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After ascending the run the horse and rider must remain high up in the lofty region of the “floats” until a change of scene permits them to descend unobserved, or the play requires their descent in public. A perilous, and consequently attractive, feat has been introduced into this play by one or two unusually reckless and daring riders, consisting of an extension of the run around the gallery of the theatre. Over this narrow road above the heads of the spectators, some hundred feet or more from the ground, amid the glare or the lights, the banging of the orchestra, and the thunders of the multitude, dashes the horse, bearing in triumph “the sensation rider of the world.” A single misstep, the displacement of a single plank in that frail support, and horse and rider would lie a mangled mass below. And this is the very reason the house is jammed with eager throngs—not that they wish the rider to meet the horrible death thus courted night after night, but it is certainly this possibility which renders the performance so attractive. Playing Mazeppa is not always the hight of felicity.