The pits in the London theatres have undergone as great a change, though a different one, as the pit at the opera, which now only nominally exists, if it exist at all. It is now an area of stalls; the old price for admission is doubled, and the entertainment is not worth an eighth of what charged for it compared with that of the olden time, when for an eight-and-sixpenny pit ticket you had Grisi, Mario, Lablache, and Tamburini, with minor vocalists, thorough artists, in the same opera. What a spectacle was the grand old house! The old aristocracy had their boxes for the season, as they had their town and country houses. You got intimate with them by sight; it was a pleasure to note how the beautiful young daughters of each family grew in gracefulness. You took respectful part in the marriages. At each opening season you marked whether the roses bloomed or paled upon the young cheeks, and you sympathised accordingly. You spoke of Lord Marlshire’s look with a hearty neighbourly feeling, and you were glad that Lady Marlshire really seemed only the eldest sister of a group of beauties who were her daughters. As for the sons of those great families, they were in full dress, sauntering or gossiping in that Elysium ill-naturedly called ‘Fops’ Alley’; they were exchanging recognitions with friends and kinsmen in all parts of the house. If you heard a distant laugh--loud enough where the laughers were moved to it--you might be sure it was caused by Lord Alvanley, who was telling some absurdly jocose story to a group of noble Young Englanders in the pit passage under the boxes. We have seen the quiet entry of a quiet man into a private box make quite a stir. Every stranger felt that the quiet man was a man of mark; he came to snatch a momentary joy, and then away to affairs of state again; he was the prime minister. Dozens of opera-goers have recorded their _souvenirs_ of the old glorious days when the opera, as they say, was an institution, opened only twice a week: whereas each house is merely an ordinary theatre, with audiences that are never, two nights running, chiefly made up of the same _habitués_. They have told what friendly interest used to be aroused when the Duchess of Kent and her daughter, the Princess Victoria, took their seats every opera night. We seem again to hear a ringing laugh, and we know it comes from the sparkling English lady with an Italian title, the Countess St. Antonio. We seem again to see that marvellously audacious-looking pair, Lady Blessington and Count D’Orsay, gauging the house and appearing to differ as to conclusions. The red face of the Duchess of St. Albans and the almost as ruddy vessel from which her tea was poured have been described over and over again; and, in the records of other chroniclers we fancy that once more there come upon us the voices of two gentlemen who talked so above the singers that a remonstrant ‘Hush!’ went round the building. The offenders were the Duke of Gloucester and Sir Robert Wilson.