ecutors, mock reclaimers,
Ye jaundiced few, ye legal maimers
Of the lone, poor, and meek;
Ye moral fishers for stray gudgeons,
Ye sainted host of old curmudgeons,
Who ne'er the wealthy seek!
If moralists ye would appear,
Attack vice in its highest sphere,
The cause of all the strife;
The spring and source from whence does flow
Pollution o'er the plains below,
Through all degrees of life.

[Illustration: page197]

THE OPERA.

The Man of Fashion--Fop's Alley--Modern roue and
Frequenters--Characteristic Sketches in High Life--Blue
Stocking Illuminati--Motives and Mariners--Meeting with the
Honourable Lillyman Lionise--Dinner at Long's--Visit to the
Opera--Joined by Bob Transit--A Peep into the Green Room--
Secrets behind the Curtain--Noble Amateurs and Foreign
Curiosities--Notes and Anecdotes by Horatio Heartly.

~198~~ The Opera, to the man of fashion, is the only tolerable place of
public amusement in which the varied orders of society are permitted
to participate. Here, lolling at his ease, in a snug box on the first
circle, in dignified security from the vulgar gaze, he surveys the
congregated mass who fill the arena of the house, deigns occasionally
a condescending nod of recognition to some less fortunate _roue_, or
younger brother of a titled family, who is forcing his way through the
well-united phalanx of vulgar faces that guard the entrance to _Fop's
Alley_; or, if he should be in a state of single blessedness, inclines
his head a little forward to cast round an inquiring glance, a sort of
preliminary overture, to some fascinating daughter of fashion, whose
attention he wishes to engage for an amorous interchange of significant
looks and melting expressions during the last act of the opera. For the
first, he would not be thought so _outre_ as to witness it--the attempt
would require a sacrifice of the dessert and Madeira, and completely
revolutionize ~199~~ the regularity of his dinner arrangement. The
divertissement he surveys from the side wings of the stage, to which
privilege he is entitled as an annual subscriber; trifles a little
badinage with some well-known operatic intriguant, or favourite
danseusej approves the finished movements of the male artistes, inquires
of the manager or committee the forthcoming novelties, strolls into the
green room to m