t, and a garret. Not those
grey-headed gouty old sinners in the boxes, who have not the excuse of
youth for the follies with which they desecrate old age. And certainly
not that pale clerk, who has most probably embezzled his employer's
money, and who is frantically exclaiming, "Waiter, another bottle of
champagne," as he tells the women of his lot that he feels "a cup too
low." You say he has them to cheer him. Yes, till his money is gone.
When he is at Bow-street, as assuredly he will soon be, I promise you
they will not be the last to give evidence as to his possession of funds,
or the manner of his spending them. There may be honour among thieves,
there is none among women when they have once lost their own.

Still gaily goes on the dancing. Then there is supper and wine--and more
dancing, and more music, and more wine. The reporters for the papers
generally leave about supper-time, and state that the gaieties were
prolonged till a late hour; it is well they do this. In the earlier part
of the evening the rioting and chaffing is somewhat of the coarsest, and
the wit somewhat of the poorest; and the later it grows, and the more
potent is the vinous influence, the less select, or rather the more
obscene, is the phraseology. In the wild saturnalia that ensues, all the
restraints of decency and habit are thrown on one side. It is time to
close, and the conductor sees this. Already Henry VIII. is right royally
drunk, and Cardinal Wolsey is uttering flat blasphemy, and one monk has
got a black eye, another a bloody nose. Unless, as in the case of Covent
Garden, the theatre is burned down, and the proceedings are abruptly
terminated, there is a final dance,--a patriotic rendering of the
national anthem,--and into the air walk, or rather tumble, the
debauchees, some to go home quietly to bed, others to keep it up in the
nearest coffee-houses and public-houses; and handmaidens rising early to
take in the milk in various parts of the metropolis are astonished by the
exceedingly unsteady gait and singular costumes of various dismal gents,
who have, if they are not absolute fools, sworn that it will be a long
time before they go to another masque bal. Such, I believe, is the
general conclusion, the only exceptions being the costumier who provides
the dresses, generally a Jew, and the bigger Jew who furnishes the wine.

UP THE HAYMARKET.

If I take up the reports of our various religious societies, I find w