ra, may be seen to walk along the
street in companies of three or four, with a hurried step, until their
progress is arrested by the view of divers green, blue, pink, or crimson
coloured lamps, holding a very conspicuous position over the doors of
some houses of very suggestive exterior, or before some suspicious
hiatuses in the pavement, where those horrid monsters, who figure in
Christmas pantomimes, might easily be imagined to dwell. These lamps
seem to be possessed of a most incredible power of human attraction, for
no sooner does their light fall upon the vision of the nocturnal
wayfarer, than he is drawn within the portals over which they are
established. Upon mounting the steps into these houses, or descending
into these subterranean regions, the inquirer will discover a long,
brilliantly illuminated, gaudily papered chamber, whose walls are
ornamented with numerous over-grown mirrors, and French coloured
prints, representing young ladies in short dresses, standing in every
possible posture except that usually assumed by ladies of our
acquaintance. Along one side of this apartment, at the distance of about
three and a half feet from the wall, extends a marble slab, placed in a
horizontal position, and elevated three feet from the floor, forming a
species of enclosure. Within this enclosure, a number of men, habited to
the waist in white garments,--apparently a nameless order of
priesthood--are going through some inexplicable mystic rites, repeatedly
seizing up various large glass bottles containing transparent or opaque
liquids, and carrying them to different parts of this marble slab at the
request of various persons, who seem to be the worshippers in this
temple. At one end of the enclosure, a solitary man of a dark and sombre
hue, evidently a person held more sacred than the other priests, is seen
alternately to hammer portions of some hard matter, resembling stone in
appearance, and then split them by the magical application of a small
piece of blunt iron. He conducts this ceremony with the greatest
solemnity, occasionally pronouncing these incantatory words, "Plate or
shell, sah?" in a seemingly interrogative manner. The worshippers at
these shrines are some of the same young gentlemen whom we have seen
standing back in the opera boxes by the doors, making fast remarks on
all that was passing around them, or sitting in the parquette
endeavouring to annihilate the prima donna by the attractiveness of
their app