theatricals: black-neckclothed and well-booted, they sit in their boxes
and decide on the ankles of a dancer or the voice of a singer. They have
a smattering of literature, and use a great deal of French in their
conversation: they have something of romance in their composition, and
have been known to marry for love. In short, there is in their whole
nature, a more roving, liberal, Continental character of dissipation, than
belongs to the cold, tame, dull, prim, hedge-clipped indolence of more
national exquisitism. Into this set, out of the other set, fell young
Godolphin; and oh! the merry mornings at actresses' houses; the jovial
suppers after the play; the buoyancy, the brilliancy, the esprit, with
which the hours, from midnight to cockcrow, were often pelted with
rose-leaves and drowned in Rhenish.

By degrees, however, as Godolphin warmed into his attendance at the
playhouses, the fine intellectual something that lay yet undestroyed at
his heart stirred up emotions which he felt his more vulgar associates
were unfitted to share.

There is that in theatrical representation which perpetually awakens
whatever romance belongs to our character. The magic lights; the pomp of
scene; the palace, the camp; the forest; the midnight wold; the moonlight
reflected on the water; the melody of the tragic rhythm; the grace of the
comic wit; the strange art that give such meaning to the poet's lightest
word;--the fair, false, exciting life that is detailed before us--crowding
into some three little hours all that our most busy ambition could
desire--love, enterprise, war, glory! the kindling exaggeration of the
sentiments which belong to the stage--like our own in our boldest moments:
all these appeals to our finer senses are not made in vain. Our taste for
castle-building and visions deepens upon us; and we chew a mental opium
which stagnates all the other faculties, but wakens that of the ideal.