St. Stephen’s Day (December 26, the day after Christmas) was the day specially set aside for the production of a pantomime, but in due time those performances were extended all over the Christmas season. They were the particular delight of the young folk, though older folk also liked to attend them and live their youth over again in the joy reflected from the faces of the boys and girls in the audience. Leigh Hunt, a charming English writer who never lost his boy-heart tells us how much pleasure he found in watching the children at a pantomime. “I am more delighted,” he says, “in watching the vivacious workings of their ingenuous countenances at these Christmas shows than at the sights themselves.... Stretching half over the boxes at the theatre, adorned by maternal love, see their enraptured faces, now turned to the galleries, wondering at their height and at the number of regular-placed heads contained in them; now directed towards the green cloud which is so lingeringly kept between them and their promised bliss. The half-peeled orange laid aside when the play begins; their anxiety for that which they understand; their honest laughter which runs through the house like a merry peal of sweet bells; the fear of the little girl lest they should discover the person hid behind the screen; the exultation of the boy when the hero conquers. But, oh, the rapture when the pantomime commences! Ready to leap out of the box, they joy in the mischief of the clown, laugh at the thwacks he gets for his meddling, and feel no small portion of contempt for his ignorance in not knowing that hot water will scald and gunpowder explode; while, with head aside to give fresh energy to the strokes, they ring their little palms against each other in testimony of exuberant delight.” Pantomime in the England of to-day has dwindled into a mere side show for spectacular ballets, which are now all the fashion. Clown and Columbine are indeed, occasionally introduced into these ballets but the clown is no longer a leading character and Columbine and her companions are selected more for their skill in dancing than in the art of gesture. Very rarely, indeed, is a comic mask introduced into a Christmas piece nowadays. Formerly, Harlequin and Columbine wore little black masks that just covered the upper part of the face, while the rest of the jolly crew of elves, ogres and buffoons were disguised in huge headpieces arranged over their shoulders. And here comes in the point of the picture by Mr. Potter which I have reproduced from the Christmas number of an English weekly called _The Sporting Times_. [Illustration: Going to the Pantomime. Drawing by John Leech. From the Illustrated London News, December 24, 1853.]