Imagine to yourself the inside of a large box, about fifteen feet wide, and long in proportion: this box is the stage; on each side are placed screens, at different distances, on which the objects of the scene are coarsely painted. Beyond there is a great curtain, bedaubed in the same manner; which extends from one side to the other, and is generally cut through, to represent caves in the earth, and openings in the heavens, as the perspective requires. So that, if any person, in walking behind the scenes, should happen to brush against the curtain, he might cause an earthquake so violent as to shake----our sides with laughing. The skies are represented by a parcel of bluish rags, hung up with lines and poles, like wet linen at the washer- woman’s. The sun, for he is represented here sometimes, is a large candle in a lanthorn. The chariots of the gods and goddesses are made of four bits of wood, nailed together in the form of a square, and hung up by a strong cord, like a swing: across the middle is fastened a board, on which the deity sits a straddle; and in the front of it hangs a piece of coarse canvas, bedaubed with paint, to represent the clouds that attend on this magnificent car. The bottom of this machine is illuminated by two or three stinking, unsnuffed candles, which, as often as the celestial personage bustles about and shakes his swing, smoke him deliciously, with incense worthy such a divinity. As these chariots are the most considerable machines of the opera, you may judge by them of the rest. A troubled sea is made of long rollers covered with canvas or blue paper, laid parallel and turned by the dirty understrappers of the theatre. Their thunder is a heavy cart, which rumbles over the floor’d ceiling, and is not the least affecting instrument of their agreeable music. The flashes of lightning are made by throwing powdered rosin into the flame of a link; and the falling thunderbolt is a cracker at the end of a squib.