the ladies of the ballet. Some were
voluminous; some were scanty; some were
short; some—not many— long. Some
were stiff and expansive; others had to
make up in spangles, what they lacked in
starch. Some were whisked about in
conventional ballet figures; others, passed
across the stage, or manoeuvred on it in
marches and processions. Of the ladies
wearing these various costumes, some were
elderly. Those figured in the background.
Some were mere children. Active young
women bounded over the stage, and
threaded their corkscrew path among their
humbler sisters, apparently oblivious of all
else; and little mites of girls danced their
infantine boleros close to the footlights, and
with eyes fixed immovably on the
conductor's baton. Princes, also of all ages
(and some of remarkably prepossessing
appearance), have been passed in review
by Your Commissioner. Stout princes, lean
princes, tall princes, short princes; princes
in mauve, in red, in blue, in green; princes
differing from one another in every respect,
except that they were almost all clad in
doublet and hose, and that they had all
been to a Music Hall or two, and had
brought away some of the popular airs of
the day. All the princes danced; hornpipe,
clog dance, break-down, champion jig, or
what not.

Your Commissioner now, recalling his
experiences, begs to say that he is unable
to report the existence of stage indecency,
such as is suggested by your Lordship's
circular. If the ordinary stage dress of a
ballet girl, and of a stage prince, be
improper, then the stage swarms with
improprieties, and has so swarmed for many
years. If it be asserted that less attention
is given to public decency, in the costumes
in question, at the present time, than has
for years and years been the case, Your
Commissioner begs totally to deny the fact.
If it be intended to be conveyed that
exhibitions are commonly to be witnessed in
the pantomimes and burlesques of the day,
which a man should think twice about
taking the ladies of his family to see,
Your Commissioner, with all respect for
the remarks in the press and "other
sources," on which your Lordship's
strictures are founded, respectfully but
uncompromisingly and firmly says that it is
not so.

Certain managers, plunging eagerly into
print, and commenting on your Lordship's
circular, assumed that the facts were as
your Lordship's informants stated them,
and immediately fell foul of the public, by
whom improprieties were encouraged. If
by this it were meant that the public taste
is becoming so vitiated and debased as to
call for questionable exhibitions on the
boards of a theatre, Your Commissioner
enters against any such hardy representation
his energetic protest. Any manager
who may think it well to try the experiment,
and to pander to this supposed
depraved taste, will soon have ample leisure
to meditate on the vanity of earthly things
in the seclusion of Whitecross- street.

The really disgraceful exhibition of a low
French dancing company at a London
theatre last year, might have called justly
for your Lordship's attention. It was so
little relished by the audience, that it
speedily had to be transplanted to more
congenial soil. The lesson has probably
been taken to heart, for nothing of the
sort has been attempted this year.

Your Commissioner thinks that your
Lordship may take heart of grace, and
that, after all, the public may be trusted.
At the same time he thinks it will do no
harm to any one, either before or behind
the footlights, to know that your
Lordship's department is on the alert, and that
any breach of public decorum will be sternly
repressed. But he submits, in justice to
all concerned, that on the next occasion on
which your Lordship deems it necessary
to interfere, you should point out exactly
what it is that has moved your Lordship to
action, and should take the earliest
opportunity of proving to the offending manager
that the Lord Chamberlain's rebuke is no
brutum fulmen. So will the public learn
what it is that they ought to avoid, and so
will innocent managers, untouched by your
Lordship's anger, reap the reward of their
virtuous actions.

WILLS AND WILL MAKING.

OF all the dark corners into which the human
soul retires when it has some doubtful business
on hand, some of the very darkest and most
unpleasant are found to be those selected for
naking a will. Think of the thousands of
furious fathers " cutting off " their children for
some marriage disapproved of; giving out that
they are asserting paternal rights—in reality,
revenging themselves because of thwarted ambition
and greedy hopes. Think of the line of old
sinners darning up their wicked lives with
bequests to hospitals and charities, to which
they would not give a shilling till what they
lave is no longer theirs. Think of the lurid
death-bed scenes, the act delayed until almost
to late; the cormorants crowding round, the
lawyers and clergy waiting the interval of in