The production of this _danseuse_ appears to have seen the last direct result of that scattering of the amateurs of one nation among the artists of another, which was produced by the European convulsions of from 1789 to 1815. CHAPTER XV. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS AT THE LONDON OPERA, HALF A CENTURY SINCE. [Sidenote: A MANAGER IN THE BENCH.] A complete History of the Opera would include a history of operatic music, a history of operatic dancing, a history of the chief operatic theatres, and a history of operatic society. I have made no attempt to treat the subject on such a grand scale; but though I shall have little to say about the principal lyrical theatres of Europe, or of the habits of opera-goers as a European class, there is one great musical dramatic establishment, to whose fortunes I must pay some special attention, and concerning whose audiences much may be said that will at least interest an English reader. After several divided reigns at the Lincoln's Inn Theatre, at Covent Garden, at the Pantheon, and at the King's Theatre, Italian Opera found itself, in 1793, established solely and majestically at the last of these houses, which I need hardly remind the reader was its first home in England. The management was now exercised by Mr. Taylor, the proprietor. This gentleman, who was originally a banker's clerk, appears to have had no qualification for his more exalted position, beyond the somewhat questionable one of a taste for speculation. He is described as having had "all Sheridan's deficiency of financial arrangement, without that extraordinary man's resources." Nevertheless he was no bad hand at borrowing money. All the advances, however, made to him by his friends, to enable him to undertake the management of the Opera, are said to have been repaid. Mr. Ebers, his not unfriendly biographer, finds it difficult to account for this, and can only explain it by the excellent support the Opera received at the period. Mr. Taylor was what in the last century was called "a humorist." Not that he possessed much humour, but he was a queer, eccentric man, and given to practical jokes, which, in the present day, would not be thought amusing even by the friends of those injured by them. On one occasion, Taylor having been prevailed upon to invite a number of persons to breakfast, spread a report that he intended to set them down to empty plates. He, moreover, recommended each of the guests, in an anonymous letter, to turn the tables on the would-be ingenious Taylor, by taking to the _déjeuner_ a supply of suitable provisions, so that the inhospitable inviter might be shamed and the invited enabled to feast in company, notwithstanding his machinations to the contrary. The manager enjoyed such a reputation for liberality that no one doubted the statement contained in the anonymous letter.