ing feats in the whole range of scenic illusion.

Besides these acquirements, he has several veracious accounts to
communicate of the private manners and customs of different actors,
which, during the pauses of a quadrille, he usually communicates to his
partner, or imparts to his neighbour at a supper table. Thus he is
advised, that Mr. Liston always had a footman in gorgeous livery waiting
at the side-scene with a brandy bottle and tumbler, to administer half a
pint or so of spirit to him every time he came off, without which
assistance he must infallibly have fainted. He knows for a fact, that,
after an arduous part, Mr. George Bennett is put between two feather
beds, to absorb the perspiration; and is credibly informed, that Mr.
Baker has, for many years, submitted to a course of lukewarm
toast-and-water, to qualify him to sustain his favourite characters. He
looks upon Mr. Fitz Ball as the principal dramatic genius and poet of the
day; but holds that there are great writers extant besides him,--in proof
whereof he refers you to various dramas and melodramas recently produced,
of which he takes in all the sixpenny and three-penny editions as fast as
they appear.

The theatrical young gentleman is a great advocate for violence of
emotion and redundancy of action. If a father has to curse a child upon
the stage, he likes to see it done in the thorough-going style, with no
mistake about it: to which end it is essential that the child should
follow the father on her knees, and be knocked violently over on her face
by the old gentleman as he goes into a small cottage, and shuts the door
behind him. He likes to see a blessing invoked upon the young lady, when
the old gentleman repents, with equal earnestness, and accompanied by the
usual conventional forms, which consist of the old gentleman looking
anxiously up into the clouds, as if to see whether it rains, and then
spreading an imaginary tablecloth in the air over the young lady's
head--soft music playing all the while. Upon these, and other points of
a similar kind, the theatrical young gentleman is a great critic indeed.
He is likewise very acute in judging of natural expressions of the
passions, and knows precisely the frown, wink, nod, or leer, which stands
for any one of them, or the means by which it may be converted into any
other: as jealousy, with a good stamp of the right foot, becomes anger;
or wildness, with the hands clasped before the throat, instea