Some days since a meeting was held in the parish of Saint Pancras of the “Young Men’s Anti-Monopoly Association.”  The place of gathering, says the reporter, was “a ruined penny theatre!” It is evident in the brain of the writer that the small price at which the theatre was ruined made its infamy:  to be blighted for a penny was the shame.  Drury Lane and Covent Garden have been ruined over and over again—­but then their ruin, like PHRYNE’S, has ever been at a large price of admission; hence, like court harlots, their ruin has been dignified by high remuneration.  What, however, could be expected from a theatre that, with inconceivable wickedness, suffered itself to be undone for a penny?  Let the reporter answer:—­

“——­ FORSTER, Esq., advanced, and, assuming a teapot position on the stage, moved the first resolution, to the effect ’That the bread-tax was the cause of all distress, and that they should use their strenuous efforts to remove it.’  ’Ladies (there was one old woman in a shocking bad black and white straw bonnet present) and gentlemen (said he), this is a public meeting to all intents and purposes.’”

For ourselves we care not for an orator’s standing like a teapot, if what he pours out be something better than mere hot-water or dead small beer.  If, however, we were to typify orators in delf, there are many Tory talkers whom we would associate with more ignominious shapes of crockery than that of a teapot—­senators who are taken by the handle, and by their party used for the dirtiest offices.

We now come to the bad old woman whose excess of iniquity was blazoned in her “bad black and white straw bonnet.”  This woman might have been an ASPASIA, a DE STAEL, a Mrs. SOMERVILLE,—­nay, the SYBILLA CUMEA herself.  What of that?  The “bad” bonnet must sink the large souled Grecian to a cinder-wench, make the Frenchwoman a trapes from the Palais Royal, our fair astronomer a gipsy of Greenwich Park, and the fate-foretelling sybil a crone crawled from the worst garret of Battle-bridge.  The head is nothing; the bonnet’s all.  Think you that Mrs. Somerville could have studied herself into reputation, that the moon and stars would have condescended to smile upon her, if she had not attended their evening parties in a handsome turban, duly plumed and jewelled?

Come we now to the next recorded atrocity:—­

“There jumped now upon the stage a red-haired, laughing-hyena faced, fustian-coated biped, exclaiming—­’My name is Wall!  I have a substantive amendment to move to the resolution now proposed—­(’Go off, off! ooh, ooh, ooh! turn him out, out, out!’) We are met in a place where religion is taught (groans).  Well, then, we are met where they “teach the young idea how to shoot"’—­(laughter, groans, and ‘Go on, Wall.’) Turning to the young gents on the platform, ‘You,’ quoth Mr. Wall, ’have not read history:  you clerks at 16s. a week, with your gold chains and