the ribbons, every one of these acts being
superintended with the utmost care and
patience by Mr. Eves, and every one of
them taking place at the utterance of the
mystic word "Go."

To the young lady succeeds a very young
gentleman, a child of not more than seven
years old, who is to have his very first
lesson, whose little legs when he sits cannot
span the horse's back, and whose little
body when he stands is secured by a
surcingle fastened round his waist, and firmly
attached to the horse's pad. He is
plucky little lad this, a Spaniard, whose
family are all in the profession, and who,
under Mr. Eves's tuition, will do no
discredit to his name.

Mr. Eves taking a little rest just now,
other persons commence practice in the
ring. The tight-rope is stretched across
one portion, and is speedily ascended by
Mademoiselle Corisande, in her short ballet
skirt, and well-chalked practice shoes.
Professor Porco and his three little boys
are also hard at work, the professor
flinging his offspring into the air in an
apparently reckless but really most careful
manner, patiently but firmly superintending
their progress. A little further off
are two rather melancholy-looking dogs,
which walk on their hind legs and jump
through hoops at the bidding of their
master, whose face, perhaps from constant
association with his pupils, has something
of the terrier expression. And, standing
in the midst of a group, and quietly looking
on at all that is passing, is the most
popular member of the company, Mr. Joe
Tucker, the clown. There are clowns
and clowns. The old-fashioned clown of
one's boyhood, with the pliant queue
nodding over his whitened scalp, his red
cheeks and enormous mouth, his red and
white dress, with its huge pockets, and
his red-clocked stockings, has for the most
part given place to a person elaborately
got up in green and gold, who has
forgotten the old English broad humour,
without attaining the French neatness after
which he strives. The old clown asked,
"What he could come for to go for to fetch
for to carry;" on being told that the top
of the rope was chalked, "to prevent the
performer from slipping down, sir," he
insisted on chalking the bottom of the
rope, " to prevent the performer from
slipping up, sir;" drank the contents of a
bottle of wine, after throwing a somersault,
because he was told to "pour it into a
tumbler;" and invariably insisted in following
the ring-master out of the circus,
because, as he told the audience with a
wink, " The dirt always goes before the
broom." The modern clown could do
nothing so low as this. He is—save the
mark!—a Shakesperean clown, or a Talking
Jester, and he pours forth a flux of
the most miserable nonsense, sometimes in
prose, sometimes in verse, studded with
political and moral sentiments, which seem
to have been culled from the lists of toasts
usually to be found at the end of old
song-books.

Mr. Tucker happily belongs rather to
the old school than to the new; but he has
plenty of "patter," and his "wheezes," as
the jokes between the clown and the
ring-master are technically termed, are
manufactured out of the best Joe Millers, and
garnished with local allusions and hits at
topics of the time. He is wonderfully
agile, too, a capital clog and spade dancer,
and a brilliant performer on the stilts; and
during all these performances he never
forgets that he is a clown, and not merely an
acrobat, so that his tumbling is diverting
as well as clever.

Before leaving, I go through the stables,
where I find the horses capitally kept and
groomed, and put-up with a wonderful
economy of space, being separated from
each other by swinging bars, and so small
a space being left for passing behind them
as to render perfectly natural the inquiry
whether any of them were " light-heeled."
Thence to the dressing-room, and to the
property-room, where I delight in recognising
many old friends. The basket-shape
of the preternaturally stout gentleman
who bows with such politeness to the people
while he stamps his feet on the pad-saddle,
the turnpike-gate, which always appears
by itself without any visible connexion
with any other object, expressly for Dick
Turpin and Black Bess to jump over, the
beadle's dress—to say the least, an awkward
equestrian costume—worn by one of
Turpin's pursuers, the table and dishes in
use when the clown invites the pony to
supper, and the pistol fired off by that
intelligent animal. A property-man is at
work, fresh papering the hoops for
Mademoiselle Corisande's performance, and the
whole atmosphere is filled with floating
particles of chalk and whitening.

Throughout the establishment everything
is, so far as it can be, complete;
and though there are now sixteen circuses
in the kingdom—five-and-twenty years ago
there were only three—there is not one