CHAPTER XXXVIII.

We are here (in the country) among the vast and noble scenes of
Nature; we are there (in the town) among the pitiful shifts of policy.
We walk here in the light and open ways of the divine bounty,--we
grope therein the dark and confused labyrinths of human malice; our
senses are here feasted with all the clear and genuine taste of their
objects, which are all sophisticated there, and for the most part
overwhelmed with their contraries: here pleasure, methinks, looks like
a beautiful, constant, and modest wife; it is there an impudent,
fickle, and painted harlot.--COWLEY.

Draw up the curtain! The scene is the Opera.

The pit is crowded; the connoisseurs in the front row are in a very
ill humour. It must be confessed that extreme heat is a little trying
to the temper of a critic.

The Opera then was not what it is now, nor even what it had been in a
former time. It is somewhat amusing to find Goldsmith questioning, in
one of his essays, whether the Opera could ever become popular in
England. But on the night--on which the reader is summoned to that
"theatre of sweet sounds" a celebrated singer from the Continent made
his first appearance in London, and all the world thronged to "that
odious Opera-house" to hear, or to say they had heard, the famous
Sopraniello.