Our box was excellently situated, and by no means distant from the stage; yet we often found it impossible to determine at what point, in different directions, the boards ended and the scenery began. The arrangement of the groups too, not merely in combinations of grace and beauty, but in such bold, easy, and picturesque variety, that one might fancy Murillo had made the sketches for them, was another source of wonder and admiration; and had all these pretty sights been shown us in the course of two acts instead of five, I am sure we should have gone home quite delighted and in the highest possible good-humour. But five acts of raree-show is too much; and accordingly we yawned, and talked of Grétry, Méhul, Nicolo, and I know not whom beside;--in short, became as splenetic and pedantic as possible. We indulged ourselves occasionally in this unamiable mood by communicating our feelings to each other, in a whisper however which could not go beyond our own box, and with the less restraint because we felt sure that the one stranger gentleman who shared it with us could not understand our language. But herein we egregiously deceived ourselves: though in appearance he was _Français jusqu'aux ongles_, we soon found out that he could speak English as well as any of us; and, with much real politeness, he had the good-nature to let us know this before we had uttered anything too profoundly John Bullish to be forgiven. Fortunately, too, it appeared that our judgments accorded as well as if we had all been born in the same parish. He lamented the decadence of music in this, which ought to be its especial theatre; but spoke with enthusiasm of the Théâtre Italien, and its great superiority in science over every other in Paris. This theatre, to my great vexation, is now closed; but I well remember that such too was my judgment of it some seven years ago.