actors are everywhere exposed to contumely and insult ;-treated with disrespect, they cannot be respectable. Voltaire, who dis

LONDON-PLAYERS.

91

covered sixty years ago, the Britannic isles,* or at least taught the French something of the manners of the people and of their literature, made them believe that comedians and their art were honoured there. It is an error. Garrick might be so in his time, Mrs. Siddons and the Kemble family are so now, but these are only exceptions; and it is not very probable that the English, who pay the arts, but are accused of despising artists in general, should lay down their pride in favour of actors. Many actresses have been married by gentlemen, and even noblemen, and some of them were not undeserving of their good fortune. In France this was not done. English independence disdains the sanction of custom, either to do right or to do wrong; and rules of conduct admit of much more latitude here than in France, where individual characters are, in a great measure, all cast in the mould which belongs to their respective ranks in society. This originality is said to wear off in England, and it would be a matter of regret; for, although not without inconveniences, it is a most valuable quality. The best species of fruit are apt to degenerate in the course of time; and, as they were originally obtained by happy accidents, and were the spontaneous production of a wild stock, it is, after all, on the nursery of trees raised from the kernel that hopes are to rest for new varieties. Europe runs some risk of becoming Chinese, and retaining no other distinctions of character than those of rank

*To no writer, says Lord Holland, in his Life of Lope de la Vega, are the English so indebted for their fame in France, and all over Europe, as to Voltaire. No critic ever employed more wit, ingenuity, and diligence in forming literary intercourse. His enemies would persuade us that such exuberance of wit implies want of information; but they only succeed in showing that a want of wit does not imply an exuberance of information.

and situation, or no other moral qualities than seemliness and decorum.

It is not easy for women to procure proper places at Covent-Garden. A box is taken a fortnight beforehand by people favoured by the box-keeper.They fill their box if the play-bill of the day suits them; if not, they leave it empty, or occupy only a few seats. And, as you pay only on entering, and not at the time of engaging the box, there is no risk in taking it thus beforehand. After the first act, the public has a right to any vacant box or seats; but it is clear that all those who have no interest with the box-keeper have no chance for seats when they are worth having. Having observed that the second tier of boxes was filled by decent persons, I thought myself fortunate in having got one there, and believed I could fill it easily; but I have been laughed at for my ignorance. These boxes, I have been told, are not bad company, but are not good company. Fashionable people do not go to them;-citizens and tradesmen, with their wives; and a lady may find herself by the side of her mantua-maker. This is like Sancho in his government, when every dish he wanted to taste disappeared under the wand of the doctor. Going to the play is not a habit with any body here; it is in fact unfashionable: but London is so large, and the theatres so few, that they are always full. Paris has twenty-three theatres; London four or five, and these shut up part of the year. The hour of dining is precisely that of the play, which is another considerable obstacle. We have only found means of going twice to Covent-Garden, and once to the Lyceum. The plays we saw are all modern: The Free Knights, Fly by Night, Speed the Plough, The Maniac, and Hit or Miss. I shall give some

LONDON-COVENT-GARDEN.

93

account of these plays, that my foreign readers may know something of the English theatre.

Fly by Night.* General Bastion is living at his house in the country, with his daughter and a sister, who rules the family. The General, who has lost his sight in the wars thirty years ago, spends his time in fighting his battles over again; the sister, in reading the newspapers and watching her niece, whom she intends to marry to a man of her own choice, expected that very evening, while the niece loves another. An officer with a wooden leg is announced, a principal personage in the old stories of the General, a Colonel Redoubt, who had lost a leg in the same engagement where he had lost his eyes. Colonel Redoubt is of course received like an old friend, and soon finds means to let Miss Bastion know that he has not a wooden leg,that he is young, and her lover in disguise. They agree (in a song,) that they love,-that they must fly, and that there will be a post-chaise at a certain hour at the garden-door. In the evening the

*The following note has been furnished to me respecting Fly by Night-This play is a translation of a French play of Picart, called Le conteur ou les deux postes, except that the Comte de Grenouille is there an Englishman; an original, it is true, but respectable. The public in France would not receive favourably a play where the English character was made contemptible.*

* My informant, as well as myself, had not been in France for many years when he furnished the above note; we have both visited it since, and can claim now for our countrymen no such superiority of politeness or liberality. We saw with regret and surprise, that foreigners in France, but particularly the English, are the objects of general obloquy and ridicule. The people of France hate the rest of Europe for the injuries they themselves have inflicted, for those that were inflicted in return, and most of all, perhaps, for those which were not inflicted when Fortune changed sides and the day of retribution arrived!

General begins telling his old stories by the fireside; the sister and the whole family fall asleep, except the lovers and a trusty servant. The sister, always suspicious, holds in her sleep her niece's hand; this hand is very adroitly disengaged, and the hand of a clownish servant, fast asleep as well as his mistress, substituted, having been for that purpose transported in his chair near her. Next a great bunch of keys hanging from her side is seized upon, and they disappear. The blind General all this while has been narrating, and continues, after the flight of the lovers, to tell his stories to an audience fast asleep. This is a coup-dethéâtre. Astonished at last at the silence of his friend the Colonel, to whom he has appealed as a witness of some memorable circumstances, he urges him repeatedly, but all in vain, to speak, and confirm what he has said. This scene is interrupted at last by the lover chosen by the aunt, who comes in without being announced, astonished to find every door open, and every body asleep;—the aunt, suddenly waking, introduces her niece, whose hand she thinks she holds, to the young gentleman, but the hand is that of the clownish footman, whom she draws after her. Surprise-discovery-rage-and general confusion ;-quick post horses-and a pursuit!

In the mean time, change of scene;-an inn, of which the landlord and landlady are new-married people, who (by way of episode,) begin to quarrel already. An out-rider comes in drunk, orders a supper, and bespeaks horses for his master, a French lord and his lady. Soon after a post-chaise draws up; these are the runaway lovers, who are mistaken for the French lord and lady. Their servant, who perceives the mistake, takes advan