Drury Lane Pantomime commences at 7.30, and is not over till 11.30, and yet in these four hours there rarely comes over you any sense of weariness, except perhaps when the ballets are too long.  From first to last the audience is expecting something, and is ready to accept every transition from one scene to another as a change for the better.  Mr. HARRY NICHOLLS and Mr. HERBERT CAMPBELL are, of course, funny to look at as the conventional proud sisters; only, as they admit in one of their duets, “it’s been done before,” in Cinderella, for example; and, by the way, in choosing this subject of Beauty and the Beast, all resemblance between the two stories should have been got rid of, as, up to the Ball Scene, except for the absence of the Pumpkin and the Mice, it is difficult to distinguish between the two fairy tales.  But, when last I saw Cinderella, wasn’t ROSINA VOKES the sprightly heroine, and her brother with the wonderful legs the Baron?  I think so:  but I will not be too much of a laudator temporis acti, and will be thankful that one of the youthful Commissioners thoroughly enjoyed this Pantomime, though he was not absolutely certain as to what might be the effect of ghosts and skeletons on his very little brother, aged five or six, if he were brought to see this show.  For my part, had I at an early age seen these skeletons which pervade the piece, and of whom two become elongated ghosts, I should have lain awake o’ nights, seen horrible reproductions on the wall by the glimmer of the fire-light (spectral rush-lights were used when I was a small boy), screamed for help, and perhaps given my own private and practical version of the Ghost Scene in Richard the Third by not leaping out of bed and shouting, “Give me another horse!” (there was only one in the nursery, and that was a towel-horse), but by putting my head under the bed-clothes and shivering with fear till my nurse returned from her supper.  Such on me, your present brave First Commissioner of Theatres, was the effect of merely seeing the interior of the Blue Chamber in Skelt’s Scenes and Characters, with which I used to furnish my small theatre on the nursery table.

[Illustration:  Troubled Trots.]

Well, this is all private and personal, and not much about the Drury Lane Pantomime, it is true; but, as everyone will see “The Only Pantomime” (we have reached the era of the “Onlys"), and be only too delighted, what need I say more than that the libretto is written by Mr. BILL-OF-THE-PLAY YARDLEY conjointly with Mr. DRURIOLANUS AUCTOR, and I daresay it was very witty and rhythmical and poetical, though I didn’t catch much of it, and the songs were neither particularly well sung, nor remarkably humorous,—­one, introduced by Miss VESTA TILLY (and, therefore, for this our joint authors are not responsible, except for permitting it to be done), being a distinct mistake, and utterly out of character with the part of the Prince, as written,