in the lap of luxury; am grown callous and inert with perpetual excitement. ——‘What avails from iron chains Exempt, if rosy fetters bind as fast?’ I have my favourite box too, as Beau Brummell had his favourite leg; one must decide on something, not to be always deciding. Perhaps I may have my reasons too—perhaps into the box next to mine a Grace enters; perhaps from thence an air divine breathes a glance (of heaven’s own brightness), kindles contagious fire;—but let us turn all such thoughts into the lobbies. These may be considered as an Arabesque border round the inclosed tablet of human life. If the Muses reign within, Venus sports heedless, but not unheeded without. Here a bevy of fair damsels, richly clad, knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, lead on ‘the frozen winter and the pleasant spring!’ Would I were allowed to attempt a list of some of them, and Cowley’s _Gallery_ would blush at mine! But this is a licence which only poetry, and not even a Free Admission can give. I can now understand the attachment to a player’s life, and how impossible it is for those who are once engaged in it ever to wean themselves from it. If the merely witnessing the bustle and the splendour of the scene as an idle spectator creates such a fascination, and flings such a charm over it, how much more must this be the case with those who have given all their time and attention to it—who regard it as the sole means of distinction—with whom even the monotony and mortifications must please—and who, instead of being passive, casual votaries, are the dispensers of the bounty of the gods, and the high-priests at the altar? THE SICK CHAMBER _The New Monthly Magazine._] [_August, 1830._