Taglioni was the very perfection of grace, and her name is still remembered as a queen amongst dancers. Poor woman, her latter years were clouded by poverty and misfortune, and she was obliged to give dancing lessons in order to support her children. Her opinion of the modern school of dancing was extremely low, and she did not scruple to declare that it appeared to her both ugly and improper. “Dieu, qu’elles sont laides avec leurs indécences,” was the criticism she passed upon some ballerinas who claimed to be her successors at a time when the acrobatic distortion known as the cake-walk had not yet been invented. What indeed would she have thought of that? So-called dancing in these days is more often than not largely composed of wild gymnastic exercises, whilst skirt-dancing is too often but a series of feeble kicks executed by angular performers whose lack of grace is concealed by a number of voluminous swathings and petticoats. When my sister and I went to the opera neither the performance nor the ballet attracted either of us as much as what was called “the crush-room,” which was our principal delight. This social institution is now totally extinct. In those days, however, directly the opera was over the fashionable portion of the audience at once adjourned to a hall arranged for people to wait in whilst their carriages were being fetched, and here the gay world would linger generally for at least an hour. The crush-room, indeed, was like a sort of informal evening party; but such an institution would have no success in these days of bustle and rush when every one is only too anxious to be first away, and so many are eager to betake themselves to the fashionable restaurants, the possible existence of which was undreamt of up to comparatively recent years. I have seen nearly all the actors and actresses whose names to-day are but dim recollections of the past. Paul Bedford I well remember in a burlesque of Norma singing an excruciatingly funny song with a wreath of carrots and turnips on his head. He was the funniest comedian I ever saw, though his methods would perhaps be thought too broad at the present time when the stage almost ranks with the Church, and not a few theatrical people are as proud as if they possessed three eyes and a tail. Paul Bedford, besides being a comedian of extraordinary though very rollicking talent, was an excellent vocalist as well. He had, indeed, originally made his reputation in Lablache’s great part of Don Pasquale. The late Mr. Toole, who often used to come and lunch with me, was the last of the comedians of the old school whose original personality was a principal cause of their success. Theatres to-day are, of course, far more luxurious than was formerly the case, everything being changed, from the lighting (in old days a very primitive affair) to the programmes, which used to be merely roughly printed slips of coarse paper.