from beneath her feet, we foretell that a song is impending. When
two gentlemen enter, for whom, by a happy coincidence, two chairs,
and no more, are in waiting, we augur a conversation, and that it
will assume a retrospective biographical character. When any of
the performers who belong to the sea-faring or marauding
professions are observed to arm themselves with very small swords
to which are attached very large hilts, we predict that the affair
will end in a combat. Carrying out the association of ideas, it
may have occurred to some that when I asked my old friend in the
chair to allow me to propose a toast I had him in my eye; and I
have him now on my lips.

The duties of a trustee of the Theatrical Fund, an office which I
hold, are not so frequent or so great as its privileges. He is in
fact a mere walking gentleman, with the melancholy difference that
he has no one to love. If this advantage could be added to his
character it would be one of a more agreeable nature than it is,
and his forlorn position would be greatly improved. His duty is to
call every half year at the bankers', when he signs his name in a
large greasy inconvenient book, to certain documents of which he
knows nothing, and then he delivers it to the property man and
exits anywhere.

He, however, has many privileges. It is one of his privileges to
watch the steady growth of an institution in which he takes great
interest; it is one of his privileges to bear his testimony to the
prudence, the goodness, the self-denial, and the excellence of a
class of persons who have been too long depreciated, and whose
virtues are too much denied, out of the depths of an ignorant and
stupid superstition. And lastly, it is one of his privileges