Nay, Prime Ministers rehearse their jokes; Opposition leaders
prepare and polish them: Tabernacle preachers must arrange them
in their minds before they utter them. All I mean is, that I
would like to know any one of these performers thoroughly, and
out of his uniform: that preacher, and why in his travels this
and that point struck him; wherein lies his power of pathos,
humour, eloquence; -- that Minister of State, and what moves
him, and how his private heart is working; -- I would only say
that, at a certain time of life certain things cease to interest:
but about some things when we cease to care, what will be the use
of life, sight, hearing? Poems are written, and we cease to
admire. Lady Jones invites us, and we yawn; she ceases to
invite us, and we are resigned. The last time I saw a ballet at
the opera -- oh! it is many years ago -- I fell asleep in the
stalls, wagging my head in insane dreams, and I hope affording
amusement to the company, while the feet of five hundred nymphs
were cutting flicflacs on the stage at a few paces distant. Ah,
I remember a different state of things! Credite posteri. To see
these nymphs -- gracious powers, how beautiful they were! That
leering, painted, shrivelled, thin-armed, thick-ankled old thing,
cutting dreary capers, coming thumping down on her board out of
time -- that an opera-dancer? Pooh! My dear Walter, the great
difference between my time and yours, who will enter life some
two or three years hence, is that, now, the dancing women and
singing women are ludicrously old, out of time, and out of tune;
the paint is so visible, and the dinge and wrinkles of their
wretched old cotton stockings, that I am surprised how anybody
can like to look at them. And as for laughing at me for falling
asleep, I can't understand a man of sense doing otherwise. In my
time, a la bonne heure. In the reign of George IV., I give you