account of flat, stale, and unprofitable performances, greets me whenever
I am rash enough to take my post of observation. Lady Romford has a
private box, which she visits only in preference to staying at a still
duller home, on a disengaged evening; and Bagot occasionally drags me to
the play, to make my foreign ignorance and inexperience a pretext for
following Lady Clara to a spot which no one seems to visit without an
apology. People in society give as many reasons for having done so strange
a thing as go to see the new tragedy, as they would invent in Paris to
excuse a similar omission.

Since the Kemble munia, and the Byron mania, there has been a general
affectation of indifference towards poetry and the drama; your true
fashionable never mentions either without ridicule--the natural
consequence of previously exaggerated enthusiasm.

But above all the absurdities connected with this national weakness,
stands that of the public prints. So much importance is given by the
newspapers to every thing relating to the histrionic art, that we are
daily informed of the whereabout of all the third-rate performers of the
minor theatres; that "Mr. Smith, of Sadler's Wells, is engaged to Mr.
Ducrow for the ensuing season;" or that "Miss Brown, belonging to the
ballet department of the Surrey theatre, has sprained her ankle." While
two thirds of a leading print are occupied with details of the Reform Bill,
or a debate on some constitutional question,--or while the foreign
intelligence of two sieges and a battle is concentrated with a degree of
terseness worthy a telegraph, half a column is devoted to the plot of a
new melo-drama at the Coburg; or to a cut and dried criticism upon the
nine hundredth representation of _Hamlet_--beginning with the "immortal
bard," and ending with the waistcoats of the grave-digger!--_The Opera, a
Novel_.