hibition at the Institute of that learned town. Mr.
Hartopp was in the little parlour behind his country-house, his hours
of business much broken into by those intruders who deem no time
unseasonable for the indulgence of curiosity, the interchange
of thought, or the interests of general humanity and of national
enlightenment. The excitement produced on the previous evening by Mr.
Chapman, Sophy, and Sir Isaac was greatly on the increase. Persons who
had seen them naturally called on the Mayor to talk over the exhibition.
Persons who had not seen them, still more naturally dropped in just to
learn what was really Mr. Mayor's private opinion. The little parlour
was thronged by a regular levee There was the proprietor of a dismal
building, still called "The Theatre," which was seldom let except
at election time, when it was hired by the popular candidate for the
delivery of those harangues upon liberty and conscience, tyranny and
oppression, which furnish the staple of declamation equally to the
dramatist and the orator. There was also the landlord of the Royal
Hotel, who had lately built to his house "The City Concert-Room,"--a
superb apartment, but a losing speculation. There, too, were three
highly respectable persons, of a serious turn of mind, who came to
suggest doubts whether an entertainment of so frivolous a nature was not
injurious to the morality of Gatesboro'. Besides these notables, there
were loungers and gossips, with no particular object except that of
ascertaining who Mr. Chapman was by birth and parentage, and suggesting
the expediency of a deputation, ostensibly for the purpose of asking
him to repeat his performance, but charged with private instructions
to cross-examine him as to his pedigree. The gentle Mayor kept his eyes
fixed on a mighty ledger-book, pen in hand. The attitude was a rebuke
on intruders, and in ordinary times would have been so considered. But
mildness, however majestic, is not always effective in periods of civic
commotion. The room was animated by hubbub. You caught broken sentences
here and there crossing each other, like the sounds that had been frozen
in the air, and set free by a thaw, according to the veracious narrative
of Baron Munchausen.

PLAYHOUSE PROPRIETOR.--"The theatre is the--"

SERIOUS GENTLEMAN.--"Plausible snare by which a population, at present
grave and well-disposed, is decoyed into becoming--"

EXCITED ADMIRER.--"A French poodle, sir, that plays at dominos