et us take a slight example. The scene is a street: an elderly
gentleman, with a large face and strongly marked features, appears. His
countenance beams with a sunny smile, and a perpetual dimple is on his
broad, red cheek. He is evidently an opulent elderly gentleman,
comfortable in circumstances, and well-to-do in the world. He is not
unmindful of the adornment of his person, for he is richly, not to say
gaudily, dressed; and that he indulges to a reasonable extent in the
pleasures of the table may be inferred from the joyous and oily manner in
which he rubs his stomach, by way of informing the audience that he is
going home to dinner. In the fulness of his heart, in the fancied
security of wealth, in the possession and enjoyment of all the good
things of life, the elderly gentleman suddenly loses his footing, and
stumbles. How the audience roar! He is set upon by a noisy and
officious crowd, who buffet and cuff him unmercifully. They scream with
delight! Every time the elderly gentleman struggles to get up, his
relentless persecutors knock him down again. The spectators are
convulsed with merriment! And when at last the elderly gentleman does
get up, and staggers away, despoiled of hat, wig, and clothing, himself
battered to pieces, and his watch and money gone, they are exhausted with
laughter, and express their merriment and admiration in rounds of
applause.

Is this like life? Change the scene to any real street;--to the Stock
Exchange, or the City banker's; the merchant's counting-house, or even
the tradesman's shop. See any one of these men fall,--the more suddenly,
and the nearer the zenith of his pride and riches, the better. What a
wild hallo is raised over his prostrate carcase by the shouting mob; how
they whoop and yell as he lies humbled beneath them! Mark how eagerly
they set upon him when he is down; and how they mock and deride him as he
slinks away. Why, it is the pantomime to the very letter.

Of all the pantomimic _dramatis personae_, we consider the pantaloon the
most worthless and debauched. Independent of the dislike one naturally
feels at seeing a gentleman of his years engaged in pursuits highly
unbecoming his gravity and time of life, we cannot conceal from ourselves
the fact that he is a treacherous, worldly-minded old villain, constantly
enticing his younger companion, the clown, into acts of fraud or petty
larceny, and generally standing aside to watch the result of the
en