"vagrant," and swore they would be sung to by native nightingales, and not by foreign screech-owls. Peas were thrown on the stage to endanger the dancers. Ladies wearing O. P. medals were cheered. Men dressed as sailors and middies delivered ribald speeches. Everybody exulted when Charles Kemble fell by accident in the very height of a mortal combat with George Frederick Cooke as Richard Crookback. A gentleman in the boxes played "Colleen" on the flute all through the first piece; bitten apples were thrown at Mrs. Charles Kemble when she was playing Lucy, in the Beggar's Opera. Mr. O'Reilly denounced the sort of ladies who frequented the privileged boxes. In vain Townsend and his myrmidons dashed into the pit and galleries, tore off the placards and banners, or arrested the ringleaders of the evening, while the indefatigable Brandon had men taken up for continually coughing or even for crying" Silence" in an aggravating way.

The Times grew more angry, and denounced Mrs. Siddons for receiving a salary of fifty pounds a night. Why, the lord chief justice sat every day in Westminster Hall, from nine to four for half that sum. Hard-lined, high-coloured, gross caricatures, represented Sarah, John, and Charles Kemble as sturdy, impudent beggars, with John Philip in front exclaiming, "Pity our ach-es, and our want-es." The O. P. dance grew so popular that even princes of the blood came to see it. One night a lady who was seen lending a pin to fasten an O. P. placard in front of the boxes received an ovation from the whole house.

Kemble was a man of temper, nerve, and firmness. The prize-fighters were not his hiring; but he now sometimes bemused himself (in a grave way) with old port. Cooke, who had received lectures from his manager, exulted in these occasional aberrations, and, repeating Black Jack's own galling words to himself, used to say:

Kemble, you were very drunk last night. If I were you I should avoid it when going on the stage. You should time it-you should time it as I do."

Kemble's speeches were, however, often reasonable, and full of common sense. He proved to the rioters that even in Queen Anne's time, a hundred years before, when food was cheaper, the price to the pit had been three shillings. He told them the proprietors for ten years past had not received six per cent. on their fluctuating and precarious investment. He assured them that actors did benefit by the receipts, and that their salaries were three times as large as their predecessors'. He ended by a generous outburst that ought to have touched the English heart.

"This," he added, "I declare to you upon my honour-I, who would not tell a lie for all that this theatre is worth!"

The tumults and riots still went on. The O. P. rioter had now reduced things to a system. In his enormous sevencaped great-coat he had nightly to squeeze himself through the iron hatch under the jealous scrutiny of Brandon and the money and cheque takers, his dozen feet of placards wound round his body, a rattle, a dustman's bell, a post-horn, drum, or a trombone, and his white nightcap and short bludgeon pent in his pocket. He had to "roar himself as hoarse as a night coachman in winter," to stamp the fierce O. P. dance, to join in real and sham combats, and to risk his limbs in frantic rushes down to the orchestra. To reward such arduous service four hundred and forty-five pounds were collected.

The chief rioters usually left the theatre in procession, howling at the offices of the opposition newspapers, or shouting Horace Smith's song of "Heigh ho, says Kemble," under the very windows of the unbending manager. Mr. Kemble's house was 89, Great Russell Street, north side-a house pulled down when the eastern wing of the British Museum was erected. On one occasion, when the mob had threatened a visit to the manager's house, the magistrates ambushed soldiers close at hand, and gave orders what to do in case the doors were forced or set on fire.

At last a lull came. The jubilee procession in honour of George the Third, in which the cars of the allegorical four quarters of the world were drawn by scene-shifters in their plain clothes, drew nobody.

Cooke, in the epilogue to the Grecian Daughter, alluding to the disaffection as past, lit up the flames again, and the house shook with applause when Charles Kemble died as Dionysius. A fresh cause of offence also occurred. One of those warm, fussy persons, who always appear at such times of public excitement, coming one night into the theatre, in full Whig uniform (blue coat and buff waistcoat, and with the dangerous letters O. P. in his hat), was saluted with the familiar and commendatory address of" Here comes the honest counsellor!" and way was made for him to the centre of the pit. Thus encouraged, and it was thought authorised, the people again gave free scope to their clamour, and "Old prices," and Clifford for ever!" became the rallying-words of the night. Brandon, the boxkeeper, got this Mr. Clifford apprehended outside the theatre, as a rioter, and carried before a magistrate at Bow Street, by whom, however, he was immediately discharged. Mr. Clifford then indicted Brandon for an assault and false imprisonment, in which indictment Brandon was

L

cast for five pounds. When the jury came in with their verdict for the plaintiff, a burst of applause and uproar broke forth in such a manner as to entirely destroy the decorum of a court of justice. Cries of "Huzza!" by hundreds at once were communicated like electricity to the multitude in the open hall, and echoed on the instant through Palace Yard.

