remembrance fresh and unfading, overtopping all possible jokes, unto
the end of time. Or now, I learn with bitter tears how poor Jane
Shore, dressed all in white, and with her brown hair hanging down,
went starving through the streets; or how George Barnwell killed the
worthiest uncle that ever man had, and was afterwards so sorry for
it that he ought to have been let off. Comes swift to comfort me,
the Pantomime--stupendous Phenomenon!--when clowns are shot from
loaded mortars into the great chandelier, bright constellation that
it is; when Harlequins, covered all over with scales of pure gold,
twist and sparkle, like amazing fish; when Pantaloon (whom I deem it
no irreverence to compare in my own mind to my grandfather) puts
red-hot pokers in his pocket, and cries "Here's somebody coming!" or
taxes the Clown with petty larceny, by saying, "Now, I sawed you do
it!" when Everything is capable, with the greatest ease, of being
changed into Anything; and "Nothing is, but thinking makes it so."
Now, too, I perceive my first experience of the dreary sensation--
often to return in after-life--of being unable, next day, to get
back to the dull, settled world; of wanting to live for ever in the
bright atmosphere I have quitted; of doting on the little Fairy,
with the wand like a celestial Barber's Pole, and pining for a Fairy
immortality along with her. Ah, she comes back, in many shapes, as
my eye wanders down the branches of my Christmas Tree, and goes as
often, and has never yet stayed by me!

Out of this delight springs the toy-theatre,--there it is, with its
familiar proscenium, and ladies in feathers, in the boxes!--and all
its attendant occupation with paste and glue, and gum, and water
colours, in the getting-up of The Miller and his Men, and Elizabeth,
or the Exile of Siberia. In spite of a few besetting accidents and
failures (particularly an unreasonable disposition in the