scene, remember, takes place out of doors. The
juggler, after going through his less exciting
tricks— keeping up a shower of balls with his
hands while he keeps up a shower of rings with
his toes, perhaps at the same time balancing a
loose stick tower on his chin— building up his
jointed pole on his forehead, up which the
trained goat runs and stands with all four feet
on the top, on a space not half so large as one's
hand— piling four or five waterpots on his head,
with a girl standing on the top of all, with which
singular head-dress he dances about the circle
juggling his balls as usual, or stringing beads on
a thread with his tongue— after holding a staff
in his waistband and letting a brother juggler
swarm up it and lay himself all abroad on the
top, legs and arms flying to all four quarters,
and the body balanced only on one part of the
stomach— after these and other kindred displays
he comes to the finale of all: the girl and the
basket. The juggler calls the little girl to him
and begins to play with her, at first gently, then
a little more boisterously, until at last he
thrusts her roughly under the basket, and tells
her he shall keep her there till she is good.
The little girl begins to whine and remonstrate
from underneath the basket; the juggler gets
angry, scolds her, and tells her to hold her tongue,
else he will whip her; but the little one is un-
appeasable, and the quarrel goes on, increasing
in intensity, until at last the man, in a paroxysm
of anger, draws his sword and thrusts it wildly
into the basket. The screams of the child are
heartrending, her yells and cries agonising; but
the juggler stabs and stabs again, and works his
sword about the wickerwork in uncontrollable
and fiendish fury. Then, the child's voice ceases,
and just a few heavy sobs are heard; then, some
fainter moans, fainter— fainter— as the last gasps
of a murdered child would be— and then, all is
still. The juggler pulls his bloody sword from
the basket, wipes it, and composedly salaams
Mem Sahib and her friends, who are
generally in a state of hysterical distress;
sometimes, indeed, the soldiers are with difficulty
restrained from tearing the man to pieces,
especially in one case known to me, when the
captain of the company, himself quivering in
every limb with horror and agitation, had actually
to defend the juggler from the excited men.
How it might have fared with him Heaven only
knows, but that on his giving a peculiar cry,
the little girl came bounding and laughing into
the circle— coming from behind the soldiers—
though every man was ready to swear that she
had not passed him, and could not have passed
through the thick ranks anywhere. Now, how
is that trick done? It is nothing but jugglery
from first to last— as much mere jugglery as
Torrini's trick of sawing one live page into two,
or as Robin's of pulling one pigeon into two;
but, mere trick as it is, it is undiscovered yet,
though hundreds of shrewd hard-headed
unimaginative and scientific Englishmen have seen
it, thought about it, tried it— and been baffled—
for half a dozen generations.

We must rank amongst the more legitimate
jugglers the rope-dancers and tumblers of old
times. In Elizabeth's reign they all went
together, classed with " ruffians, blasphemers,
thieves, vagabonds, heretics, Jews, pagans, and
sorcerers:" yet the old lioness liked looking at
them well enough; and in Laneham's description
of the Sports of Kenilworth, he speaks of
" a man so flighty that he doubted if he was a
man or a spirit," and could not tell what to make
of him, save that he might guess his back to be
" metalled like a lamprey, that has no bone, but
a line like a lutestring." Before then, Queen
Mary and Cardinal Pole, reviewing the royal
pensioners in Greenwich Park, laughed heartily
at the " pretty feats " of a tumbler; as generations
agone Edward the Second had laughed,
who was signally amused by a fellow who fell
off his horse, and vaulted on his back again, as
quick as you might see. Froissart speaks of
a marvellous bit of rope-dancing, quite as good
as Blondin's, if not better, on the occasion of
the entry of Isabel of Bavaria into Paris.
" There was a mayster came out of Geane; he
had tyed a corde upon the hyghest house on
the brydge of Saynt Michell over all the houses,
and the other corde was tyed to the hyghest
tower of Our Ladye's churche; and as the
quene passed by, and was in the great streat
called our Ladye's strete; bycause it was late,
this sayd Mayster, with two brinnynge candelles
in his handes, issued out of a littel stage that
he had made on the heyght of Our Ladye's
tower, synginge as he went upon the corde all
along the great strete, so that all that sawe him
hadde marvayle how it might be; and he bore
still in hys handes the two brinnynge candelles so
that he myght be well sene all over Parys, and
two myles without the city. He was such a
tumbler that his lightnesse was greatly praised."

Another rope dancer in Edward the Sixth's
time excited great wonder here in London. He
stretched a rope as thick as a ship's cable, from
the battlements of Saint Paul's steeple down to
the floor before the house of the Dean of Saint
Paul's, where he fastened it with an anchor; and
down this rope he came, "his head forward,
casting his arms and legs abroad, running on his
breast on the rope, from the battlements to the
ground, as it had been an arrow from the bow,
and stayed on the ground." Then he went to
the king and kissed his foot, and then swarmed
up the rope again, halting midway to play
" certain mysteries," as casting one leg from the
other, and tumbling and dancing on the rope.
Then he tied himself to the cable by his right
leg, "a little space beneath the wrist of the
foot," and hung by that leg a long while;
then played more mysteries; and so up the
rope again to safety and the high steeple of
Saint Paul's.

Very clever, too, were the egg-dancers
(" hoppesteres" in Chaucer's time), and the sword-
dancers, and the vaulters, and the entortillationists.
At the end of the last century there
was a magnificent vaulter, an Irishman, over six
feet in height, admirably made, and only eighteen
years old: he could jump over nine horses