"Why, yes," quoth the Devil, looking round; "we have a very good female supply in this quarter. But pray how comes it that the English are so candid in sin? Among all nations there is immorality enough, Heaven knows; but you are so delightfully shameless: if a crime is committed here, you can't let it 'waste its sweetness;' you thrust it into your papers forthwith; you stick it up on your walls; you produce it at your theatres; you chat about it as an agreeable subject of conversation; and then you cry out with a blush against the open profligacy abroad! This is one of those amiable contradictions in human nature that charms me excessively. You fill your theatres with ladies of pleasure--you fill your newspapers with naughty accounts--a robbery is better to you than a feast--and a good fraud in the city will make you happy for a week; and all this while you say: '_We_ are the people who send vice to Coventry, and teach the world how to despise immorality.' Nay, if one man commits a murder, your newspapers kindly instruct his associates how to murder in future, by a far safer method. A wretch kills a boy for the surgeons, by holding his head under water; 'Silly dog!' cries the Morning Herald, 'why did not he clap a sponge dipped in prussic acid to the boy's mouth?'" Here we were interrupted by a slight noise in the next box, which a gentleman had just entered. He was a tall man, with a handsome face and very prepossessing manner. "That is an Author of considerable reputation," said my Devil, "quiet, though a man of wit, and with a heart, though a man of the world. Talking of the drama, he once brought out a farce, which had the good fortune to be damned. As great expectations had been formed of it, and the author's name had transpired; the unsuccessful writer rose the next morning with a hissing sound in his ears, and that leaning towards misanthropy, which you men always experience when the world has the bad taste to mistake your merits. 'Thank Fate, however,' said the Author, 'it is damned thoroughly--it is off the stage--I cannot be hissed again--in a few days it will be forgotten--meanwhile I will take a walk in the Park.' Scarce had the gentleman got into the street, before, lo! at a butcher's shop blazed the 'very head and front of his offending.' 'Second night of its appearance, the admired Farce of ----, by ----, Esq.' Away posts the Author to the Manager.--'Good Heavens! Sir, my farce again! was it not thoroughly damned last night?'--'Thoroughly damned!' quoth the Manager, drily; 'we reproduce it, Sir--we reproduce it (with a knowing wink,) that the world, enraged at our audacity, may come here to damn it again.' So it is, you see! the love of money is the contempt of man: there's an aphorism for you! Let us turn to the stage. What actresses you have!--certainly you English are a gallant nation; you are wonderfully polite to come and see such horrible female performers! By the by, you observed when that young