[Sidenote: WEATHER. while forced his dwindling victims to confess, [Illustration: _A Carriage Sweep._] "small by degrees, and beautifully less."]
Sweet Gallery squeeze, you will possess The utmost freedom of the press; Crowds, looking up, still pushing go, With _stares_ above, and _stairs_ below; The soldier first, a foremost man, Like Bow-street culprits—_keeps the van_, Charges the door, whose keepers stern A "bob" will charge _him_ in return; He's _got his step_, so with light mind Bears all the pressure from behind; Feels from the rear-mob, all alive, A drive, though not a _carriage drive_: And, lo! among them, soot-grimed deep, A sweep, though not a _carriage sweep_. Baker and butcher, lass and lover; With one fat Falstaff falling over, Sure—though he _like it_ not—to go And _lump it_ when he gets below; A prize John Bull, who, bulky dunce, Takes both alternatives at once, And quickly reaches _his first floor_, _Dismounted_ at the Gallery Door!
4. Exhibition of the Royal Academy opens, at the National Gallery.
R.A.'s are _raised_ to power: and, presto, bang! "On _inner_ walls the cry is still 'they _hang_;'" While many a heavy sigh the artists fetch, "To have them _hang_ our pictures is no _ketch_." For half their sins did justice prompt the elves, Half the R.A. array would hang themselves!
No lady is a lady without having a box at the Opera: so my Jemmy, who knew as much about music,—bless her!—as I do about sanscrit, algebra, or any other foreign language, took a prime box on the second tier. It was what they called a double box; it really _could_ hold two, that is, very comfortably; and we got it a great bargain—for five hundred a year! Here, Tuesdays and Saturdays we used regularly to take our places, Jemmy and Jemimarann sitting in front; me, behind: but as my dear wife used to wear a large fantail gauze hat, with ostrich feathers, birds of paradise, artificial flowers, and tags of muslin or satin, scattered all over it, I'm blest if she didn't fill the whole of the front of the box; and it was only by jumping and dodging, three or four times in the course of the night, that I could manage to get a sight of the actors. By kneeling down, and looking steady under my darling Jemmy's sleeve, I _did_ contrive, every now and then, to have a peep of Senior Lablash's boots, in the Puritanny, and once saw Madame Greasi's crown and head-dress in Annybalony.