The Pantomime of Life

Before we plunge headlong into this paper, let us at once confess
to a fondness for pantomimes--to a gentle sympathy with clowns and
pantaloons--to an unqualified admiration of harlequins and
columbines--to a chaste delight in every action of their brief
existence, varied and many-coloured as those actions are, and
inconsistent though they occasionally be with those rigid and
formal rules of propriety which regulate the proceedings of meaner
and less comprehensive minds. We revel in pantomimes--not because
they dazzle one's eyes with tinsel and gold leaf; not because they
present to us, once again, the well-beloved chalked faces, and
goggle eyes of our childhood; not even because, like Christmas-day,
and Twelfth-night, and Shrove-Tuesday, and one's own birthday, they
come to us but once a year;--our attachment is founded on a graver
and a very different reason. A pantomime is to us, a mirror of
life; nay, more, we maintain that it is so to audiences generally,
although they are not aware of it, and that this very circumstance
is the secret cause of their amusement and delight.

Let us take a slight example. The scene is a street: an elderly
gentleman, with a large face and strongly marked features, appears.
His countenance beams with a sunny smile, and a perpetual dimple is
on his broad, red cheek. He is evidently an opulent elderly
gentleman, comfortable in circumstances, and well-to-do in the
world. He is not unmindful of the adornment of his person, for he
is richly, not to say gaudily, dressed; and that he indulges to a
reasonable extent in the pleasures of the table may be inferred
from the joyous and oily manner in which he rubs his stomach, by
way of informing the audience that he is going home to dinner. In
the fulness of his heart, in the fancied security of wealth, in the
possession and enjoyment of all the good things of life, the
elderly gentleman suddenly loses his footing, and stumbles. How
the audience roar! He is set upon by a noisy and officious crowd,
who buffet and cuff him unmercifully. They scream with delight!
Every time the elderly gentleman struggles to get up, his
relentless persecutors knock him down again. The spectators are
convulsed with merriment! And when at last the elderly gentleman
does get up, and staggers away, despoiled of hat, wig, and
clothing, himself battered to pieces, and his watch and money gone,
they are exhausted with laughter, and express their merriment and
admiration in rounds of applause.

Is this like life? Change the scene to any real street;--to the
Stock Exchange, or the City banker's; the merchant's counting-
house, or even the tradesman's shop. See any one of these men
fall,--the more suddenly, and the nearer the zenith of his pride