If Mr Flinders Petrie’s discovery of the remains of the gigantic statue of Rameses II. in Lower Egypt, one hundred feet high of solid granite, is the largest statue of antiquity, the ‘Liberty’ of M. Bartholdi may certainly take rank as the most colossal production of modern days.
A GREENROOM ROMANCE.
IN THREE SCENES.—SCENE I.
Mr Percy Montmorency was seated in front of a looking-glass in his dressing-room at the Pantheon Theatre, habited in the costume of Charles Surface, with the perruquier in attendance. The name of ‘Montmorency’ was merely a nom de théâtre assumed by Harry Stanley when he adopted the somewhat singular resolution of ‘fretting and strutting his hour’ on the boards of a metropolitan theatre; for Mr Stanley was the only child of his father Colonel Stanley, and consequently heir to that gallant officer’s estates in Yorkshire and elsewhere. For the rest, he was three-and-twenty, undeniably good-looking, and endowed with considerable abilities. Having completed the arrangement of the powdered wig, the perruquier withdrew a pace and contemplated the effect with well-simulated admiration. ‘Mr Charles Mathews never looked the part better, sir.’
The actor seemed to coincide in the opinion of his flattering attendant, for he rose, and surveyed himself in the glass with admiration, which he made no attempt to conceal.
‘A good house, Jackson?’
‘Capital, sir. But a little cold. They’ll warm up when you go on, sir.’
‘Tell the call-boy I want him, Jackson.’
Jackson withdrew; and Montmorency surrendered himself to a mental soliloquy, which assumed somewhat of this form: ‘I wonder what my father wishes to see me about? The same old story, I suppose—the folly and wickedness of the step I have taken. Well, of one thing I am certain: I am much better off in my present position, than wedded to that Barbadoes girl, Miss Anstruther, in spite of her money-bags, and whom I have never seen.’
These reflections were put an end to by the entrance of the call-boy.