, he took some hasty puffs of tobacco, and returned to the
theatre, in the hope that the dark girl Rhoda was to be seen there; for
now that he had dined, Anthony's communication with regard to the farmer
and his daughter became his uppermost thought, and a young man's
uppermost thought is usually the propelling engine to his actions.

By good chance, and the aid of a fee, he obtained a front seat,
commanding an excellent side-view of the pit, which sat wrapt in
contemplation of a Christmas scene snow, ice, bare twigs, a desolate
house, and a woman shivering--one of man's victims.

It is a good public, that of Britain, and will bear anything, so long as
villany is punished, of which there was ripe promise in the oracular
utterances of a rolling, stout, stage-sailor, whose nose, to say nothing
of his frankness on the subject, proclaimed him his own worst enemy, and
whose joke, by dint of repetition, had almost become the joke of the
audience too; for whenever he appeared, there was agitation in pit and
gallery, which subsided only on his jovial thundering of the familiar
sentence; whereupon laughter ensued, and a quieting hum of satisfaction.

It was a play that had been favoured with a great run. Critics had once
objected to it, that it was made to subsist on scenery, a song, and a
stupid piece of cockneyism pretending to be a jest, that was really no
more than a form of slapping the public on the back. But the public likes
to have its back slapped, and critics, frozen by the Medusa-head of
Success, were soon taught manners. The office of critic is now, in fact,
virtually extinct; the taste for tickling and slapping is universal and
imperative; classic appeals to the intellect, and passions not purely
domestic, have grown obsolete. There are captains of the legions, but no
critics. The mass is lord.

And behold our friend the sailor of the boards, whose walk is even as two
meeting billows, appears upon the lonely moor, and salts that uninhabited
region with nautical interjections. Loose are his hose in one part, tight
in another, and he smacks them. It is cold; so let that be his excuse for
showing the bottom of his bottle to the glittering spheres. He takes
perhaps a sturdier pull at the liquor than becomes a manifest instrument
of Providence, whose services may be immediately required; but he informs
us that his ship was never known not to right itself when called upon.

He is alone in the world, he tells us likewis