Then friendship to the banquet bid the guests, Your greatest crime was honest, harmlesse mirth.* Of all our old holidays only four or five remain. The Fairs about London are daily perishing away. The Ranger of Greenwich park has given the death-blow to those scenes of generous and innocent Easter revelry, which it has been my fortune to witness and share in so often, by closing up the park-because, in good sooth, the grass is injured! To Greenwich Fair the young used to look forward as the sunny spot in the fancied shades of their May of life. They regarded it with the sacredness of an inheritance, and cherished it as an element of their happiness. Stepney, West End, and Peckham Fairs have pined to shadows, under the strait-waistcoat of police; and Bartlemy itselfBartlemy! that twinned in the same cradle with "the Smithfield Muses," venerable with age and honour, has bowed before the sensitive apprehensions of the "wise men of the East!" Why, the best part of a Lord Mayor himself is the antiquity of his office ;--his surest hold on our respect is the imaginative part of his character-his association with the remembrances of childhood. But thou, O Bartlemy! shalt "live in description, and look green in song;" and, in spite of the petty malice of mayors and aldermen, be immortal whilst Matthews endures--and I hope he may endure for ever! All this, and much more I had meditated, when I arrived at Brook Green. What a contrast did it present the last time I was there! Then the heavens were dark and gloomy-the road thronged with sad and anxious faces-to pay the last mournful tribute to one whose lot in this realm had been wretchedness and obloquy, and whose remains were journeying to their last repose in the sepulchre of her illustrious ancestors. The mockery of a procession with " maimed rites" came heavily on through the wet sand, giving forth a sound like the roaring of a distant sea. Now the golden sun, "with all his travelling glories round him," was shedding a genial influence on thousands of happy hearts and glad faces, all eager in the chace of joy. And surely they may find it here, where so many hands are anxious to administer it, and where the appetite is so easily appcased. Foreigners always remark how inseparable good eating is from an Englishman's notions of enjoyment. Quin himself would not have scorned the display of edibles here. To use his own felicitous phrase, "there was plentiful accommodation and great happiness of provision." The green was gemmed with " hotels and taverns," flinging their sweet and tempting odours upon the air. I could not but observe that, excepting one or two civil signs, such as the Dog and Cat, the Goose and Gridiron, &c. the greater part of them had put up the names and effigies of our great military heroes. The mobility are as capricious as their betters; all are for * Pasquil's Palinodia. The last May-pole upon record was that in May-fair, which Sir Isaac Newton begged as a stand for his great telescope. -- see A vast street of shops opened before me, stuffed with all that could allure the eye or provoke the palate. Many a wistful look did I cast in vain upon the gorgeously gilded gingerbread devices of strange amorphous shapes-many a mouth watering at pyramids of fruits which were flanked by oceans of potables, from aristocratic sherbet down to the " poor creature small beer." But if the poison enticed on one side, the antidote was proffered bountifully on the other. Here stood a Quack proclaiming the supernatural virtues of his compounds to a gaping levée, with a confident and fluent eloquence which some of my oratorical friends might despair to rival. The conjuror, too, was not wanting. The Sieur Bouz, a name which seems the patronymic of itinerant magicians (genus immortale manet), was mystifying a crowd with his cups and balls. Observing one of them drop on the ground unintentionally, as I thought, I placed my foot on it, and ventured to doubt the success of his trick. Having given the challenge, and rather confident of his failure, I accepted his wager of a crown, and lifted up the cup-I will never wager again with a conjuror. Methinks the loud laugh is buzzing in my ear still. The police ought to interfere with these fellows. With my veneration for antiquity, I could not witness without pleasure a relic of the old Morris dance, by six young and healthy-looking country lads. They were gaily decked in ribbands, with small bells attached to their knees and ancles -one hand waving a white handkerchief, the other flourishing a smooth stick. The step was regular and graceful, and, when crossing in the dance, the sticks were smartly struck against each other, making, with the jingling of the bells, a new, but not displeasing accord with the music. I doubt whether the most accomplished pupil of Paynewere it even Mr. De -- himself, could have achieved the intricacy of the figure with more facility than did these rude and self-tutored peasants. Here, too, was young Saunders," with his troop of vaulters and equestrians. Who knows not "young Saunders”? I can remember him these twenty years. Here he was again performing his wonderful evolutions, with a fearlessness and precision that filled one with the