delightful and rather original form of a night’s entertainment. This was followed by the double rooms of the supper party, a very striking scene: two richly-furnished rooms, Aubusson carpets, a pianoforte, nearly twenty chairs, sofas, tables, clocks, and a supper-table covered with delicacies, champagne bottles, flowers, etc. This is succeeded almost instantly by a scene occupying the same space—that of the forest, requiring the minutest treatment, innumerable properties, real trees, etc. This is how it is contrived. The instant the tableau curtains are dropped, the auxiliaries rush on the scene; away to right and left fly the portions of the Parisian drawing-room: tables, chairs, piano, sofa, vanish in an instant. Men appear carrying tall saplings fixed in stands; one lays down the strip of frozen pond, another the prostrate trunk of a tree—everyone from practice knowing the exact place of the particular article he is appointed to carry. Others arrive with bags of sand, which are emptied and strewn on the floor; the circular tree is in position, the limelights ready. The transformation was effected, in what space of time will the reader imagine? In thirty-eight _seconds_, by the stage-manager’s watch. By that time the tableau had been drawn aside, and Château-Renaud and his friend Maugiron were descending into the gloomy glade after their carriage had broken down.[25] As we call up the memories of the Lyceum performances, with what a series of picturesque visions is our memory furnished—poetical Shakespearian pageants; romantic melodramatic stories, set forth with elegance and _vraisemblance_; plays of pathetic or domestic interest; exhilarating comedies; with highly dramatic poems, written by the late Poet Laureate, Wills, and others. Indeed, who could have conceived on the opening night of the Lyceum management, when ‘Hamlet’ was to be brought out, that this was to be the first of a regular series—viz., nine gorgeous and ambitious presentations of Shakespearian pieces, each involving almost stupendous efforts, intellectual and physical, that we were to see in succession ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ ‘Much Ado About Nothing,’ ‘Othello,’ ‘Twelfth Night,’ ‘Macbeth,’ ‘Henry VIII.,’ and ‘King Lear’? What a gift to the public in the shape of the attendant associations, in the glimpses of Italian and other scenery, the rich costumes, the archæology!