for without ocular proof. I gazed at him in doubt as to whether it really was Turk I saw before me, and his voice presently convinced me that it was Turk, and no other. Over his herculean calves he drew a pair of doubtfully-white cotton tights, and over these a pair of yellow-satin breeches, rather the worse for wear; around his waist (no longer slim, but bulky, as became the 'heavy man') he drew a flaming red-silk sash, with enormous fringes, and a broad black belt, in which were ominously displayed two great knives and three great pistols. Then came a ballet shirt which had seen better days (or nights), then a blue-velvet jacket, with slashed sleeves and large brass buttons, and he completed his attire by throwing carelessly upon his head-- which was framed in a wig of black ringlets--a peaked black hat, with a stained red feather drooping over (I feel that I ought to say o'er') his brow. 'This is the regulation kind of thing, Chris,' he said to me in a low voice--'this is the stuff that draws the twopenny gallery.' And he turned, with much affability, and accepted a pewter-pot offered to him by a brother with a 'Here, Cully!' and drank a deep draught. Then he took me into the passage, and asked some person in authority to pass me into the theatre. The people were pouring in at all the entrances, and in a short time the house was completely filled. They were fully bent upon enjoying themselves, and began to kick and applaud directly they were seated. When the lights were turned up and a bright blaze broke upon the living sea of faces, there was a roar of delight; and as the musicians straggled into the orchestra, they were greeted with applause and exclamations of familiarity, which fell upon ears supremely indifferent. I was placed in a good position, where I had a capital view of the stage, and having purchased a playbill, I began to study it. The programme was an imposing one, and the occupants of the twopenny gallery could certainly not complain that they did not have enough for their money. First, there was the romantic melodrama of _The Knight of the Sable Plume_, in which that distinguished actor, Mr. Horace Saint Herbert Fitzherbert (pronounced by the entire press to be superior to the elder Kean, and to surpass Garrick), would sustain the principal character. To be followed by the thrilling drama of _The Lonely Murder at the Wayside Inn_. After which, a comic song by Sam Jacobs, entitled the 'Jolly Drunken Cobbler,' and the clog hornpipe, by Mr. Dicksey. The whole to conclude with the stirring domestic drama of _The Trials and Vicissitudes of a Servant-Girl_; winding up with a grand allegorical tableau in coloured fires. The appetite that could have found fault with the quantity must surely have been unappeasable. In due time the music ceases, a bell rings, there is a moment's breathless expectation in the house, and the curtain rises on _The Knight of the Sable Plume_. Scene the first: A wood.