should rumble before its cue.  It would be a hopeless task to paint the agitation of the contents of the barrel.  The property-man, swearing the barrel was unusually heavy, placed the complicated machine in readiness, the witches entered amid flames of rosin; the thunder-bell rang, the barrel renewed its impetus, and away rolled George Frederick and his ponderous companions.  Silence would now have been no virtue, and he roared most manfully, to the surprise of the thunderer, who, neglecting to stop the rolling machine, it entered on the stage, and George Frederick, bursting off the carpet head of the barrel, appeared before the audience just as the witches had agreed to meet when ’the hurly-burly’s done.’” Cooke’s biographer, Mr. William Dunlap, thought that this story bore “sufficient marks of probability.”  It must be said, however, that as to anecdotes touching their heroes, biographers are greatly prone to be credulous.

The illusions of the stage were much enhanced by Garrick’s Alsatian scene-painter, Philip James de Loutherbourg, a man of genius in his way, and an eminent innovator and reformer in the matter of theatrical decoration.  Before his time the scenes had been merely strained “flats” of canvas, extending the whole breadth and height of the stage.  He was the first to introduce set scenes and what are technically called “raking pieces.”  He invented transparent scenes, with representations of moonlight, rising and setting suns, fires, volcanoes, &c., and contrived effects of colour by means of silk screens of various hues placed before the foot and side lights.  He was the first to represent a mist by suspending a gauze between the scene and the spectator.  For two seasons he held a dioramic exhibition of his own, called the Eidophusikon, at the Patagonian Theatre in Exeter Change, and afterwards at a house in Panton Square.  The special attraction of the entertainment was a storm at sea, with the wreck of the “Halsewell,” East Indiaman.  No pains were spared to picture the tempest and its most striking effects.  The clouds were movable, painted upon a canvas of vast size, and rising diagonally by means of a winding machine.  The artist excelled in his treatment of clouds, and by regulating the action of his windlass he could direct their movements, now permitting them to rise slowly from the horizon and sail obliquely across the heavens and now driving them swiftly along according to their supposed density and the power ascribed to the wind.  The lightning quivered through transparent places in the sky.  The waves carved in soft wood from models made in clay, coloured with great skill, and highly varnished to reflect the lightning, rose and fell with irregular action, flinging the foam now here, now there, diminishing in size, and dimming in colour, as they receded from the spectator.  “De Loutherbourg’s genius,” we are informed, “was as prolific in imitations of nature to astonish the ear as to charm the sight.  He introduced a new art—­the picturesque