hem favour. Oh, then, once more show it
To this night's Anglo-German horse-play poet.

In the course of the play the sentimental sentinel in "Pizarro" was
ridiculed, and the whole concluded with a grand battle, in which the
last scene of "Timour the Tartar" was imitated and burlesqued.
"Stuffed ponies and donkeys frisked about with ludicrous agility,"
writes a critic of the time. The play was thoroughly successful, and
would seem to have retrieved the fortunes of the theatre, which had
been long in a disastrous condition.

Drury Lane also struck a blow at the "horse spectacles" of the rival
house. In 1812 was produced "Quadrupeds; or, The Manager's Last Kick."
This was only a revised version of the old burlesque of "The Tailors,
a Tragedy for Warm Weather," usually ascribed to Foote. In the last
scene an army of tailors appeared, mounted on asses and mules, and
much fun of a pantomimic kind ensued. Some years later, however, Drury
Lane was content to derive profit from a drama in which "real horses"
appeared, with the additional attraction of "real water." This was
Moncrieff's play of "The Cataract of the Ganges." Indeed, Drury Lane
was but little entitled to vaunt its superiority in the matter. In
1803 its treasury had greatly benefited from the feats of the "real
dog" in Reynolds's melodrama "The Caravan." "Real water," indeed, had
been brought upon the stage by Garrick himself, who owed his
prosperity, not more to his genius as an actor than to his ingenuity
as a purveyor of pantomime and spectacles. One of his addresses to his
audience contains the lines--

What eager transport stares from every eye,
When pulleys rattle and our genii fly,
When tin cascades like falling waters gleam,
Or through the canvas bursts the real stream,
While thirsty Islington laments in vain
Half her New River rolled to Drury Lane.

Of late years a change has come over the equestrian drama. The circus
flourishes, and quadrupeds figure now and then upon the stage, but the
"horse spectacle" has almost vanished. The noble animal is to be seen
occasionally on the boards, but he is cast for small parts only, is
little better than a four-footed supernumerary. He comes on to aid
the pageantry of the scene; even opera does not disdain his services
in this respect. A richly-caparisoned charger performs certain simple
duties in "Masaniello," in "Les Huguenots," "L'Etoile du Nord,"
"Martha," "La Juive," and some few o