been used to drape a window that had disappeared in the course of
repairs. This, stretched from side to side, made a wall of brilliant
colour against the gray tint of the room; and possibly Roger Ascham,
seeing our audience-room before and after the hanging of it, might
have had a thought of Antwerp. The stage is the one thing in the world
privileged to deceive. The most devoted reader of Ruskin can tolerate
shams here. The costumes were devised with constant reference to
Charles Knight, and, to the eye, were of the gayest silk, satin, and
velvet. There was, moreover, a profusion of jewels, which, for all
one could see, sparkled with all the lustre of the great Florentine
diamond, as you see it suspended above the imperial crowns in the
Austrian Schatz-Kammer at Vienna. The contrasts of tint were well
attended to. Pedro was in white and gold, Claudio in blue and silver,
Leonato in red; while our handsome Benedick, a youth of dark Italian
favour, in doublet of orange, a broad black velvet sash, and scarlet
cloak, shone like a bird of paradise.

There was a garden-scene, in the foreground of which, where the
eyes of the spectators were near enough to discriminate, were rustic
baskets with geraniums, fuchsias, and cactuses, to give a southern
air. In the middle distance, armfuls of honeysuckle in full bloom
were brought in and twined about white pilasters. There was an arbour
overhung with heavy masses of the trumpet-creeper. A tall column or
two surmounted with graceful garden-vases were covered about with
raspberry-vines, the stems of brilliant scarlet showing among the
green. A thick clump of dogwood, whose large white blossoms could
easily pass for magnolias, gave background. The green was lit with
showy colour of every sort,--handfuls of nasturtiums, now and then a
peony, larkspurs for blue, patches of poppies, and in the garden-vases
high on the pillars (the imposition!) clusters of pink hollyhocks