In the pitchy darkness, this awful figure throwing his eyes about, the gas in the boxes shuddering out of sight, and the wind-instruments bugling the most horrible wails, the boldest spectator must have felt frightened.  But hark! what is that silver shimmer of the fiddles!  Is it—­can it be—­the gray dawn peeping in the stormy east?  The ghost’s eyes look blankly towards it, and roll a ghastly agony.  Quicker, quicker ply the violins of Phoebus Apollo.  Redder, redder grow the orient clouds.  Cockadoodledoo! crows that great cock which has just come out on the roof of the palace.  And now the round sun himself pops up from behind the waves of night.  Where is the ghost?  He is gone!  Purple shadows of morn “slant o’er the snowy sward,” the city wakes up in life and sunshine, and we confess we are very much relieved at the disappearance of the ghost.  We don’t like those dark scenes in pantomimes.

After the usual business, that Ophelia should be turned into Columbine was to be expected; but I confess I was a little shocked when Hamlet’s mother became Pantaloon, and was instantly knocked down by Clown Claudius.  Grimaldi is getting a little old now, but for real humor there are few clowns like him.  Mr. Shuter, as the grave-digger, was chaste and comic, as he always is, and the scene-painters surpassed themselves.

“Harlequin Conqueror and the Field of Hastings,” at the other house, is very pleasant too.  The irascible William is acted with great vigor by Snoxall, and the battle of Hastings is a good piece of burlesque.  Some trifling liberties are taken with history, but what liberties will not the merry genius of pantomime permit himself?  At the battle of Hastings, William is on the point of being defeated by the Sussex volunteers, very elegantly led by the always pretty Miss Waddy (as Haco Sharpshooter), when a shot from the Normans kills Harold.  The fairy Edith hereupon comes forward, and finds his body, which straightway leaps up a live harlequin, whilst the Conqueror makes an excellent clown, and the Archbishop of Bayeux a diverting pantaloon, &c. &c. &c.

Perhaps these are not the pantomimes we really saw; but one description will do as well as another.  The plots, you see, are a little intricate and difficult to understand in pantomimes; and I may have mixed up one with another.  That I was at the theatre on Boxing-night is certain—­but the pit was so full that I could only see fairy legs glittering in the distance, as I stood at the door.  And if I was badly off, I think there was a young gentleman behind me worse off still.  I own that he has good reason (though others have not) to speak ill of me behind my back, and hereby beg his pardon.

Likewise to the gentleman who picked up a party in Piccadilly, who had slipped and fallen in the snow, and was there on his back, uttering energetic expressions; that party begs to offer thanks, and compliments of the season.