Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/135

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THE BATAVIAN REPUBLIC
123

of age. The directorial box has no ornaments to distinguish it from others, and I should not have known to whom it belonged, had I not seen on entering the theatre, a piece of paper pasted on a box-door, on which was writen in an almost illegible hand, "Le logis de directoire Batave" — The box of the Batavian directory. The theatre was miserably attended. I am confident I speak within, bounds, when I say, the whole audience did not amount to one hundred persons. So trifling a collection of spectators at the theatre of a town whose population certainly exceeds thirty thousand inhabitants, either shews that the taste of the people for dramatic exhibitions is feeble, of their poverty extreme. With such receipts, the managers cannot afford to light many candles in their house; and, that none may be unnecessarily consumed, whenever the musicians quit the orchestra, the lights which enable them to read their scores are carefully extinguished until they return. The price of admission to the boxes is rather more than half-a-crown English money, and to the