But I must turn to some other theme; for I really can hardly keep myself within bounds when I reflect on this. What shall I tell you of now?--the theatres or Jenny Lind? You have no doubt heard of the great sensation which the long-deferred appearance of the Swedish warbler has excited in the metropolis, but you can scarcely form any adequate idea of its extent. The long delay which intervened between her first engagement and her actual visit,--the fuss, lighting, and controversy betwixt the two rival managers--and the reports of the unparalleled enthusiasm with which she was received at Vienna and elsewhere, all served to keep the expectation of the public screwed up to the highest pitch. And when it was at last ascertained that the actual Jenny was in London, and speedily to appear, the price of opera-boxes and of stall-tickets rose as rapidly in the market as railway scrips in the redoubted days of staging. Mr D’Israeli’s friends, the Caucasians, were too acute to let so glorious an opportunity escape them. They bought up on speculation every vacant place, and retailed them at exorbitant profits to the eager and impatient amateurs. The expenditure of coat-tails at the pit-door for the first two or three nights was, I understand, something prodigious. Fractured ribs were as plentiful as gooseberries in their season; and the triumph of the syren was complete. She retired amidst a shower of bouquets--one of them thrown by a royal hand; and next morning the journals, forgetting politics for a time, vied with each other in ecstatic rhapsody and high-flown panegyric of the fair and gifted stranger. All this was extremely stimulating to the curiosity; and though, as you are well aware, nature has not gifted me with extreme nicety of ear, and the exorbitant rate of admission was somewhat of a stumbling-block, I resolved to throw parsimony to the winds for once, and took a box upon joint speculation with our friend Mr Archy Chaffinch.