at the famous Bottle Conjurer hoax, were incited by the Culloden Duke of Cumberland to pull down the house!  The royal prince stood up in his box waving his drawn sword, which someone, however, ventured to wrest from his grasp.  The interior fittings of the theatre were completely destroyed; the furniture and hangings being carried into the street and made a bonfire of, the curtain surmounting the flaming heap like a gigantic flag.  A riot at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields, in 1721, led to George I.’s order that in future a guard should attend the performances.  This was the origin of the custom that long prevailed of stationing sentries on either side of the proscenium during representations at the patent theatres.  Of late years the guards have been relegated to the outside of the buildings.  On the occasion of state visits of royalty to the theatre, however—­although these are now, perhaps, to be counted among things of the past—­Beefeaters upon the stage form an impressive part of the ceremonial.

Theatrical rioting has greatly declined in violence, as well it might, since the O.P. saturnalia of disturbance, which lasted some sixty-six nights at Covent Garden Theatre in 1809.  Swords were no longer worn, but the rioters made free use of their fists, called in professional pugilists as their allies, and in addition to catcalls, armed themselves with bells, post-horns, whistles, and watchmen’s rattles.  The O.P. riots may be said to have abolished the catcall, but they established “goose.”  Captures of the rioters were occasionally made by Brandon, the courageous box-office keeper, and they were charged at Bow Street Police Court with persistent hissing, with noisily crying “Silence!” and with “unnatural coughing.”  The charges were not proceeded with, but one of the accused, Mr. Clifford, a barrister, brought an action against Brandon for false imprisonment.  In this case the Court of King’s Bench decided that, although the audience in a public theatre have a right to express the feelings excited at the moment by the performance, and in this manner to applaud or hiss any piece which is represented, or any performer; yet if a number of persons, having come to the theatre with a predetermined purpose of interrupting the performance, for this end make a great noise so as to render the actors inaudible, though without offering personal violence or doing injury to the house, they are in law guilty of a riot.  Serjeant Best, the counsel for the plaintiff, urged that, as plays and players might be hissed, managers should be liable to their share; they should be controlled by public opinion; Garrick and others had yielded cheerfully to the jurisdiction of the pit without a thought of appealing to Westminster Hall.  “Bells and rattles,” added the serjeant, “may be new to the pit; but catcalls, which are equally stunning, are as old as the English drama.”  Apparently, however, the catcall, its claim to antiquity notwithstanding, was not favourably viewed by the