Now, what a poor piece of mockery, of false tinsel and fringe and folly and pretence, is your stage-player beside one of these fellows! Who is going to sit three weary hours at the Haymarket, bored by the assumed plausibility of the actor, when the real, the actual, the positive thing that he so poorly simulates is to be met on the railroad, at the station, in the club, on the chain-pier, or the penny steamer? Is there any one, I ask, who will pay to see the plaster-cast when he can behold the marble original for nothing? You say, “Are you going to the masquerade?” and I answer, “I am at it.” _Circumspice!_ Look at the mock royalties hunting (Louis XIV. fashion) in the deep woods of Fontainebleau. Look at haughty lords and ladies--the haughtiest the earth has ever seen--vying in public testimonies of homage--as we saw a few days ago--to the very qualities that, if they mean anything, mean the subversion of their order. Look at the wasteful abundance of a prison dietary, and the laudable economy which half-starves the workhouse. Look at the famished curate, with little beyond Greek roots to support him, and see the millionaire, who can but write his name, with a princely fortune; and do you want Webster or Buckstone to give these “characters” more point? Will you take a box for the ‘Comedy of Errors,’ when you can walk into the Chancery Court for nothing? Will you pay for ‘Much Ado about Nothing,’ when a friendly order can admit you to the House? And as for a ‘New Way to Pay Old Debts,’ commend me to Commissioner Goulburn in Bankruptcy; while ‘Love’s Last Shift’ is daily performed at the Court of Probate, under the distinguished patronage of Judge Wills. Is there any need to puzzle one’s head over the decline of the drama, then? You might as well ask if a moderate smoker will pay exorbitantly for dried cabbage-leaves, when he can have prime Cubans for the trouble of taking them! PENSIONS FOR GOVERNORS. I do not remember ever to have read more pompons nonsense than was talked a few days ago in Parliament on the subject of pensions for retired colonial governors. On all ordinary occasions the strongest case a man can have with the British public is to be an ill-used man--that is to say, if you be a man of mark, or note, or station. To be ill-used, as one poor, friendless, and ignoble, is no more than the complement of your condition. It is in the fitness of things that pauperism, which we English have declared to be illegal, should neither be fondled nor caressed. To be ill-used profitably there must be something pictorial in your case; it must have its reliefs of light as well as shade. There must be little touches, a bright “has been,” sunny spots of a happy past Without the force of these contrasts, there is no possibility of establishing the grand grievance which is embodied in ill-usage.