CHAP. III - Second Day

Summary

In nothing is the difference between home and foreign arrangements more striking than in the quantity of entertainment deemed fashionable and sufficient. Talk of the English as lukewarm in the matter of public amusements! Where else shall we find audiences willing to be shut up in the strait seats of a theatre, or the cramping benches of an opera pit, from seven o'clock in the evening till an hour past midnight? — where else, frames robust enough to endure, as at our provincial festivals, four hours of oratorio in the morning, and five hours of concert in the evening, with all the intermediate hurries and cares attendant on the pleasure? “Rap, rap all day, and fruz, fruz all neet,” the old Duchess of Gordon's laconic description of life in London, might be adopted for the motto of quantity in English dissipation, whether its object be the new missionary from Hindustan or Owyhee, or the new Italian songstress, who has two notes more in the altissimo scale, and sixteen demisemi-quavers more in one breath, than any of her predecessors!

I was sitting revolving this important distinction in my mind on the second morning, and rejoicing in the rationality of a few hours' pause, when Dr. Mendelssohn kindly paid me a visit.