When Napoleon first appeared before the grand army after his return from Elba--when Queen Victoria made her _débût_ at the assemblage of her first parliament--when Kean performed "Othello" at Drury Lane immediately after he had caused a certain friend of his to play the same part in the Court of King's Bench--the public mind was terribly agitated, and the public's legs instinctively carried them, on each occasion, to behold those great performers. When--to give these circumstances their highest application,--"Punch," on Thursday last, came out in the regular drama, the excitement was no less intense. Boxes were besieged; the pit was choked up, and the gallery creaked with its celestial encumbrance. As the curtain drew up, there would have been a death-like silence but for the unparalleled sales that were taking place in apples, oranges, and ginger-beer. Expectation was on tip-toe, as were the persons occupying that department of the theatre called "standing-room." The looked-for moment came; the "drop" ascended, and the spectators beheld _Mr. Dionysius Swivel_, a pint of ale, and Punch's theatre! "Tragedy," saith the Aristotelian recipe for cooking up a serious drama, "should have the probable, the marvellous, and the pathetic." In the _tableau_ thus presented, the audience beheld the three conditions strictly complied with all at once. "It was highly probable," as _Mr. Swivel_ observed to the source of pipes, 'bacca, and malt--in other words, to the landlady he was addressing--that his master, the showman, was unable to pay the score he had run up; it was marvellous that the proprietor of so popular a puppet as "Punch" should not have even the price of a pint of ale in his treasury; lastly, that circumstance was deeply pathetic; for what so heart-rending as the exhibition of fallen greatness, of broken-down prosperity, of affluence regularly stumped and hard-up! The fact is, that "Punch," his theatre, and _corps dramatique_, are in pawn for eight-and-ninepence! In the midst of this distress there appears a young gentleman, giving vent to passionate exclamations, while furiously buttoning up a tight surtout. The object of his love is the daughter of the object of his hate. _Mr. Snozzle_, having previously made his bow, overhears him, and being the acting manager of "Punch," and having a variety of plots for rescuing injured lovers from inextricable difficulties on hand, offers one of them to the lover, considerably over cost price; namely, for the puppet-detaining eight-and-ninepence, and a glass of brandy-and-water. The bargain being struck, the scene changes.