The length was the same as an English play of those days—that is, from seven till past eleven—a melodrama, a pantomime, and a farce. The latter amused us mightily; it was a quiz upon the English, more laughable than fair, for it satirised their riding, an art in which our nation is not behind the Italians. The hero, an immensely corpulent John Bull, with a pert booby of a son, who answered “Yes, papa,” to everything, and walked about with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, was seen mounting a horse for the first time. This he accomplished by means of a crane which lifted him up, with his legs spread out, a good height into the air, and then let him drop on the horse’s back. After this followed a lesson in riding, in which John Bull fell off, as did his son, and then they ran against each other, boxing and fighting all the time, till eventually the son went on his knees and craved forgiveness from his daddy, who graciously held out his hand to be kissed. At the end the riding-master introduced a number of tumblers, who threw somersaults over four horses standing side by side and performed other feats of activity, in all of which they were immediately imitated and even surpassed by old and young John. It was great nonsense, but very funny. The audience was so filthy, and the smells so overpowering, that it gave us an idea of what we had heard used to happen in some American theatres, for many of the men took off their coats and sat in shirt sleeves which for colour would have shamed an Irish labourer. The upper ranks of Roman society went at that time only to the opera, and the audience of this theatre consisted entirely of shopkeepers and tradesmen, very different to an English audience of the same class, which behaves in a respectable and gentlemanlike way. These people were dirty to a degree, and might well have been old Westminster or St. Giles turned into the pit and boxes.