of the smoke and the odour of rum in these pavilions of an old and frowsy Terpsichore, let him enter the theatrical booth, and he will sup full of horrors, in the first piece, and be treated, in the second, with farce as broad as the previous tragedy was deep. Murders, rape, incest, despair, suicide, and the gallows, will be the staple of the first; practical jokes, jests of venerable antiquity, and coarse as the audience, will form the staple of the second. There sallow-faced mechanics, bluff peasants and soldiers, and blear-eyed journeymen, stamped with the brand of dissipation, sit, for the pleasant excitement of either, now and then varying the entertainments by hurling gingerbeer bottles at the heads of the performers, or extinguishing the lights by well-aimed cabbages and potatoes.

And this is Greenwich-fair, the most famous festival of the Londoners; the wonder of foreigners; an eye-sore to the magistracy and all orderly people; but an evil which our shortsighted legislation, in matters of popular recreation, augments, instead of diminishing. Singing and dancing are forbidden all the year places where the populace resort; the Solons of the quarter-sessions will not allow them to hear music, or to dance, lest they should get

VOL. II.

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drunk, forgetting that they can become sottish without the exhilaration of either. They enclose common lands, and curb their amusements by every means, as if they were slaves, born to toil, and precluded by some law of nature from any refined enjoyments, and then they complain that once a year, upon occasion of a fair, their pent-up jollity explodes, and that they run riot, and commit all manner of

excesses.

Several attempts have been made to suppress Greenwich-fair, but in vain. It still remains the noisiest and most disgraceful holiday of the London mob, and probably ever will remain so till our magistracy have a little more consideration for the amusements of the poor; and put a few more opportunities for recreation in their way; until the legislature takes up the question upon high and philosophical grounds, and provides such facilities for harmless and exhilarating sports for the many, as will withdraw them from the silent and sottish corners in low public-houses, where they sit almost every night, ready, whenever the period of their saturnalia arrives, to make up for the past privations of the year, by indulgences which harm themselves, and afford excuses to their local tyrants to draw still tighter, upon other occasions, the bonds that bind them.

Before leaving Greenwich, we should not omit to mention the Dreadnought, one of the most prominent objects that meets the rambler's eye on proceeding thither by water. This fine old man-of-war, now used as an hospital ship for seamen of all nations, and supported by the voluntary subscriptions of the charitable, was, in the days of his youth, a formidable enemy of the French and Spaniards; a worthy successor of the Dreadnought of old, which fought against the Spaniards in the time of Queen Elizabeth. In the glorious victory of Trafalgar he bore his part bravely; and under the command of Captain John Conn, he captured (we speak of him in the masculine, as a man-of-war) the large Spanish three-decker, the San Juan, which had been previously engaged by the Bellerophon and the Defiance. The San Juan surrendered, after a stout affray, in which her hull was greatly shattered, her masts cut away, her captain slain, and nearly three hundred of her men killed and wounded. The loss on board the Dreadnought was seven killed and twenty-two wounded. From being stationed for so many years past in the river, within so short a distance of the metropolis, the Dreadnought was well known to the multitudes of London, and afforded, even in her mastless

condition, an accurate notion, to those who had never seen any other ship of war, of the floating bulwarks by which Great Britain is defended. In the summer of 1840 a leak was discovered in her hold (we may now promote her to the feminine gender, considering her as a nurse to the sick), which rendered her removal necessary, for a short period only, till her repairs were completed, and she was towed down to Sheerness for that purpose by three steam-boats, appointed for that special service, amid the cheers of a great multitude, who assembled to witness her departure. In a few days afterwards she was restored to her former moorings, where she now remains.

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CHAPTER VI.

White Bait Dinners at Blackwall.-Assault on London by Falconbridge. The East India docks.-The River Lea. -Reminiscences of Isaac Walton.-Poetics of Hoddesdon.-Want's Inn at Broxbourne.-Theobalds.-A Good Appetite; a Story of Henry VIII. and the Abbot of Waltham.-Epping Forest. The Bell at Edmonton.-The Tournament of Tottenham.-True Philosophy at Tottenham Cross.-Stratford-le-Bow and Bromley.

URNING from Greenwich to the opposite bank of the river, we pass that considerable bend which forms the Isle of Dogs, and, on its eastern extremity, see the hamlet of Blackwall, famous for its shipping in the records of commerce, and for its luscious white bait in the modern annals of gastronomy. Hither, during the season, resort numerous aristocratic parties to regale upon the peculiar delicacies of the place; hither resort Privy Councillors, Ministers of State, and Under-secretaries, with whom of late years it has become quite fashionable to dine