A Liberal, I hope—a Democrat, if you will—on some not unimportant public topics, I cannot help a species of meek wailing Conservatism upon the decadence of some of our social institutions. This is the age of abolition—of doing away with and putting down. They have robbed our grenadiers of their worsted epaulettes. The beefeaters in the Tower have been deprived of those scarlet and embroidered tunics, that contrasted so quaintly with the pantaloons and highlows of everyday life, and thrust into buttoned-up coats and brass buttons. The barristers’ wigs will go next, I suppose, and the cocked-hat of the parish beadle—his red plush shorts and buckled shoon are already departed. I have fears for the opera; I tremble for the days when there will be bonnets in the upper tiers and paletots in the pit. When I mind the opera first, it was a subaltern’s, and not a sergeant’s, guard that kept watch and ward under the portico. The officer on duty had a right of entrance _ex officio_ into the pit, and it was splendid to see him swinging his bearskin and flashing his epaulettes in Fops’ Alley. The very name of Fops’ Alley is becoming obsolete now. The next generation will forget its locality. In those days, on drawing-room nights, the men used to come in their court suits and uniforms, their stars and badges, the ladies in their ostrich plumes and diamond necklaces, only taking off their trains. There were opera-hats in those days—half moon cocked-hats; now the men carry Gibuses like pancakes. The link boys are disappearing—the leather-lunged, silver-badged fellows, who shouted so sonorously that Lady Sardanapalias’ carriage stopped the way. And the glories of the operatic stage; are not those inconstant singing birds fled now? Can all the Arditis in the world compensate for Costa, with his coat thrown back, and those immortal, tight-fitting white kid gloves? He was the first man who ever succeeded in parting his hair down the back; and now, he too is growing bald, and he has cajoled Grisi the mellifluous, and Mario the heroic, to pipe their nightingale notes among the coach-builders of Long Acre, and the fried-fish shopmen of Drury Lane. Of the glorious unequalled, unapproachable Four—Grisi, Rubini, Tamburini, and Lablache—who once electrified the world in the “Puritani,” three are dead: the first is in Covent Garden provoking malevolent criticism. Where are the other Four, the Terpsichorean quartett, the immortals who danced the _pas de quatre_! Ah! Mademoiselle Piccolomini, you are very arch and pretty; ah! Mademoiselle Marie Taglioni, you are a _spirituelle_ and graceful dancer; but you are not the giants and giantesses of the old Dead Days. “You little people of the skies, What are you when the sun shall rise!” But the sun is set, and there is darkness, and I am afraid that I am prosing _in re_ her Majesty’s Theatre, as old playgoers will prose about Jack Bannister, sir, and Dowton, and Munden, and Fawcett.