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I have committed no robbery, I assure you, for the Poet gave me free leave to take as much of his work as I could carry off with me. Never was town so empty as Dublin is now, since Mark Anthony was left alone in the market-place with the air which was uncivilly tempted also to forsake him.

The Count of Narbonne, however, brought all the country round into the play-house, and will be acted to another crowded theatre, I dare say, again on Saturday. The ragamuffishness of the players, and the filthy meanness of everything behind the scenes (I don’t know how I can say scenes, when there are none) of the New Theatre Royal surprises even me, who lived two years at Smock Alley, in what I thought very reasonably good idleness, drunkenness, and dirt.

The city itself is, in every particular which my observation can reach, incredibly improved. The lights are as regularly sustained by night as they are in London. They affect to be oppressed in various shapes by the institution of the police, but I know they keep the streets ten thousand times more orderly and quiet than the old watchmen ever did. They do permit some frail beauties to walk their charms along the wood pavement of Dame Street, but then they are