'Perhaps not,' rejoined Catesby. But that does not lessen my admiration of your conduct.' 'I am devoted to one object,' replied Fawkes, and nothing shall turn me from it.' Remove yourself instantly from temptation, then,' replied Catesby. I will meet you at the cellar beneath the Parliament House to-morrow night.' With this, he accompanied Guy Fawkes to the door; and the latter, without hazarding a look behind him, set out for London, where he arrived at nightfall. On the following night, Fawkes examined the cellar, and found it in all respects as he had left it; and, apprehensive lest some difficulty might arise, he resolved to make every preparation. He, accordingly, pierced the sides of several of the barrels piled against the walls with a gimblet, and inserted in the holes small pieces of slow-burning match. Not content with this, he staved in the tops of the uppermost tier, and scattered powder among them to secure their instantaneous ignition. This done, he took a powder-horn, with which he was provided, and kneeling down, and holding his lantern so as to throw a light upon the floor, laid a train to one of the lower barrels, and brought it within a few inches of the door, intending to fire it from that point. His arrangements completed, he arose, and muttered, 'A vessel is provided for my escape in the river, and my companions advise me to use a slow match, which will allow me to get out of harm's way. But I will see the deed done, and if the train fails, will hold a torch to the barrels myself.' At this juncture, a slight tap was heard without. Guy Fawkes instantly masked his lantern, and cautiously opening the door, beheld Catesby. 'I am come to tell you that Parliament is prorogued,' said the latter. 'The House does not meet till the fifth of November. have another month to wait.' We 'I am sorry for it,' rejoined Fawkes. I have just laid the train. The lucky moment will pass.' And, locking the door, he proceeded with Catesby to the adjoining house. They had scarcely been gone more than a second, when two figures muffled in cloaks emerged from behind a wall. The train is laid,' observed the foremost, and they are gone to the house. You might seize them now without danger.' 'That will not answer my purpose,' replied the other. I will give them another month.' 'Another month!' replied the first speaker. Who knows what may happen in that time? They may abandon their project.' There is no fear of that,' replied the other. But you had better and join them.' go Merrie England in the olden Time: OR, PEREGRINATIONS WITH UNCLE TIM AND MR. BOSKY, OF LITTLE BRITAIN, DRYSALTER. BY GEORGE DANIEL. 'Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale ?' -SHAKSPEARE, CHAPTER VI. Southwark Fair ranked next to St. Bartholomew, and compre. hended all the attractions for which its rival on the other side of the water was so famous. On the 13th day of September, 1660, John Evelyn visited it. I saw,' said this entertaining sight-seer, ' in Southwark, at St. Margaret's Faire, monkies and apes daunce, and do other feats of activity on ye high rope: they were gallantly clad à la mode, went upright, saluted the company, bowing and pulling off their hats; they saluted one another with as good a grace as if instructed by a dauncing master; they turned heels over head with a basket having eggs in it, without breaking any; also with lighted candles in their hands, and on their heads without extinguishing them, and with vessels of water, without spilling a drop. also saw an Italian wench daunce and performe all the tricks of y' tight rope to admiration. All the Court went to see her. Likewise here was a man who tooke up a piece of iron cannon, of about 400lbs. weight, with the haire of his head onely.' September 15, 1692, the curious old narrator paid it another visit. The dreadful earthquake in Jamaica this summer' (says he) was prophanely and ludicrously represented in a puppet-play or some such lewd pastime, in the fair of Southwark, whch caused the Queene to put downe that idle and vicious mock shew.' The fair, however, revived, and outlived her Majesty many merry years. How slept the authorities some seasons ago, when Messrs. Mathews and Yates dramatised an 'Earthquake' at the Adelphi! The Bowling Green in Southwark was the high 'Change of the Fair. Mr. Fawkes, the renowned conjurer, exhibited at his booth, over against the Crown Tavern, near St. George's Church. Dramatic representations, music and dancing, the humours of Punch and Harlequin, a glass of good wine, and other liquors,' were to be had at the several booths held at the Golden Horse-shoe,'* the 'Half-Moon Inn,'t and other well-known houses of entertainment. At Joseph Parnes's Musick Rooms, at the sign of the Whelp and Bacon, during the time of Southwark Fair, is at the Golden Horse-Shoe, next to the King's Bench, where you may be entertained with a variety of musick and dancing, the like not in the Fair, nor never before; where you may be accommodated with a glass of good wine, and other liquors; and likewise several dances, danced after the Scotch, Italian, and English ways; likewise a Girl that dances with sharp swords, the like not in England.'-Temp. W. 3. + Sept. 12. 1729.