make on the noise created by tuning the orchestra, will, I hope, give no lasting remorse to any of the gentlemen employed in the band. It is to be desired that they would keep their instruments ready tuned, and strike off at once. This would be an accommodation to many well-meaning persons who frequent the theater, who, not being blest with the ear of St. Cecilia, mistake the tuning for the overture, and think the latter concluded before it is begun.

Give, half-ashamed, a tiny flourish still,"

was originally written "one hautboy will"; but, having provi-
dentially been informed, when this poem was on the point of
being sent off, that there is but one hautboy in the band, I
averted the storm of popular and managerial indignation from
the head of its blower: as it now stands, "one fiddle" among
many, the faulty individual will, I hope, escape detection. The
story of the flying playbill is calculated to expose a practice
much too common, of pinning playbills to the cushions inse-
curely, and frequently, I fear, not pinning them at all. If
these lines save one playbill only from the fate I have recorded,
I shall not deem my labor ill employed. The concluding epi-
sode of Patrick Jennings glances at the boorish fashion of wear-
ing the hat in the one-shilling gallery. Had Jennings thrust
his between his feet at the commencement of the play, he
might have leaned forward with impunity, and the catastrophe
I relate would not have occurred. The line of handkerchiefs
formed to enable him to recover his loss is purposely so crossed
in texture and materials as to mislead the reader in respect to
the real owner of any one of them. For in the statistical view
of life and manners which I occasionally present, my clerical
profession has taught me how extremely improper it would be
by any allusion, however slight, to give any uneasiness, how-
ever trivial, to any individual, however foolish or wicked.
G. C.

'Tis sweet to view, from half-past five to six,
Our long wax candles, with short cotton wicks,
Touched by the lamplighter's Promethean art,
Start into light, and make the lighter start;
To see red Phoebus through the gallery pane
Tinge with his beam the beams of Drury Lane:
While gradual parties fill our widened pit,
And gape, and gaze, and wonder, ere they sit.

At first, while vacant seats give choice and ease,
Distant or near, they settle where they please;
But when the multitude contracts the span,
And seats are rare, they settle where they can.

Now the full benches to late-comers doom
No room for standing, miscalled standing room.

Hark! the check-taker moody silence breaks,
And bawling "Pit full!" gives the check he takes;
Yet onward still the gathering numbers cram,
Contending crowders shout the frequent damn,
And all is bustle, squeeze, row, jabbering, and jam.
See to their desks Apollo's sons repair-
Swift rides the rosin o'er the horse's hair!
In unison their various tones to tune,

Murmurs the hautboy, growls the hoarse bassoon;
In soft vibration sighs the whispering lute,

Tang goes the harpsichord, too-too the flute,

Brays the loud trumpet, squeaks the fiddle sharp, Winds the French horn, and twangs the tingling harp; Till, like great Jove, the leader, figuring in,

Attunes to order the chaotic din.

Now all seems hushed but no, one fiddle will

Give, half-ashamed, a tiny flourish still.

Foiled in his crash, the leader of the clan
Reproves with frowns the dilatory man:
Then on his candlestick thrice taps his bow,

Nods a new signal, and away they go.

Perchance, while pit and gallery cry, "Hats off!" And awed Consumption checks his chided cough, Some giggling daughter of the Queen of Love Drops, reft of pin, her playbill from above:

Like Icarus, while laughing galleries clap,

Soars, ducks, and dives in air the printed scrap;
But, wiser far than he, combustion fears,
And, as it flies, eludes the chandeliers;
Till, sinking gradual, with repeated twirl,

It settles, curling, on a fiddler's curl;

Who from his powdered pate the intruder strikes,
And, for mere malice, sticks it on the spikes.

Say, why these Babel strains from Babel tongues? Who's that calls "Silence!" with such leathern lungs? He who, in quest of quiet, "Silence!" hoots,

Is apt to make the hubbub he imputes.

What various swains our motley walls contain!
Fashion from Moorfields, honor from Chick Lane;
Bankers from Paper Buildings here resort,
Bankrupts from Golden Square and Riches Court;
From the Haymarket canting rogues in grain,
Gulls from the Poultry, sots from Water Lane;
The lottery-cormorant, the auction-shark,

The full-price master, and the half-price clerk;
Boys who long linger at the gallery door,

With pence twice five-they want but twopence more;
Till some Samaritan the twopence spares,

And sends them jumping up the gallery stairs.

Critics we boast who ne'er their malice balk,

But talk their minds - we wish they'd mind their talk;
Big-worded bullies, who by quarrels live-
Who give the lie, and tell the lie they give;
Jews from St. Mary Axe, for jobs so wary,
That for old clothes they'd even axe St. Mary;
And bucks with pockets empty as their pate,
Lax in their gaiters, laxer in their gait;
Who oft, when we our house lock up, carouse
With tippling tipstaves in a lock-up house.

