little in the 'Universal History'--the ancient part of it--and here
was the Court of Persia. It was being admitted to a sight of the past.
I took no proper interest in the action going on, for I understood not
its import, but I heard the word Darius, and I was in the midst of
'Daniel.' All feeling was absorbed in vision. Gorgeous vests, gardens,
palaces, princesses, passed before me. I knew not players. I was in
Persepolis for the time, and the burning idol of their devotion almost
converted me into a worshipper. I was awe-struck, and believed those
significations to be something more than elemental fires. It was all
enchantment and a dream. No such pleasure has since visited me but in
dreams." Returning to the theatre after an interval of some years, he
vainly looked for the same feelings to recur with the same occasion.
He was disappointed. "At the first period I knew nothing, understood
nothing, discriminated nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered
all--'was nourished I could not tell how.' I had left the temple a
devotee, and was returned a rationalist. The same things were there
materially; but the emblem, the reference was gone! The green curtain
was no longer a veil drawn between two worlds, the unfolding of which
was to bring back past ages, to present a 'royal ghost'--but a certain
quantity of green baize, which was to separate the audience for a
given time from certain of their fellow-men who were to come forward
and pretend those parts. The lights--the orchestra lights--came up a
clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the second ring, was now but a
trick of the prompter's bell--which had been, like the note of the
cuckoo, a phantom of a voice; no hand seen or guessed at which
ministered to its warning. The actors were men and women painted. I
thought the fault was in them; but it was in myself, and the
alteration which those many centuries--of six short twelvemonths--had
wrought in me." Presently, however, Lamb recovered tone, so to speak,
as a playgoer. Comparison and retrospection soon yielded to the