At half-past seven there is a stir upon the river; and my Lord Mayor’s barge sweeping down in great state, twenty-one cannon are fired as a salute; and then, just before my Lord Mayor’s barge reached the bridge, to which it had made a circle, “the wager-boats started, on the signal of firing a single piece of cannon.” They are said to have been absent some fifty minutes, and “on their return the whole procession moved with a picturesque irregularity towards Ranelagh.” We hear no more of these “wager-boats;” it is evident that the interest of those who came to see the show was not centred in them, and we can but exclaim with all true lovers of aquatics, “O monstrous! but one halfpennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack!”
But all the world has moved up the river, the Thames has become a floating town, everything—from “a dung-barge to a wherry”—is in motion; let us on to Ranelagh!
We land with the company on the stairs at nine o’clock, and share their disappointment when, on proceeding to join the assembly which has come by land in the Temple of Neptune, we find that the Ocean God, wrathful perhaps at his musicians having been attired in “sylvan suits,” has thrown obstacles in the way of our amusement—for his temple is not yet swept out or even ready—so that we have to defer our intended cotillons till after supper. This takes place at half-past ten, in the Rotunda, where, whilst we refresh ourselves at one of three circular tables of different elevations, “elegantly set out though not profusely covered,”—an imitation of which style may be seen in the diners à la Russe of the present day, our ears are regaled by an orchestra of 240 performers, “in which are included some of the first masters,” led by Giardini. But though a spell of enchantment is cast around us by the bewitching singing of “Messrs. Vernon, Reinhold, &c. &c.,” the appearance of the orchestra has in itself a lugubrious effect, “for its illumination has been unfortunately overlooked.”
Supper being over, we withdraw to the Temple of Neptune, and though we have very great personages amongst us, for there are their Royal Highnesses the Dukes of Gloucester and Cumberland, the Duke of Northumberland, Lords North, Harrington, Stanley, Tyrconnel and Lincoln, with their respective ladies; also Lords Lyttelton, Coleraine, Carlisle, March, Melbourne, Cholmondeley, Petersham, &c., and the French, Spanish, Russian and Prussian Ambassadors,—we dance minuets and cotillons, without regard to precedence, till a late hour.
The weather is not favourable to out-door amusements, so that the bridges and palm-trees which were erected in the gardens are lost upon us, and the illuminations with which they were to have been accompanied are not exhibited; so we dance on till we are thoroughly tired, and then home, well pleased, though somewhat puzzled, with our first regatta.
As we walk homeward we hear a lusty voice chaunting one of the eleven verses of the ballad composed in honour of the occasion, and which had brought down thunders of applause in the Rotunda:
“Enough of festinos, champêtres enough,
Bal-parés, and frescos, and such worn-out stuff,
But how to amuse ye? Ay, there was the question.
A regatta was thought of—oh, lucky suggestion!”
A regatta was thought of—oh,Derry down.
The refrain is taken up by numberless voices in a variety of keys, and, if there be a want of harmony, it is not because our own voices remain silent.
OUR FIRST CURATE.
On the middle of a wild uncultivated moor in the north of England is situated a small village, which shall be nameless, although the mention of its veritable name would give small enlightenment to most readers. In these days of steam and perpetual motion there are indeed but few corners of the world which remain a terra incognita, but this is, I believe, one of them; at all events at the time of which I am about to write,—the time of my youth, now alas I numbered with the past, the spot was unvisited save by the snow and sleet in the winter season, and when these had melted and gone, came only the purple heather flowers, glowing beneath the summer sunshine far as the eye could reach.
Here, in the parsonage, my two sisters and myself were born. We lost our mother early, too early to be sensible of our loss; and our father never brought any one to supply her place to us, either in the shape of step-mother or governess. We learnt our alphabet and earliest lessons at his knee, and as we grew older he it still was who taught us all we ever knew. Thus we grew up not exactly ignorant, but unaccomplished, and shy to a degree. Of this shyness each had her own characteristic manifestation. Sarah, the eldest of us, was affected by a nervous cough and contraction of the eyebrows at the sight of a stranger; the same phenomenon induced a tremor through my whole frame more nearly resembling St. Vitus’s dance than anything else; while Rose, our youngest sister, blushed a deeper red than the reddest of her namesakes in the garden. In spite, however, of all our shyness, although the scent of a tailed coat, or the sight of a hat other than our father’s in the hall, sent us off with the speed of lightning, like frightened mice to our hiding-places—the most inscrutable nooks and crannies in all the house—of course, in spite of this, we had our own private romances; we each of us were to have a lover some day; some bright being—wearing hat and coat, I suppose, but himself hardly made of mortal clay—was to fall down straight from the clouds, or perhaps to “slither down a rainbow” at our feet; this being bright—or rather these beings, for there were to be three of them—were to declare their love, a passion pure, ethereal, rapturous, such as earth before had never known, which should be reciprocated electric-like on the instant, and then shyness should be no more, reserve should be swallowed up in confidence, and there should be but one heart, one mind, one soul between us.
Such was our first dream of love, a dream altogether dream-like and unsubstantial; by and by, however, we began to indulge in some little
