succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather
partaken of its decline. He had been ominously heard of, through the
play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection with a little girl of
noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen him as a predatory
Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an
outrageous hat all over bells.

I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house,
where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard
of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives,--to
this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord Mayor's
dominions which is not geographical,--and wore out the time in dozing
over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By
and by, I roused myself, and went to the play.

There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty's service,--a most
excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so
tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,--who knocked all
the little men's hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and
brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was
very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in
the cloth, and on that property married a young person in bed-furniture,
with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth (nine in
number at the last census) turning out on the beach to rub their own
hands and shake everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill!" A certain
dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything else
that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by the
boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed to two other
Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so effectually
done (the Swab family having considerable political influence) that it
took half the evening to set things right, and then it was only brought
about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, black gaiters,
and red nose, getting into a clock, with a gridiron, and listening, and
coming out, and knocking everybody down from behind with the gridiron
whom he couldn't confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr.
Wopsle's (who had never been heard of before) coming in with a star
and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the
Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot,
and that h