highest notions of human powers. Next to a top " fiddler"--which art I look upon as the ne plus ultrà of mortal genius-a skilful ropedancer is the most extraordinary of men. Well might Johnson contend, that no one could arrive at high excellence in this line, unless he possessed all the cardinal virtues. I never see one without conceding them all to him, and set him down "most wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best." A modern critic, somewhere, places the famous Richer above Sir Joshua Reynolds, and I agree with him. Next to beholding the display of art itself is the pleasure of studying its effects on others. At my side stood a raw unwhelped clown, so wild and withered in his attire," that one was puzzled to conceive how such a being could have been found within any calculable distance of London. He was one of those fellows who have two left legs, with a head not unlike a pumpkin;—from the moment Saunders-" young" Saundersbegan his caracoles, he stood like Dryden's hero 66 66 But he seemed perplexed and toiling to think whether the whole was not a work of magic-or whether there, were not some unseen wires by which the actor was upheld in his stupendous flights between heaven and earth, "striking his lofty head against the stars." I had just begun to smile at his stupid wonder, till I reflected, that my smile was the result of conscious superiority; and, the juggler's laugh tingling in my ears, my features settled into the gravity of a judge. A little farther on, I came to a splendid theatre. It was Richardson's; a name familiar with all the play-goers at fairs. If frequency of attendance give any claim to favour, my name ought long ago to have been down on the free-list. The external appearance of this theatre, for it would be unjust to call it a booth, was really striking, and afforded an evidence of the uncommon care and expense which are employed amongst us in getting up this kind of thing. Many large cities do I know in Europe, whose royal theatres are vastly below, both in show and comfort, this perambulating playhouse. There is something generous and liberal in the way these exhibitions are conducted. All the corps dramatique are paraded in a spacious portico before the crowd, in the cast and habits of their respective characters, to give us, as it were, a taste of their art. In one corner were Tom, Jerry, and Logic, "the inexpressive three," in high feather, dividing the general attention between the infinitely knowing "castor of Logic" and the "bang-up tog of Tom." It was declared, however, with one voice, that they were the "primest swells" imaginable. In another place was a group of banditti awfully ferocious :-here a "black diamond flashing his ivory” in the face of a fair Sultana; and there "a Charley," with "all appliances to boot," whispering in the ear of a crowned Queen. Farther on, two valorous knights, "clad in complete steel," rehearsing a passage at arms. My eye was caught by the heroine, whose plume was so portentously high, that it seemed farther from her chin to the top of her head, than to the sole of her foot. It was quite pathetic to see her totter about under this mountain of feathers; and scarcely less so, to witness the affliction of a rival heroine, whose tail was so prodigiously exuberant, that her utmost efforts could scarcely protect it from the invasion of hostile feet. The lover was apart, solitary and die-away, as he should be, though no great shakes after all; but the clown-are there two Grimaldis ?-a fellow with trenches from mouth to ear, and when he "oped his ponderous and marble jaws" I shrunk back with involuntary apprehension. Nor was he deficient in that sort of boisterous wit, which, in such situations, and with uncritical audiences, is sure to command applause. His phrase, to be sure, savoured a little of ancient Pistol, as he dwelt on the immense and supernatural excellences of his exhibitions,-challenging the world to equal them-dealing out a lofty scorn for the neighbouring rival establishments-cutting jokes on his brother vagabonds, and sometimes with a happy audacity on the audience itself, and concluding with summersault, as a sort of practical commentary on his discourse. He had an attendant clown or satellite moving about him, little more however than a residuary legatee of the morsels of his wit. But the daintiest part of my friend Richardson's exhibition was the corps du ballet. If the artistes were less scientific than those of the Opera, they were at least much better looking girls; and though they wanted the "foot of fire," there was a healthy substantial English ness about their dancing, infinitely more germane to those they were called upon to please, than the most exquisite science of Bigottini or Fanni Bias. Their dress reminded me of Chalkhill's lines: "Under their vestments-something short before White buskins laced with ribbanding they wore : It was a catching sight to a young eye. Passing over a multitude of other very attracting sights, I must not omit the " Assembly Rooms," one of which was attached to every "Hotel." They were all capacious, and some of them very splendid: large and variegated lustres and girandoles, "all made out of the carver's