Various

“ An agency to a Fire and Life Assurance Society is, of course, above reproach, and the Stock Exchange, an institution which, in the imagination of reckless fools, provides as large a cover as charity, is positively enviable—a reputation which it owes to the fancied ease with which half-a-crown is converted into one hundred thousand pounds by the mere stroke of an office pen. ”

“ As to the Music,—well, I am not a musician, and in any new Opera when there is no one tuneful phrase as in Aïda or Tannhäuser, which, at the very first hearing, anyone with half an ear can straightway catch, and reproduce next day till everyone about him cries, "Oh don't!" ”

“ Everything is referred to him for decision, and the master of the house treats him with a deferential humility which goes far to contradict the cynical observation that there is no gratitude on earth. The Tolerated Husband, indeed, never tires of dispensing hospitality at the cost of his friend, and though the whole world knows the case, there will never be a lack of guests to accept what is offered.
At last, however, in spite of his toleration, he becomes an encumbrance in his own house, and, like most encumbrances, he has to be paid off, the friend providing the requisite annual income. ”

“ Then I re-read them, to judge of them not merely as dramas for the closet, but as dramas for the stage, written to be acted, not to be read; or, at all events, as far as the general public were concerned, to be acted first, and to be read afterwards. As acting dramas, it is difficult to conceive anything less practically dramatic. ”

“ The world begins to ask, vaguely at first, but with a constantly increasing persistence, how the thing is done. Respectability and malice combine to whisper a truthful answer. Starting from the axiom that the precarious income which is produced by a want of success in many branches of business cannot support luxury or purchase diamonds, they arrive, per saltum, at the conclusion that there must be some third party to provide the wife and the husband with means for their existence. ”

“ It may be that among our unimaginative race the lack of virtue is not presented in the gaudy trappings that delight our neighbours. Our wickedness is coarser and less attractive. It gutters like a cheap candle when contrasted with the steady brilliancy of the Parisian article. ”

“ The Tournament Scene is a very effective "set," but practically an elaborate "sell," as all the fighting on horseback is done "without." Presently, after a fierce clashing of property-swords, sounding suspiciously like fire-irons, Ivanhoe and Sir Brian come in, afoot, to fight out "round the sixth, and last." There is refreshing novelty in Mr. COPLAND's impersonation of Isaac of York, who might be taken for Shylock's younger brother who has been experimenting on his beard with some curious kind of hair-dye. ”

“ You are, let us say, a young professional man in chambers or offices, incompetently guarded by an idiot boy whom you dare not trust with the responsibility of denying you to strangers. You hear a knock at your outer door, followed by conversation in the clerk's room, after which your salaried idiot announces, "A Gentleman to see you." Enter a dingy and dismal little man in threadbare black, who advances with an air of mysterious importance. ”

“ It is certain that the gilded society which turns up a moderately aristocratic nose at trade and tradesmen, looks with complete indulgence upon an ex-officer who dabbles in wine, or associates himself with a new scheme for the easy manufacture of working-men's boots. ”

“ It is customary for the self-righteous moralists who puff themselves into a state of Jingo complacency over the failings of foreign nations, to declare with considerable unction that the domestic hearth, which every Frenchman habitually tramples upon, is maintained in unviolated purity in every British household. ”

“ The Tolerated Husband tries all these methods, one after another, with a painful monotony of failure in each. Yet, somehow or other, he still keeps up appearances, and manages to live in a certain style not far removed from luxury. ”

“ It can be none other than the husband's rich bachelor friend, the same who accompanies the pair on all their expeditions, who is a constant guest at their house, and is known to be both lavish and determined in the prosecution of any object on which he has set his heart. ”

“ The scenic effects are throughout admirable, and the method, adopted at the end of each tableau, of leaving the audience still more in the dark than they were before as to what is going on on the stage, is an excellent notion, well calculated to intensify the mystery in which the entire plot is enveloped. ”

“ The speaker said he knew that it had long been settled that the finest and most comprehensive education that our advanced civilisation could supply should be provided for the submerged half of the population, and they could not grumble at these things, but what they did not consider necessary was, that a salary should be forthcoming for each pupil-teacher sufficient to enable him or her to drive down to the schools in their own carriage and pair. ”

