tograph.

With regard to Public Entertainments in the more technical sense, the
period of which I am writing was highly favoured. We had Irving and Miss
Terry at the height of their powers, with all the gorgeous yet accurate
"staging" which Irving had originated. We had Lady Bancroft with that
wonderful undertone of pathos in even her brightest comedy, and her
accomplished husband, whose peculiar art blended so harmoniously with
her own. We had John Hare, the "perfect gentleman" of Stage-land, and
the Kendals with their quiet excellence in Drawing-room Drama; and the
riotous glory of Mrs. John Wood, whose performances, with Arthur Cecil,
at the Court Theatre, will always remain the most mirth-provoking
memories of my life. Midway between the Theatre and the Opera, there was
the long and lovely series of Gilbert and Sullivan, who surely must have
afforded a larger amount of absolutely innocent delight to a larger
number of people than any two artists who ever collaborated in the
public service.

As to the Opera itself, I must quote a curious passage from Lord
Beaconsfield, who figures so often in these pages, because none ever
understood London so perfectly as he.

"What will strike you most at the Opera is that you will not see a
single person you ever saw before in your life. It is strange; and it
shows what a mass of wealth and taste and refinement there is in this
wonderful metropolis of ours, quite irrespective of the circles in which
we move, and which we once thought, entirely engrossed them."

Those words describe, roughly, the seasons of 1867-1870; and they still
hold good, to a considerable extent, of my earlier years in London. The
Opera was then the resort of people who really loved music. It had
ceased to be, what it had been in the 'thirties and 'forties, a merely
fashionable resort; and its social resurrection had scarcely begun.

Personally, I have always been fonder of real life than of its dramatic
counterfeit; and a form of Public Entertainment which greatly attracted
me was that provided by the Law Courts. To follow the intricacies of a
really interesting trial; to observe the demeanour and aspect of the
witnesses; to listen to the impassioned flummery of the leading counsel;
to note its effect on the Twelve Men in the Box; and then to see the
Chinese Puzzle of conflicting evidence arranged in its damning exactness
by a skilful judge, is to me an intellectual enjoyment which can hardly
be equalle