the actor's place of abode is often stated in his advertisements in order that the public may call upon him to obtain tickets for his benefit, if they prefer that course to purchasing them in the usual way at the box-office of the theatre. In the case of actresses this plan has often been found efficacious in diminishing the exuberant ardour of certain youthful supporters of the stage, by enabling them to discover that the fair performer who had peculiarly stirred their dramatic sympathies, was hardly seen to such advantage by daylight, in the seclusion of her private dwelling, as when under the glare of gas, with distance lending enchantment to rouge and pearl-powder, and casting an accommodating veil over divers physical deficiencies and unavoidable deteriorations. As benefits became common, and they were relegated to the close of the season, when the general appetite for theatrical entertainments may be presumed to be tolerably satiated, the actors found it very necessary to put forward performances of an unusual kind to attract patronage and stimulate the curiosity of the public. It was understood that on these occasions criticism was suspended, and great licence was permissible. A benefit came to be a kind of dramatic carnival. Any and everything was held to be lawful, and efforts of an experimental kind were almost demanded--certainly excused under the circumstances. The player who usually appeared wearing the buskin now assumed the sock, and the established comedian ventured upon a flight into the regions of tragedy. Novelty of some sort was indispensable, and the audience, if they might not wholly approve, were yet expected to forbear condemning. The comic actors especially availed themselves of their privileges, and on the strength of their popularity--the comedian always establishing more intimate and friendly relations between himself and his audience than are permitted to the tragedian--indulged in very strange vagaries. Mr. Spiller, on the occasion of his benefit at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1720, issued an advertisement: "Whereas I, James Spiller, of Gloucestershire, having received an invitation from Hildebrand Bullock, of Liquorpond Street, London, to exercise the usual weapons of the noble science of defence, will not fail to meet this bold invader, desiring a full stage, blunt weapons, and from him much favour." At another time the same actor announced his benefit in a kind of mock electioneering address, requesting the vote and interest of the public on the ground of his being "a person well affected to the establishment of the theatre." To recite an epilogue while seated on the back of an ass was a favourite expedient of the comedians of the early Georgian period, while the introduction of comic songs and mimicry--such as the scene of "The Drunken Man," and the song of "The Four-and-Twenty Stock-Jobbers," which Mr. Harper performed on his benefit-night in 1720--was found to be a very attractive measure.