t Gaunt House,
which should include some of these little dramas--and we must take
leave to introduce the reader to this brilliant reunion, and, with a
melancholy welcome too, for it will be among the very last of the
fashionable entertainments to which it will be our fortune to conduct
him.

A portion of that splendid room, the picture gallery of Gaunt House,
was arranged as the charade theatre. It had been so used when George
III was king; and a picture of the Marquis of Gaunt is still extant,
with his hair in powder and a pink ribbon, in a Roman shape, as it was
called, enacting the part of Cato in Mr. Addison's tragedy of that
name, performed before their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales, the
Bishop of Osnaburgh, and Prince William Henry, then children like the
actor. One or two of the old properties were drawn out of the garrets,
where they had lain ever since, and furbished up anew for the present
festivities.

Young Bedwin Sands, then an elegant dandy and Eastern traveller, was
manager of the revels. An Eastern traveller was somebody in those
days, and the adventurous Bedwin, who had published his quarto and
passed some months under the tents in the desert, was a personage of no
small importance. In his volume there were several pictures of Sands
in various oriental costumes; and he travelled about with a black
attendant of most unprepossessing appearance, just like another Brian
de Bois Guilbert. Bedwin, his costumes, and black man, were hailed at
Gaunt House as very valuable acquisitions.

He led off the first charade. A Turkish officer with an immense plume
of feathers (the Janizaries were supposed to be still in existence, and
the tarboosh had not as yet displaced the ancient and majestic
head-dress of the true believers) was seen couched on a divan, and
making believe to puff at a narghile, in which, however, for the sake
of the ladies, only a fragrant pastille was allowed to smoke. The
Turkish dignitary yawns and expresses signs of weariness and idleness.
He claps his hands and Mesrour the Nubian appears, with bare arms,
bangles, yataghans, and every Eastern ornament--gaunt, tall, and
hideous. He makes a salaam before my lord the Aga.

A thrill of terror and delight runs through the assembly. The ladies
whisper to one another. The black slave was given to Bedwin Sands by
an Egyptian pasha in exchange for three dozen of Maraschino. He has
sewn up ever so many odalisques in sacks and tilted t