great expectations had been formed of it, and the author's
name had transpired; the unsuccessful writer rose the next morning with a
hissing sound in his ears, and that leaning towards misanthropy, which you
men always experience when the world has the bad taste to mistake your
merits. 'Thank Fate, however,' said the Author, 'it is damned
thoroughly--it is off the stage--I cannot be hissed again--in a few days
it will be forgotten--meanwhile I will take a walk in the Park.' Scarce
had the gentleman got into the street, before, lo! at a butcher's shop
blazed the 'very head and front of his offending.' 'Second night of its
appearance, the admired Farce of ----, by ----, Esq.' Away posts the
Author to the Manager.--'Good Heavens! Sir, my farce again! was it not
thoroughly damned last night?'--'Thoroughly damned!' quoth the Manager,
drily; 'we reproduce it, Sir--we reproduce it (with a knowing wink,) that
the world, enraged at our audacity, may come here to damn it again.' So it
is, you see! the love of money is the contempt of man: there's an aphorism
for you! Let us turn to the stage. What actresses you have!--certainly you
English are a gallant nation; you are wonderfully polite to come and see
such horrible female performers! By the by, you observed when that young
lady came on the stage, how timidly she advanced, how frightened she
seemed. 'What modesty!' cry the audience; 'we must encourage her!' they
clap, they shout, they pity the poor thing, they cheer her into spirits.
Would you believe that the hardest thing the Manager had to do with her
was to teach her that modesty. She wanted to walk on the stage like a
grenadier, and it required fifteen lessons to make her be ashamed of
herself. It is in these things that the stage mimics the world, rather
behind the scenes than before!"

"Bless me, how Braham is improved!" cried a man with spectacles, behind me;
"he acts now better than he sings!"

"Is it not strange," said Asmodeus, "how long the germ of a quality may
remain latent in the human mind, and how completely you mortals are the
creatures of culture? It was not till his old age that Braham took lessons
in acting; some three times a week has he of late wended his way down, to
the comedian of Chapel-street, to learn energy and counterfeit warmth; and
the best of it is, that the spectators will have it that an actor feels
all he acts; as if human nature, wicked as it is, could feel Richard the
Third every other nig