In Rome a ballet of this description used to run — and probably still does so — through a whole season, filling the Tordinone every night, and hummed, more or less loudly, by the entire audience. Italians will not be deterred from giving tongue to their likes and dislikes with a freedom unknown to us frigid islanders ; and, sitting in the Apollo stalls amongst the principini, I used to hear the airs of Brahma (the ballet of that Œcumenical winter) chanted all around me by dandies of the first water, very seldom under their breath.