It is a generally received opinion that all stage wardrobes are made up of tawdry rags, and that the landscapes and palaces that look so charming by gaslight are but mere daubs by day. But there are wardrobes _and_ wardrobes, scenery and scenery. The dresses used for some great "get up" at the opera houses, or at the principal London and provincial theatres, are costly and magnificent; the scenery, although painted for distance and artificial light, is really the product of artists of talent, and there is an attention to reality in all the adjuncts that would quite startle the believers in the tinsel and tawdry view. A millionaire might take a lesson from the stage drawing-rooms of the Prince of Wales and the Court theatres, and no cost is spared to procure the _real_ article, whatever it may be, that is required for the scene. These minutiae of realism, however, are quite a modern idea, dating no farther back than the days of Boucicault and Fechter. Splendid scenery and gorgeous dresses for the legitimate dramas were introduced by John Kemble, and developed to the utmost extent by Macready and Kean; but it was reserved for the present decade to lavish the same attention and expenses upon the petite drama. Half a century ago the property maker manufactured the stage furniture, the stage books, the candelabra, curtains, cloths, pictures, &c., out of papier mache and tinsel; and the drawing-room or library of a gentleman's mansion thus presented bore as much resemblance to the reality as sea-side furnished lodgings do to a ducal palace. Before the Kemble time a green baize, a couple of chairs and a table, sufficed for all furnishing purposes, whether for an inn or a palace.