That a headache too often follows hard upon a dramatic entertainment must be tolerably plain to anyone who has ever sat in a theatre.

Surely a better state of things must have existed a century ago, when the grandsires and great-grandsires of us Londoners were in the habit of frequenting the theatres night after night, almost as punctually as they ate their dinner or sipped their claret or their punch.

To look in at Drury Lane or Covent Garden, if only to witness an act or two of the tragedy or comedy of the evening, was a sort of duty with the town gentlemen, wits, and Templars, a hundred years back, when George III.

was king.

But gas had not then superseded wax, and tallow, and oil.
Beyond increasing the _quantity_ of light, stage management has done little since Garrick's introduction of foot-lights, or "floats," as they are technically termed, in the way of satisfactorily adjusting the illumination of the stage.