and skate about with as much rapidity, and precisely as though it were a sheet of ice.  The adroit skill of old stagers on the slippery surface, with the clumsy awkwardness and terror of novices in the art, are well represented.  A prodigious fat man makes his appearance; when a race is called for, he, of course, tries his prowess, when the ice cracking beneath the heavy weight assembled on it gives way with a heavy crash, and “Fatty” is consigned to a watery bed.  Assistance is immediately tendered, when, by Harlequin’s power, a lean and shrivelled spirit of the deep rises from below to the great alarm of the beholders, and whose limbs continue to expand till his head touches the clouds.  The whole of the scene is one of the most laughable and best managed in the Pantomime.  Kew Gardens, on a May-day morning, is also a very pleasing scene, in which some pretty Morris dancing is introduced.  The Barber’s shop, in which shaving by steam is hit off, is excellent in its way, but not so well understood in its details, as to make it equally effective in representation.  Vauxhall Bridge, and the Gardens which succeeds it, are also charmingly painted by the Grieves, and from hence the Clown and Pantaloon take an “Aeronautic excursion” to Paris.  This is a revolving scene—­the balloon ascends—­and the English landscape gradually recedes from the view—­the gradual approach of night—­the rising of the moon—­the passing of the balloon through heavy clouds—­and the return of day, are beautifully represented; the sea covered with ships, is seen in distant perspective with the French coast; a bird’s-eye view of Paris follows, and the balloon safely descends in the gardens of the Tuileries.  The adjoining palace, mansions, and gardens being brilliantly illuminated, give the scene a most splendid and picturesque effect.  A variety of other scenes, but far too numerous to mention individually, deserve the highest applause, particularly the village of Bow, Leadenhall Market, with a change to an illuminated civic feast in the Guildhall; Burlington Arcade at night, and the village of Ganderclue by sunrise.  The Temple of Iris, formed of the “radiant panoply of the heavenly arch,” by Grieve, is most brilliant.

The advent of Pantomime, early in the eighteenth century, gave a special fillip to spectacular display, as they were all announced to be set off with “new scenery, decorations, and flyings.”

Some of the stage devices of Pantomime are of considerable antiquity; as, for instance, the basket-work hobby-horses, that figured as far back as the old English Morris dances, to be revived in the French ballet of the seventeenth century, and, in after years, in English Pantomime.