ed, obedient to command, and skilled in
marching and military formations. Londoners, perhaps, are little aware
of the services their favourite regiments are prompt to lend to
theatrical representations. Notably our grand operas owe much to the
Coldstreams and Grenadiers. After a performance of "Le Prophete" or
"L'Etoile du Nord," let us say, hosts of these warriors may be seen
hurrying from Covent Garden back to their barracks. Plays that have
depended for their success solely upon the battles they have
introduced have not been frequent of late years, and perhaps their
popularity may fairly be counted as a thing of the past. We have left
behind us the times when versatile Mr. Gomersal was found submitting
to the public by turns his impersonation of Napoleon at Waterloo and
Sir Arthur Wellesley at Seringapatam; when Shaw, the Lifeguardsman,
after performing prodigies of valour, died heroically to slow music;
when Lady Sale, armed with pistol and sabre, fought against heavy
Afghan odds, and came off supremely victorious. Perhaps the public
have ceased to care for history thus theatrically illustrated, or
prefers to gather its information on the subject from despatches and
special correspondence. The last theatrical venture of this class
referred to our army's exploits in Abyssinia. But the play did not
greatly please. Modern battles have, indeed, outgrown the stage, and
the faculty of making "imaginary puissance" has become lost. In the
theatre, as elsewhere, the demand is now for the literal, the
accurate, and the strictly matter of fact.

CHAPTER XXV.

STAGE STORMS.

Addison accounted "thunder and lightning--which are often made use of
at the descending of a god or the rising of a ghost, at the vanishing
of a devil or the death of a tyrant"--as occupying the first place
"among the several artifices put in practice by the poets to fill the
minds of an audience with terror." Certainly the stage owes much to
its storms: they have long been highly prized both by playwrights and
playgoers, as awe-inspiring embellishments of the scene; and it must
have been an early occupation of the theatrical machinist to devise
some means of simulating the uproar of elemental strife. So far back
as 1571, in the "Accounts of the Revels at Court," there appears a
charge of L1 2s. paid to a certain John Izarde, for "mony to him due
for his device in counterfeting thunder and lightning in the play of
'Narcisses;' and for sundry nec