brain," as Coleridge has it-hung down from the roof, and scattered a radiance that outvied the sun himself. By the by, this was in bad taste, to light up in the day-time. The more youthful part of the dancers, though not very expert in gestic lore, had a lightness of step which bespoke no heaviness of heart. They were full of the gay and buoyant spirits which belong to those with whom life as yet is only hope and promise. One young creature I remarked, who seemed to be one of a higher order of beings. She was among them, but not of them. The glow of youth and health was diffused over her features, which recent exercise had rendered more animated. It was one of those forms and faces which we sometimes meet, and which command respect at the same moment that they inflame the imagination. She reminded me of another presence, and of other days, when my heart was in all its singleness and freshness. Lovely floweret! though doomed to waste thy sweetness upon a rude and unworthy soil, may'st thou bloom ever innocent and pure, unchilled by any blast of misery, and untainted by any of those poisonous influences which always hover round youth and beauty! Such were the May-day festivities of Brook Green; not celebrated in all the pride and pomp of ancient reverence, but with an earnest and light-hearted gaiety. It wanted, indeed, its proper emblem, the may-pole; there were no itinerant minstrels singing their " old true tale" of "Ladye Love and War"— no juggler swallowing fire and smoke, to the imminent peril of his own bowels, and the astonishment of beholders-none of the descendants of Orson Pinnit* were there, with the royal bears--nor were there a multitude of those old observances and games, which "have a spell beyond their name," and which raised this day above all the other holidays of the year. I left it, however, with a heart something freer than before, as the sun was going down," trailing clouds of glory" which Italy never exceeded. X. MODERN PILGRIMAGES.-NO. IV. THE PARACLETE. "Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies, And Venus sets, ere Mercury can rise :" Said Pope, imitating Chaucer. The little poet, "no more for loving made, than being loved," should have been contented to speak for himself. There exists no being upon earth that stands so much in need of giving and receiving affection, as the man of letters and retirement; nor is there one whose habitual pursuits and thoughts are so congenial to that second religion-that single devotedness towards one lovely object, deprived of which every nobler spirit frets and eats into itself. If the heart of the poet did not contradict his pen, as it traced the sentiment, he might have thought on Petrarch, on Abelard, and have stood confuted. But the votaries of the Muse love to be over-candid, to disentangle themselves, in a moment of high spirits, from their most sacred feelings, and to toss them up to ridicule in good-humoured vengeance for many an hour of pain. And when Feeling grants her sons a holiday, the truants instantly rebel. They pelt most mercilessly the sovereign whom they love, with missiles that wound, if they do not kill: sneers and jests pour in overwhelming love, enthusiasm, passion, all that is generous and great; the vulgar take the jest for earnest, and think the laughers most flinty-hearted, while the rogues compress the very essence of feeling in the same heart's core. There is a moral grandeur in genius and passion that forbids to its possessors any thing like an esprit de corps, or party spirit. The fraternity claims no allegiance or loyalty as a body; and those little treasons which its members indulge in, of now and then denying the sincerity, nay at times the existence, of that noble sentiment which constitutes their essence, are regarded by it as rare amusements :-similar to our late Monarch, who was said to enjoy cordially the caricatures in which he was himself represented. We should, therefore, never estimate strictly the assertions of poets respecting their own tribe. They are sad rogues, and though zealously attached to fame, cannot resist, now and then, the temptation of telling awkward stories of themselves, that they may lead the world into a quagmire. It is to this habit, which Feeling has, of playing the traitor with itself, that Schlegel has assigned the name of the arbitrary comic. I do not like this scholastic system of labelling, and had rather invent a new term every time that the idea occurs, than be thus fettered in my vocabulary. A Dictionary of Sentiment will certainly be the tombstone of all poetry and poetic prose. Lady Montague's injurious line, which is rashly quoted above, falls short of him who wrote the epistle of Heloise: and I cannot help here remarking, how fortunate it was for the poet's fame that he happened to indulge in this one poetic burst of passion. Had he not written it, and consequently had hostile critics the power of fastening on him the defect of being passionless, 'tis hard to say with what success his memory might have weathered the storm. But as there is no impugning the sensibility of the heart that dictated such impassioned verse, this scrap serves during the reigning state of taste, as a sheet-anchor in the |