Fops’ Alley! The word reminds me of bygone operatic days, and I sigh when, looking round the house, I remember how Time, the destroyer, has left a mark, too, upon these _cari luoghi_. It is true that many of those reminiscences may not be worth sighing for; but is there not always something melancholy in the fading away of old associations? Where is the Omnibus Box? The longitudinal den answering to the _Loge Infernale_ at Paris, and the _Fosse aux Lions_ at Madrid, yet has its customary locality over the orchestra, on the Queen’s side of the proscenium; but where are its brilliant, witty, worthless occupants? But one, the gay young prince, who, if report says true, kicked, with his own royal foot, through the panels of the door of communication leading from the Omnibus Box to the stage, and for that night—the night of the famous Tamburini and Coletti disturbance—locked by special order of M. Laporte, has become a Respectable, holds high office, does his work well, and occupies himself far more with the subjects of soldiers’ kit and barrack accommodation, than with squabbles between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. But where are the rest? Where the dashing spirits and impetuous madcaps of twenty years since? One is in a lunatic asylum, and another is paralytic, and a third is prowling about the gambling-places on the Rhine, and the last I saw of a fourth, was once, in 1852, descending the stairs of the Hotel des Bains, at Dieppe, when a companion, drawing me on one side as a broken, bowed, decrepit, sunken-eyed, gray-headed, prematurely-aged man passed us tottering on a stick, whispered to me, “See! there goes D’Orsay;” who died a fortnight afterwards.