perfect cleanliness, decent and fitting curtains and other furniture, of good stuff, but neither costly nor tawdry, and convenient, but not dazzling, light, are the proper requirements in the furnishing of an opera-house. As for the persons who go there to look at each other--to show their dresses--to yawn away waste hours--to obtain a maximum of momentary excitement--or to say they were there, at next day's three-o'clock breakfast (and it is only for such persons that glare, cost, and noise are necessary), I commend to their consideration, or at least to such consideration as is possible to their capacities, the suggestions in the text. But to the true lovers of the drama I would submit, as another subject of inquiry, whether they ought not to separate themselves from the mob, and provide, for their own modest, quiet, and guiltless entertainment, the truth of heartfelt impersonation, and the melody of the unforced and delicate voice, without extravagance of adjunct, unhealthy lateness of hours, or appeal to degraded passions. Such entertainment might be obtained at infinitely smaller cost, and yet at a price which would secure honorable and permanent remuneration to every performer; and I am mistaken in my notion of the best actors, if they would not rather play at a house where people went to hear and to feel, than weary themselves, even for four times the pay, before an audience insulting in its listlessness and ignorant in its applause. [102] There are, unusually, two paintings of this subject, the first representing the preparations for the scourging, the second its close. [103] This character has, I think, been traced in the various writings of Mrs. Sherwood better than in any others; she has a peculiar art of making it felt and of striking the deep tone of it as from a passing-bell, contrasting it with the most cheerful, lovely, and sincere conditions of Protestantism. [104] See "Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII." (Dispatches of the Venetian ambassador Giustinian, translated by Mr. Rawdon Brown,) 1854. [105] Malva rotundifolia, Cichorium Intybus, Sisymbrium tenuifolium, Chenopodium urbicum, Achillea Millefolium. CHAPTER XX. THE MOUNTAIN GLORY.