Note 32 — THEATRICAL RECOLLECTIONS.

“Samson pulling down the hall of the Philistines” is the very finest piece of spectacle that can be conceived!—“Susannah and the Elders” is rather too naked a concern for the English ladies to look at, unless through their fans: transparent ones have lately been invented, to save the expense of blushes, &c. But the most whimsical of their scriptural dramas is the exhibition of Noah as a ship-builder, preparatory to the deluge: it is a most splendid spectacle. He is assisted by large gangs of angels working as his journeymen, whose great solicitude is to keep their wings clear out of the way of their hatchets, &c. At length the whole of them strike and turn out for wages, till the arrival of a body of gens d’armes immediately brings them to order, by whom they are threatened to be sent back to heaven if they do not behave themselves!