ill either avert them, or turn them to
my advantage. Though I know neither the time nor the manner of the death
I am to die, I am not at all solicitous about it; because I am sure that
he knows them both, and that He will not fail to comfort and support me
under them.

OPERA LIONS.

_Dic mihi_, _si fias tu leo_, _qualis eris_?

MART., xii. 93.

Were you a lion, how would you behave?

There is nothing that of late years has afforded matter of greater
amusement to the town than Signior Nicolini's combat with a lion in the
Haymarket, which has been very often exhibited to the general
satisfaction of most of the nobility and gentry in the kingdom of Great
Britain. Upon the first rumour of this intended combat, it was
confidently affirmed, and is still believed, by many in both galleries,
that there would be a tame lion sent from the tower every opera night in
order to be killed by Hydaspes. This report, though altogether
groundless, so universally prevailed in the upper regions of the
playhouse, that some of the most refined politicians in those parts of
the audience gave it out in whisper that the lion was a cousin-german of
the tiger who made his appearance in King William's days, and that the
stage would be supplied with lions at the public expense during the whole
session. Many likewise were the conjectures of the treatment which this
lion was to meet with from the hands of Signior Nicolini: some supposed
that he was to subdue him in recitativo, as Orpheus used to serve the
wild beasts in his time, and afterwards to knock him on the head; some
fancied that the lion would not pretend to lay his paws upon the hero, by
reason of the received opinion that a lion will not hurt a virgin:
several who pretended to have seen the opera in Italy, had informed their
friends that the lion was to act a part in High Dutch, and roar twice or
thrice to a thorough bass before he fell at the feet of Hydaspes. To
clear up a matter that was so variously reported, I have made it my
business to examine whether this pretended lion is really the savage he
appears to be, or only a counterfeit.

But before I communicate my discoveries, I must acquaint the reader that
upon my walking behind the scenes last winter, as I was thinking on
something else, I accidentally jostled against a monstrous animal that
extremely startled me, and, upon my nearer survey of it, appeared to be a
lion rampant. The lion, seeing me very mu