s for. Still the world has lost a grand pleasure in not seeing
damned an Opera written by the Manager of the Opera-house,--it would
have been such a consolation to all the rejected operatives,--it would
have been the prettiest hardship entailed on a great man ever since the
time of that speaker who was forced himself to put the question whether
he had been guilty of bribery, and should be expelled the House, and had
the pleasure of hearing the Ayes predominate. _Je me mete_ with the
affairs of the Theatre--they are in my diabolic province, you know. But
if the stage be the fosterer of vice, as you know it is said, vice just
at this moment in England has very unattractive colours."

"Ah, wait till we break the monopoly. But even now have we not the
'Hunchback?'

"Yes; the incarnation of the golden mediocre: a stronger proof, by the
hyperbolic praise it receives, of the decline of the drama than even the
abundance of trash from which it gleams. Anything at all decent from a
new dramatic author will obtain success far more easily than much higher
merit, in another line; literary rivalship not having yet been directed
much towards the stage, there are not literary jealousies resolved and
united against a dramatist's as against a poet's or a novelist's
success. Every one can praise those pretensions, however humble, which
do not interfere with his own."

"It is very true; there is never any very great merit, at least in a new
author, when you don't hear the abuse louder than the admiration. And
now, Asmodeus, with your leave, I will prepare for breakfast, and our
morning's walk."

"Oh, dear, dear London, dear even in October! Regent-street, I salute
you!--Bond-street, my good fellow, how are you? And you, O beloved
Oxford-street! whom the 'Opium Eater' called 'stony-hearted,' and whom
I, eating no opium, and speaking as I find, shall ever consider the
most kindly and maternal of all streets--the street of the middle
classes--busy without uproar, wealthy without ostentation. Ah, the
pretty ancles that trip along thy pavement! Ah, the odd country
cousin-bonnets that peer into thy windows, which are lined with cheap
yellow shawls, price L1. 4s. marked in the corner! Ah, the brisk young
lawyers flocking from their quarters at the back of Holborn! Ah, the
quiet old ladies, living in Duchess-street, and visiting thee with their
eldest daughters in the hope of a bargain! Ah, the bumpkins from Norfolk
just disgorged by the Bull