“ He should be weak in character, he may be pleasant in manner and appearance, and he must be both poor and extravagant. If to these qualities be added, first a wife, young, good-looking, and in most respects similar to her husband, though of a stronger will, and secondly a friend, rich, determined, strictly unprincipled, and thoroughly unscrupulous, the conditions which produce the Tolerated Husband may be said to be complete. ”

“ He takes a small house in the country, and fills it with guests, to whom he offers admirable wines, and excellent cigars. His wife is always beautifully dressed, and glitters with an array of jewels which make her the envy of many a steady leader of fashion. ”

“ He allows his friend to help him with large subventions of money; he lets him cover his wife with costly jewels. He is content to be supplanted without fuss, provided the supplanter never decreases the stream of his benevolence; and the supplanter, having more wealth than he knows what to do with, is quite content to secure his object on such extremely easy terms. ”

“ Having married, he finds that his pay, combined with a moderate private income, and a generous allowance of indebtedness, due to the gratification of expensive tastes, is insufficient to maintain him in that position of comfort to which he conceives himself to be entitled. ”

“ As to the dramatic construction of this Opera, had I not been informed by the kindly playbill that I was seeing Ivanhoe, I should never have found it out from the first scene, nor should I have been quite clear about it until the situation where that slyboots Rebecca artfully threatens to chuck herself off from the topmost turret rather than throw herself away on the bad Templar Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert-sans-Sullivan. The Opera might be fairly described as "Scenes from Ivanhoe," musically illustrated. There is, however, a continuity in the music which is lacking in the plot. ”

“ Recruits are wanted in the Ibsenite ranks, so as to strengthen numerically the one party against the other; for the Ibsenitish sect has so for progressed as to be at loggerheads amongst themselves; not indeed on any really essential question, such as would be, for example, any doubt as to the position of IBSEN as a Dramatist, or as to the order of merit and precedence to be assigned to his works. ”

“ He entertains his friends at elaborate dinners, both at home and at expensive restaurants; he is a frequent visitor at theatres, where he often pays for the stalls of many others as well as for his own. ”

“ It is the story of a "ballet lady" who rises in "the profession" to the dignity of a speaking part, and is on the point of being raised still higher in the social scale, and becoming the wife of a real live young nobleman, when she sensibly accepts a considerable sum of money, consents to forego her action for breach of promise, and finally marries a highly respectable acrobat, and becomes the landlady of the "Man of Kent." ”

“ House of Commons, Monday Night, Feb. 2.—"I do not," said OLD MORALITY, a cloud of disappointment settling on his massive brow, "know any case where, comparatively late in life, after a blameless career, depravity has so suddenly broken out in a man as it has with SYDNEY GEDGE. It is true, that upon occasion GEDGE has not given entire satisfaction to our friends opposite. They hold the opinion that his incursions in debate have been inopportune, and, in short, unnecessary ”

“ My poor dear Mother—a lady born and bred—sank by slow degrees to a cawfy-stall, which is now morgidged to the 'ilt, and my eldest Sister, a lovely and accomplished gairl, was artlessly thrown over by a nobleman, to 'oom she was engaged to be married, before our reverses overtook us. ”

“ GEDGE has always voted straight, has appropriately filled up a dull half-hour when we had to keep a Debate going, and at all times he has invested our side of the House with a certain je ne sais quoi of dignity, combined with profound wisdom. ”

“ Little awkward at first, you know, specially on a windy day; tendency to get between your knees, or wrap itself round your neck. But we're growing used to each other, and shall get on nicely by-and-by. ”

“ The dilettanti members of this association the United Ibsenites could flatter by deferring to the opinions of their hosts, while inculcating their own, thus securing the goodwill and patronage of the Playwreckers, a plan nowadays adopted with considerable success by some of our wiliest dramatists, eager to secure a free course and be glorified ”

“ No, on such matters they are apparently at one; but in other matters they are at one another. Thus the unity appears to be only superficial, a decent plaster hiding the rift occasioned by one of their number having literally translated into English IBSEN's latest Norwegian drama, of which translation the verbal correctness is impugned by another learned Ibsenite.
Not being "a hardy Norseman," and having neither a reading nor speaking acquaintance with the Norse language, I am unable to decide abstruse points on which such learned doctors disagree ”

“ But, after all, Ivanhoe and Rowena, as THACKERAY remarked, are a poor namby-pamby pair, and the real heroine is Rebecca. The Opera ends with a "Rebecca Riot." Every one wishes success to the new venture. ”