Seldom, I should say, has any acrobatic performance caused so much excitement in London as Zazel’s, and those who went to the Gaiety at that time will remember the amusing burlesque of the feat (given in, I think, “Little Doctor Faust”) by Edward Terry and that never-to-be-forgotten incarnation of clever vitality, Nelly Farren, in which the latter, having climbed into a burlesque cannon, was asked, “Are you in? Are you far in? Are you Nearly Far-in?”—sallies which were greeted with thunders of applause. The music halls, to which to-day every one goes, were formerly not considered at all correct places for ladies. About the first time that society began seriously to realise their existence was, I think, at the time of the Russo-Turkish war, when Plevna, a sort of spectacular ballet, was being given at the Canterbury. A great benefit was organised in aid of the Turkish wounded, and a good many people crossed the river and took boxes. This incursion into what was to them an unknown world produced a certain taste for this kind of amusement, and led to music halls being gradually patronised by a very different sort of audience from the one which was formerly enraptured by the singing of the _lions comiques_. As years went on music hall after music hall abandoned its chairman,—a man, as a rule, of stentorian voice who in old days was a principal feature of these places. The entertainments given then gradually changed their character, and to-day every one goes to the music hall, where, for the most part, the performance is quite as innocent as a village penny-reading presided over by the vicar. Before the days when the music hall had attained the popularity which it now enjoys, vague rumours, of course, used to reach society as to its chief stars, and occasionally some of us used to be unobtrusively taken to see them. One of the chief was George Leybourne, whose song “Champagne Charlie,” with its sparkling music and catchy refrain, combined with the fact that he used to drive about in a carriage drawn by four horses, created quite a sensation in London. Another was the great Macdermott, whose song “We don’t want to fight, but by Jingo if we do,” originated the expression a “jingo,” so often used in political controversy. The _lion comique_ is now but a memory of the past, his very direct and somewhat robust methods being unsuited to the taste of the generation which takes its pleasures in a very different way from that popular in less squeamish times.