no blacksmith shall break them asunder." Now this was an expression which had actually been used by the lover in the "scandal in high life," and had been made immense fun of by the counsel in the trial which ensued, and by the Sunday newspapers in commenting on that trial. When, therefore, the phrase was spoken by Pontifex in his most telling manner, it created first a thrill of astonishment at the author's daring, then a titter, then a tremendous roar of laughter and applause. Mr. Frank Likely, who was standing at the wing when he heard this, nodded comfortably at Spofforth, who was in the opposite stage-box anxiously watching the effect of every line; and the latter shut up his glass, like the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo, and felt that the battle was won. "It was touch-and-go, my boy," Likely said to the author afterwards; "one single hitch in that speech, and the whole thing would have been goosed off the stage." There were, however, a few people in the theatre who were not so intensely delighted with Mr. Spofforth's ingenuity and boldness. Laurence Alsager, whose absence from England had prevented his hearing the original story, thought the whole play dreary enough, though he appreciated the art of Pontifex and the buffoonery of Mugger; but the great roar of delight caught him in the middle of a yawn, and he looked round with astonishment to see how a very silly phrase could occasion such an amount of laughter. Glancing round the house, his eyes fell upon Lady Mitford, and he saw that her cheeks were flushed, her looks downcast, and her lips compressed. She had been in the greatest wonderment, poor child, during the whole of the piece: the manners of the people represented were to her as strange as those of the Ashantees; she heard her own language and did not understand it; she saw men and women, apparently intended to be of her own nation and station, conducting themselves towards each other in a manner she had never heard of, much less seen; she fancied there had been a laxity of speech and morals pervading the play, but she only knew it when the roar of welcome to Mr. Pontifex's hint about the blacksmith fell upon her ear. She had never heard the origin of the phrase, but her natural instinct told her it was coarse and gross; she knew it from the manner in which her husband, unable to restrain a loud guffaw, ended with "Too bad, too bad, by Jove!" She knew it by the manner in which Mr. Bertram studiously turned his face away from her to the stage; from the manner in which the ladies all round endeavoured to hide their laughter behind their fans, oblivious of the betrayal afforded by their shaking shoulders; she knew it from the look of intense disgust in the face of that curious-looking bearded man in the stalls, whose glances her eyes met as she looked down.