—At Reynold's Great Theatrical Booth, in the_Half-Moon Inn, near the Bowling-Green, in Southwark, during the time of the Fair, will be presented that celebrated opera, called the Beggar's Wedding,-a new opera called Southwark Fair, or the Sheep-Shearing,-an opera called Flora,-and an entertainment called The Humours of Harlequin.' Thither resorted Lee and Harper to delight the denizens of Kent Street, Guy's Hospital, and St. Thomas's, with Guy of Warwick, Robin Hood and Little John, the comical adventures of Little John and the Pindar's wife, and the fall of Phaeton! In July, 1753, the Tennis Court and booths that were on the Bowling green, with some other buildings where the fair used to be held, were pulled down; and shortly after that pleasant Bowling Green was converted into a potato and cabbage market! Southwark, or Lady Fair, has long since been suppressed. Thanks, however, to the 'great painter of mankind,' that we can hold it as often as we please in our own breakfast-parlours and drawingrooms! The works of Hogarth are medicines for melancholy. If the mood be of Jacques's quality, a most humorous sadness,' it will revel in the master's whim; if of a deeper tinge, there is the dark side of the picture for mournful reflection. Though an unsparing satirist, probing vice and folly to the quick, he has compassion for human frailty and sorrow. He is no vulgar caricaturist, making merry with personal deformity; he paints wickedness in its true colours, and if the semblance be hideous, the original, not the copy, is to blame. His scenes are faithful transcripts of life, high and low. He conducts us into the splendid saloons of fashion ;-we pass with him into the direst cells of want and misery. He reads a lesson to idleness, extravagance, and debauchery, such as never was read before. He is equally master of the pathetic and the ludicrous. He exhibits the terrible passions, and their consequences, with almost superhuman power. Every stroke of his pencil points a moral; every object, however insignificant, has its meaning. His detail is marvellous, and bespeaks a mind pregnant with illustration, an eye that nothing could escape. Bysshe's Art of Poetry, the well-chalked tally, the map of the gold mines, and the starved cur making off with the day's lean provision, are in perfect keeping with the distressed poet's ragged finery, his half-mended breeches, and all the exquisite minutiae of his garret. His very wig, most picturesquely awry, is a happy symbol of poetical and pecuniary perplexity. Of the same marking character are the cow's horns, rising just above the little citizen's head, in the print of Evening,' telling a sly tale; while the dramatis persone of the Strollers' Barn, the flags, paintpots, pageants, clouds, waves, puppets, dark-lanterns, thunder, lightning, daggers, periwigs, crowns, sceptres, salt-boxes, ghosts, devils, and tragedy queens, exhibit such an unique miscellany of wonders, that none but a Hogarth ever thought of bringing together. Turn, by way of contrast, to 'Gin Lane,' and its frightful accompaniments! Hogarth went quite as much to see Southwark Fair and its fun (for which he had a high relish) as to transfer them to his canvass. 'Tis a holiday with the mountebanks, and he has caught them in all their grimacerie and glory. A troop of strollers, belonging to Messrs. Cibber and Bullock, attitudinising and making mouths, as a prologue to the Fall of Bajazet,' are suddenly surprized into the centre of gravity by the breaking down of their scaffold, and Kings, Queens, Turks, tumblers, monkeys, and Merry Andrews, descend topsy-turvy into a china-shop below! At Lee and Harper's grand booth are the celebrated Wooden Horse of Troy, the Temptation of Adam and Eve, and Punch's Opera. A fire-eater is devouring his red-hot element, and his periwigged Jack-Pudding is distributing his quack nostrums. A tragedy hero has a brace of bailiffs in his train; and a prize-fighter, with his bare sconce dotted with sable patches, and a nose that might successfully bob for black-beetles against a brick wall, mounted on a blind bone-setter, perambulates the fair, challenging the wide world to mortal combat! These, with a pretty female drummer of Amazonian proportions; an equilibrist swinging on the slack rope; a juggler with his cups and balls; a pickpocket and a couple of country boobies; a bag-piper; a danc. ing dog; a dwarf drummer, and a music-grinder, make up a dramatis persone only to be equalled by the Strolling Players and the March to Finchley. * * Pannard, a minor French poet, whom Marmontel styles the La Fontaine of Vaudeville, has written some verses admirably descriptive of an opera behind the scenes. J'ai vu le soleil et la lune Qui tenoient des discours en l'air : Sortir tout frisé de la mer. J'ai l'aimable Cythéré Au doux regard, au teint fleuri, Dans un machine entourée D'amours natifs de Chambérie.' And, after having seen a great number of other things, equally curious, he concluded with 'J'ai vu des ombres très-palpables Se trémousser aux bords du Styx: Some years ago, a strolling company at Ludlow, in Shropshire, printed a play-bill ncarly as large as their drop-scene. It announced The Doleful History of King Lear and his Three Daughters, with the Merry Conceits of his Majesty's Fool, and the valorous exploits of the Duke of Gloucester's Bastard; all written by one William