398 The Theatres. [ApRIt, 
who, instead of that extraordinary addition to his Irish name, from the 
treasures of his own fancy, Rophino, (by no means, we believe, a literal 
translation of the name under which he delighted the John Bull at the 
Haymarket, and which, to an untravelled ear, sounds so like that expres- 
‘sive name, “ Rufiano; *) he should call himself Heliogabulus, or some 
name expressive of a dramatic digestion, on the largest scale, for we have 
Mr. Lacy, the manufacturer, compiler, arranger and deranger, of three- 
fourths of the French farces that have perished in the course of the year. 
The “ Oratorios” under the supreme command of Mr. Hawes, are 
solemnly following up the career of their predecessors, and are, like 
them, full of attraction to those who can listen to the heaviest music on 
earth for five hours together, and terrifying to all who have better 
tastes. The truth is that the world wears out its fondnesses for things 
of this kind, just as it does for every other. Thirty years ago we were 
all in love with revolutions, France, dancing dogs under the guillotine, 
_ and king killing. That taste wore itself out, and we had no more of it 
left, except here and there among a few little bitter coteries, of which 
the men were “ beggars” and “ philosophers,’ and the women scrib- 
blers and any thing else that the reader may please to conceive-—Our 
next taste was war: then nothing was delightful but Sunday drills, 
_ battles, with handsome loss in killed and wounded, illuminations, 
gazettes, and K.C.B.’s. Of that, too, we got-tired; the taxes helping 
to clear our sight on the subject. Then came long-winded speeches 
zbout trade, the rabble of political economists, prosings on poor laws, 
corn laws, and cheap ways of smothering the Irish peasantry, and 
banishing the English. Those at length tired us. Then came Mr. 
Hume with his “ tail’ of forty clerks, fishing up the crimes of the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, with one hand, and with the other fishing 
for pint mugs clubbed by the aggregate sixpences of statesmen of the 
smithy and ‘the scullery, assembling their “ collective wisdom” in the 
appropriate pot-house. Of that, too, we got sick in time. Then came 
Queen Caroline, a magnificent card in the pack of the Burdetts and 
Broughams, the queen of clubs, that the knaves would have turned into 
the queen of diamonds, if they could. Wise England! land of the phi- 
losopher and the statesman, profound in thought, and pregnant with 
experience, glory be to the days of the mob- led queen ! glory to the 
assembled cleanliness of her vindicatory chimney-sweepers, to the 
unblemished purity of the white-robed and plumaged sisterhood of 
Marylebone, to the sensitive delicacy of the nightmen of Whitechapel, 
to the scrupulous honour of the Rabbies of Moorfields, to the English » 
feeling and legislative knowledge of the patriots of St. Giles’s, and to 
the manliness and majesty of the Wilsons and Woods! Of that, too, we 
became tired. Then came this eternal Catholic Question, of which we 
are sick ever since we heard Mr. Peel, saw the back of Sir John Copley, 
and the brains of Sir Thomas Lethbridge. This taste is already gone : 
and now, unless we have a war, or pestilence, or half London burnt 
down, or an Irish invasion, or a pasture of the potatoe crop, or a run- 
away of some new Stephenson, we shall be absolutely at a loss for some- 
thing to read of at breakfast. The newspapers will be merely schedules 
of sales of Mr. Robins’s new filterer, histories of Mr. Elliston’s next tor- 
toise-shell snuff-box, pr esented by a “ grateful company ;” the squab- 
bles of Madame Vestris with her adorers, the loss of Mrs. Waylett’s best — 
paste tiara, or the honour of the king’s sword laid on the shoulders of 