Yet here, as elsewhere, Chance can joy bestow,
Where scowling Fortune seemed to threaten woe.

John Richard William Alexander Dwyer
Was footman to Justinian Stubbs, Esquire ;
But when John Dwyer listed in the Blues,
Emanuel Jennings polished Stubbs's shoes.
Emanuel Jennings brought his youngest boy
Up as a corn-cutter a safe employ;

In Holywell Street, St. Pancras, he was bred
(At number twenty-seven, it is said),
Facing the pump, and near the Granby's Head:
He would have bound him to some shop in town,
But with a premium he could not come down.
Pat was the urchin's name a red-haired youth,
Fonder of purl and skittle-grounds than truth.

Silence, ye gods! to keep your tongues in awe, The Muse shall tell an accident she saw.

Pat Jennings in the upper gallery sat, But, leaning forward, Jennings lost his hat:

Down from the gallery the beaver flew

And spurned the one to settle in the two.

How shall he act? Pay at the gallery door

Two shillings for what cost, when new, but four?

Or till half price, to save his shilling, wait,
And gain his hat again at half-past eight?

Now, while his fears anticipate a thief,

John Mullens whispers, "Take my handkerchief."

"Thank you," cries Pat; "but one won't make a line."

"Take mine," cried Wilson; and cried Stokes, "Take mine."

A motley cable soon Pat Jennings ties,

Where Spitalfields with real India vies.

Like Iris' bow, down darts the painted clew,

Starred, striped, and spotted, yellow, red, and blue,

Old calico, torn silk, and muslin new.
George Green below, with palpitating hand,
Loops the last 'kerchief to the beaver's band-
Upsoars the prize! The youth with joy unfeigned,
Regained the felt, and felt what he regained;
While to the applauding galleries grateful Pat
Made a low bow, and touched the ransomed hat.

THE SHIP DUELS AND THE PRIVATEERS.1

By J. B. MACMASTER.

(From "History of the United States.")

[JOHN BACH MACMASTER, American historian, was born at Brooklyn, N.Y., June 29, 1852; is professor of American history in the University of Pennsylvania. His chief work is the "History of the People of the United States" (1883-1895), not yet completed. He has also written "Benjamin Franklin” in the "American Men of Letters" series, etc.]

WHILE the army which the republicans had expected would long since have taken Canada was meeting with disaster after disaster on land, the hated and neglected navy was winning victory after victory on the sea. Such was the neglect into which this arm of the service had been suffered to fall, that but five ships were ready for sea on the day war was declared. Two of these, by order of the Secretary, were riding at anchor

1 Copyright, 1895, by J. B. MacMaster. Used by permission of D. Appleton & Co.

in the lower bay at New York, where, on the 21st of June, the "United States," the "Congress," and the "Argus" came in from the southward and joined them. The arrival of the frigates was most timely; for they had hardly passed the Hook before Commodore John Rodgers, who commanded, received news of the declaration of war, and within an hour the fleet - composed of the "President," the "United States," the "Congress," the "Argus," and the "Hornet"-weighed anchor and stood out to sea. Rodgers had orders to strike any of the British cruisers that had so long been searching merchantmen off Sandy Hook and return to port. But information had been received that the homeward-bound plate fleet had left Jamaica late in May, and he went off in pursuit. For a while he ran southeast, till, falling in with an American brig that had seen the Jamaica fleet of eighty-five vessels, under convoy, in latitude 36° north, longitude 67° west, he set sail in that direction, and at six in the morning of June 23, made out a stranger in the northeast. She proved to be the British thirty-six-gun frigate "Belvidera," Captain Richard Byron, which stood toward the fleet for a few minutes, and then turned and went off to the northeast, with the Americans in hot pursuit. The "President," happening to be the best sailer, came up with her late in the afternoon, fired three shots into her stern, and was about to send a fourth when the gun exploded, killing and wounding sixteen men, and among them Captain Rodgers. Confusion and demoralization followed, the sailing became bad, the shots fell short, and the "Belvidera," cutting away her anchors and throwing her barge, gig, yawl, and jolly-boat into the sea, and starting fourteen tons of water, drew ahead and was soon out of danger. The fleet now went a second time in pursuit of the Jamaica men, and kept up the chase till within a day's run of the English Channel, when they stood to the southward and came back to Boston by way of Madeira, the Western Islands, and the Grand Banks.

While Rodgers was thus searching for the plate fleet, an English squadron was looking for him. Three days after her fight with the "President," the "Belvidera" reached Halifax with the news of war. Vice Admiral Sawyer instantly dispatched Captain Philip Bowes Vere Broke with the "Shannon," the "Africa," the "Eolus," and the "Belvidera," to destroy Rodgers' fleet. Sweeping down the coast, the squadron was joined at Nantucket Island by the "Guerrière," and on July