In consequence of the issue of this trial, a dinner of about three hundred people took place on the 14th of December, at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Mr. Clifford in the chair, and a committee was formed to defend the persons then under prosecution for the like conduct. These symptoms of a regularly-organised opposition, added to the late decision of the jury, showed the proprietors the necessity of an immediate compromise. Mr. Kemble requested admission to the meeting, and striding in, like Coriolanus into the house of Aufidius, the following resolutions were amicably agreed upon: "That the boxes should continue at seven shillings; that the pit should be lowered to the old price, three shillings and sixpence; that the tier of private boxes in the front of the house should be thrown open and restored to the public at the end of the season; and that all prosecutions on both sides should be stopped."

The night of the Strand dinner they performed at Covent Garden the Provoked Husband and Tom Thumb. At halfprice, as usual the O. P.'s poured in, with bugles, bells, and rattans, and began their charivari as usual, till Mr. Kemble appeared in his walking-dress, half-boots, great-coat, round hat, and cane, just as he had come from the tavern. After half an hour's endeavours to obtain silence, he acquainted the house with the treaty he had just signed. He retired amid incessant cries of "Dismiss Brandon!" "No private boxes!"

In vain Mr. Munden, as the king, bowed and scraped, made the most conciliatory grimaces, and talked confidentially to the nearest rows of the pit. The rioters called out, "It is from your master we want an answer." At last some one flung a paper on the stage. Munden took it up, read it, bowed, and retired. He returned, leading in the abashed, humbled, and penitent Brandon, who tried to read an apology; but the storm grew to a whirlwind, and oranges and sticks were thrown at the over-zealous boxkeeper till he withdrew, disconsolate enough. It was in vain that Mr. Harris came forward, scratching his crop uneasily, and pleaded for his faithful servant. The howl was, "He must be dismissed. It's a sine quâ non."

On the following night, Kemble, as Penruddock, surrendered,

and poor Brandon retired from office. He also apologised for the introduction of the fighting-men. He was sorry for what had passed. It would be his first pride to prevent anything of the kind occurring again. Then broke forth a thunderburst of cheers, and the O. P.'s in the pit hoisted their final placard three times. It was inscribed

"We are satisfied."

The Rev. Mr. Geneste, an authority on these matters, thought the new prices were unbearable. He says: "It must be allowed that seven shillings is a very high price for an evening's amusement. In the time of Charles the Second the boxes were four shillings, and the pit two shillings and sixpence. This had probably been the price from the Restoration. On particular occasions, the boxes were raised to five shillings, and the pit to three shillings. It does not appear that any other advance took place for about seventy years. At last the raised prices gradually became the regular prices. Thus the matter rested for about fifty or sixty years. In 1791-1792, when the Drury Lane company removed to the Opera House, the boxes were raised to six shillings, and the pit to three shillings and sixpence."

Looking calmly back, there can be no doubt that Kemble, although stiffnecked, arrogant, and imprudent in his way of treating the rioters, was in the main right. If the public objected to the new prices, they had their remedy in their own hands; they could have stopped away. According to the opinion laid down by Lord Mansfield, the riot was a distinct conspiracy, and should have been punished as such.

Can we doubt that Kemble went home from the reconciliation dinner still, in his inner soul, inflexible as Coriolanus, and muttering in his grand academic manner, and in his asthmatic voice, those bitter words of Caius Marcius?

"It is a purposed thing, and grows by plot,
To curb the will of the nobility;

Suffer it, and live with such as cannot rule,
Nor ever will be ruled."

THE TWO GREAT MURDERS IN RATCLIFF HIGHWAY (1811).

BEFORE gas-lights and the new police had rendered London as safe as it is at present, the east end of the metropolis was infested by the dregs of the ruffianism, not merely of Europe, but of all the world. Outlaws of all countries sought refuge among the crews of our Indiamen, to obtain sanctuary from pursuers, or to earn money enough for a revel on shore. Thievish Hindoos, cruel Malays, manslaughtering Americans, savage Frenchmen, brutal Germans, fiery Sclavonians, butcherly Russians, the lees and outcast of both Christendom and savagedom, frequented the brandy-shops and low dancingrooms of Wapping, Stepney, Poplar, Ratcliff Highway, and the purlieus of the Docks. With this seething mass of villany, it could scarcely be wondered at that a great crime should be at last committed.

Within a few minutes of midnight, on Saturday, December 7, 1811, Mr. Marr, a young, newly-married man, keeping a small lace and hosier's shop at No. 29, Ratcliff Highway, sent out his servant girl to pay a baker's bill and to get some oysters for supper. Mrs. Marr was at the time in the kitchen, rocking her baby in its cradle. The apprentice, a young ruddy Devonshire lad, named Goven, aged fourteen, was either busy in the shop or at work downstairs. The girl was alarmed as she left the house on that peculiarly gloomy December night, by seeing a man in a long dark coat standing in the lamp-light on the opposite side of the street, as if watching her master's house. The watchman, a friend of Marr's, had also previously noticed this mysterious man continually peeping into the window of Marr's shop, and thinking the act suspicious, had gone in and told the proprietor. A few minutes after Mary the servant left, as the watchman was returning on his