Shakespeare, a mighty great poet, who was born in Warwickshire, and held horses for gentlemen at the sign of the Red Bull in St. John's-street; where was just such another playhouse as this! [!!!] at which we hope the company of all friends round the Wrekin. All you who would wish to cry or laugh, Had better spend your money here than in the alehouse by half; And if you wish more about these things to know, Come at six o'clock to the barn in the High Street, Ludlow, Where, presented by live actors, the whole may be seen, So Vivat Rex, God save the King! not forgetting the Queen Just as a strolling actor at Newcastle had advertised his benefit, a remarkable stranger, no less than the Prince Annamaboo, arrived, and placarded the town that he granted audiences at a shilling a head. The stroller, without delay, waited on the proprietor of the Prince, and for a good round sum prevailed on him to command bis Serene Highness to exhibit his august person on his benefit night. The bills of the day announced, that between the acts of the comedy Prince Annamaboo would give a lively representation of the scalping operation, sound the Indian war-whoop in all its melodious tones, practise the tomahawk exercise, and dine à la cannibal. An intelligent mob were collected to witness these interesting exploits. At the conclusion of the third act his Highness marched forward, flourishing his tomahawk, and shout. ing, Ha, ha!-Ho, ho!' Next entered a man with his face blacked, and a piece of bladder fastened to his head with gum the Prince, with an enormous carving. knife, began the scalping part of the entertainment, which he performed in a truly imperial style, holding up the piece of bladder as a token of triumph. Next came There is a fair-an extraordinary one-the holding of which depends not on the humour and caprice of magisterial wiggery. Jack Frost-a bold fellow ! for he has taken Marlborough and Wellington by the nose!-twice or thrice in a century proclaims his fair. No sooner is the joyful tidings bruited abroad, than the dutiful sons and daughters of Old Father Thames flock to his paternal bosom, which, being icy cold, they warm by roasting an ox upon it, and then transfer to its glassy surface the turmoil, traffic, and monstrosities of dry land. Evelyn has given an interesting description of Frost Fair in 1683-4. This amusing chronicler of passing events possessed the bump of more than Athenian curiosity. He entered the penetralia of the licentious court of King Charles the Second; and while he whispered his pathetic Jeremiads over its immorality in his closet, he shocked his averted vision day after day with its impurities-still peeping! still praying! For all and sundry the merry Monarch's many misses,' and for poor Nelly (by far the best of them) in particular, he expressed a becoming horror in his private medita. tions; yet his outward bearing towards them indicated no such compunctious visitings. He was an excellent tactician. He crept into the privy councils of the regicides, and, mirabile dictu! retired from the enemy's camp in a whole skin; and while fortunes were being confiscated, and heads falling on all sides, he kept his own snug in his pocket, and erect on his shoulders. 'Fortunate Senex!' Monarchy, Anarchy, High Church, Low Church, No Church, Catholicism, Anything-ism, Everything-ism! Plain John (he declined a baronetcy) passed over the red-hot ploughshares of political and religious persecution unsinged. And we rejoice at his good luck; for whether he treat of London's great Plague or Fire, the liaisons of his 'kind master' King Charles the Second, the naughtiness of Nelly and her nymphs, or the ludicrous outbreaks of Southwark, St. Bartholomew, and Frost Fairs, he is a dear, delightful, gentlemanly old gossiper! On the 1st of January, 1683-4, the cold was so intense, that booths (a novel spectacle) were erected on the Thames, and Jack Frost proclaimed his earliest recorded fair. 'I went crosse the Thames,' says Evelyn, January 9, 1683-4, 'on the ice, which now became so thick as to bear not only streetes of boothes, in which they roasted meate, and had divers shops of wares quite acrosse as in a towne, but coaches, carts, and horses passed over. So I went from Westminster Stayres to Lambeth, and din'd with the Archbishop. I walked over the ice (after dinner) from Lambeth Stayres to the Horseferry.' the war-whoop, an unearthly combination of discordant sounds; and lastly, the banquet, consisting of raw beef-steaks, which he rolled up into rouleaus, and devoured with right royal avidity. Having finished his delicate repast, he wielded his tomahawk in an exulting manner, bellowed Ha, ha!-ho, ho!' and made his exit. The beneficiare strolling through the market-place the following day, spied the most puissant Prince Annamaboo selling penknives, scissors, and quills, in the character of a Jew pedlar. 'What!' said the astonished Lord Townley, my Prince! is it you? Are you not a pretty circumcised little scoundrel to impose upon us in this manner?' Moses turned round, and with an arch look replied, Princh, be d-d! I vash no Princh; 1 vash acting, like you. Your troop vash Lords and Ladies last night; and to-night dey vil be Kings, Prinches, and Emperors! I vash hampugs, you vash hampugs, all vash hampugs!' |