Look around you, in the vast arena of her Majesty’s. Wonder and admire, for such a sight it is not permitted to you often to behold. Look around, and around again, the enormous horseshoe; look from base to summit, at this magnificent theatre, glorious with beauties and with riches. Here are gathered the mighty, and noble, and wealthy, the venerable and wise, the young and beauteous of the realm. The prime minister seeks at the opera a few hours’ relaxation from the toils of office; the newly-married peeress there displays the dazzling diamonds custom now, for the first time, permits her to wear; the blushing maiden of seventeen, “just out”—that very day, perhaps, presented at Court—smiles and simpers in a shrine of gauze and artificial flowers. Mark yonder, that roomy box on the grand tier, which a quiet, plainly-dressed party has just entered. There is a matronly lady in black, with a few bugle ornaments in her _coiffure_. She ensconces herself in a corner, her back towards the audience, screens herself with a curtain, and then calmly proceeds to take a review of the front rows of the stalls, and the occupants of the proscenium boxes. It is not considered etiquette to take more than a cursory glimpse of the matronly lady in black through _your_ opera-glass. Presently there sits down by the matronly lady’s side, a handsome, portly, middle-aged gentleman, in plain sober evening dress, and with a very high forehead—so high, indeed, that I don’t think that the assumption that the middle-aged gentleman’s head inclined to baldness would be unreasonable. In the opposite angle of the box sits a demure young lady—sometimes a couple of demure ones—who doesn’t move much or speak much; and at the back of the _loge_ are two gentlemen in white waistcoats, who never sit down, and, from the exquisitely uncomfortable expression of their countenances, would appear to be standing on one leg. Now, take the hat of your heart off, for your head, according to operatic sumptuary laws, must be already uncovered, and with your spirit salaam thrice three times, for the matronly lady is Victoria Queen of England, and the middle-aged gentleman, inclined to corpulence and baldness, is his Royal Highness the Prince Consort. The demure ones are maids of honour or ladies in waiting; and as for the white-waistcoated uncomfortables (seemingly) on one leg, one may be the tremendous Gold Stick himself, and the other—who shall say I—the ineffable Phipps, pride of chivalry and pearl of privy purses.