The Parthenium Theatre at the time I write of was a thing by itself. Since then there have been a score of imitations of it, none of them coming up to the great original, but sufficiently like to have dimmed the halo surrounding the first attempt, and to have left the British public undecided as to whom belonged the laurels due to those who first attempted to transform a wretched, dirty, hot building into an elegant, well-ventilated, comfortable _salon_. It was at the Parthenium that stalls were first introduced. Up to that time they had been only known at the Opera; and it was the triumph of the true British playgoer,--the man who had seen Jack Bannister, sir, and Munden and Dowton, and all those true performers who have never had any successor, sir,--that he always sat in the front row of the pit, the only place in the house whence the performance could be properly seen. When Mr. Frank Likely undertook the lesseeship of the Parthenium, he thought he saw his way to a very excellent improvement founded on this basis. He hated the true British playgoer with all his heart. In the style of entertainment about to be produced at the Parthenium, he had not the smallest intention of pandering to, or even propitiating, the great historic character; but he had perfect readiness to see that the space immediately behind the orchestra was the most valuable in the theatre; and so he set carpenters at once to work, and uprooted the hard black deal pit-benches, and erected in their stead rows of delicious _fauteuils_ in crimson velvet, broad soft padded-backed lounges with seats which turned upon hinges, and left a space underneath for your hat and coat; charming nests where you could loll at your ease, and see and hear to perfection. The true British playgoer was thus relegated to a dark and dismal space underneath the dress-circle, where he could see little save the parting of the back-hair of the swells in the stalls, and the legs, from the knee downward, and feet of the people on the stage; where the ceiling seemed momentarily descending on him, as on the prisoner in the story of the "Iron Shroud;" and where the knees of the orange-sellers dug him in the back, while their baskets banged him in front. It is needless to say that on the Saturday after the opening of the Parthenium under the new regime, the columns of the _Curtain_, the _Thespian Waggoner_, and the _Scourge_ were found brimming over with stinging letters from the true British playgoer, all complaining of his treatment, and all commencing, "By what right, sir, I should like to know." But Mr. Frank Likely cared little enough for this, or for anything else indeed, so long as he could keep up his villa at Roehampton, have his Sunday parties, let his wife dress like a duchess, have two or three carriages, and never be compelled to pay anybody anything. Not to pay was a perfect mania with him. Not that he had not the money. Mr. Humphreys, the treasurer, used to come round