Some of the stage knights are wonderfully great boasters, yet exceedingly dull fellows. I do not know that in the mouth of any one of them there is put so spirited a remark as the great Huniades made to Ulderick, Count of Sicily. The latter asked for a conference with the great governor of Hungary. Huniades bade him come to the Hungarian camp. The offended Ulderick, in a great chafe, replied that it was beneath him to do such a thing, seeing that he was descended from a long line of princely ancestors; whereas Huniades was the first of his family who had ever been raised to honor. The Hungarian very handsomely remarked, “I do not compare myself with your ancestors; but _with you_!” This has always appeared to me as highly dramatic in spirit. There is nothing half so spirited in the knightly pieces brought on the stage during the reign of George III., and which caused infinite delight to very easily-pleased audiences. It is well known that the good-natured Sovereign of England, although unassuming in his domestic character, was exceedingly fond of display in public ceremonies. He used to arrange the paraphernalia of an installation of the Garter with all the energy and care of an anxious stage-manager. The people generally were as anxious to have an idea of the reality. On one occasion, in the preceding reign, they so nearly forced their way into the banqueting-room, where the knights were holding festival, that the troops fired over their heads in order to frighten them into dispersing. Under George III. they were more content to view these splendors through a dramatic lens. In 1771, accordingly, the splendors of the then late installation of the Garter were reproduced on the stage, in a masque, called “The Institution of the Garter, or Arthur’s Round Table Restored.” The show was as good as the piece was bad. The former was got up to profit the managers, the latter to flatter or do homage to the King and Queen. It was at once cumbersome and comic. A trio of spirits opened the delectable entertainment by summoning other spirits from every nook and corner of the skies, the moon’s horns included, to the work of escorting the car of the Male Genius of England, the husband probably of Britannia, down to earth. Nothing can exceed the alacrity with which the spirits and bards of the empyreal heaven obey the summons. They descend with the car of the Genius, singing a heavy chorus, ponderous as the chariot they help to “waft down,”--in which, not the chariot, but the chorus, there is the assurance that “The bliss that spotless patriots feel Is kindred to the bliss above,”-- so that we may hope, though we can not feel certain, that there are some few persons here below, who are not unconscious of an ante-past of heaven. The Genius is a civil and polished personage, who with due remembrance to metropolitan fogs, very courteously apologizes to the spirits, that he has been the cause of bringing them down “To this grosser atmosphere awhile.”