* * * * * The curtain has risen, has fallen and risen again, and now has descended for the last time. A flutter--is it rapture or relief?--trembles through the audience. "The School for Scandal" has come to a timely end! I selfishly forbear from giving my readers a lengthened account of it, as they (unless any of the Aghyohillbeg party takes up this book) have mercy--that is, unfortunately, been debarred by fate from ever witnessing a performance such as this, that certainly, without servile flattery, may be termed unique. Words (that is, _my_ words) would fail to give an adequate idea of it, and so from very modesty I hold my pen. "It was marvellous," says Sir Mark Gore, who is paying a flying visit to Lord Rossmoyne. He says this with the profoundest solemnity, and perhaps a little melancholy. His expression is decidedly pensive. "It was indeed wonderful," says the old rector, in perfect good faith. And wonderful it was indeed. Anything so truly remarkable, I may safely declare, was never seen in this or any other generation. Miss Fitzgerald's Lady Teazle left nothing to be desired, save perhaps an earlier fall of the curtain, while Captain Cobbett's Joseph Surface was beyond praise. This is the strict truth. He was indeed the more happy in his representation of the character in that he gave his audience a Joseph they never had seen and never would see again on any stage, unless Captain Cobbett could kindly be induced by them to try it on some other occasion. A few ignorant people, indeed, who plainly found such a splendid rendering of the part too much for their intellectual capacity, were seized with a laughter profane, if smothered, whenever the talented captain made his appearance, giving the rest of the company (who could see them shaking behind their fans) to understand that they at least were "not for Joe,"--that is, Captain Cobbett's Joe. But the majority very properly took no notice of these Philistines, and indeed rebuked them by maintaining an undisturbed gravity to the very end. Sir Peter (Mr. Ryde) was most sumptuously arrayed. Nothing could exceed the magnificence of his attire. Upon an amateur stage, startling habiliments copied from a remote period are always attractive, and Mr. Ryde did all he knew in this line, giving even to the ordinary Sir Peter of our old-fashioned knowledge certain garments in vogue quite a century before he could possibly have been born. This gave a charming wildness to his character, a devil-may-care sort of an air, that exactly suited his gay and festive mood. After all, why should Sir Peter be old and heavy? why indeed?