constituted the "circences."  So away we go
towards Hackney-wick, the most of us, so soon
as the train begins to move, taking an
affectionate pantomimic farewell of the female birds
on the opposite platform, who, let loose from
their propriety of conduct (which they have
hitherto sustained with difficulty) by precisely
the same circumstance, the moving away of the
train, kiss their hands to us, and fall into a
general flutter of giggling.  I find sitting on
the seat opposite to me a dirty man with a
grave cunning face, who holds on his knee two
bird-traps, and the thought flashes across me
that this man depends for his success to-day
upon the same weakness of nature which
prompted those human birds to kiss their hands
and giggle when the train moved off.  He will
pretend to move away, but when the bird,
beguiled by the song of the decoy, comes down
and enters the trap, he will pull the string, and
the foolish little creature will be caught. Ah
me! —but there, let us have no moralising.
Have I not put on my wide-awake, and come
out for a day's enjoyment?

Enjoyment!  Save the mark!  A more
squalid, dirty, dreary, depressing place than the
wrestling-ground (attached to a public-house of
course) at Hackney-wick it would be difficult
to conceive.  The wrestlers are unmitigated
roughs, and the few spectators are mostly of the
same class.  These, then, are the famous rustic
games of Hackney-wick!  While I am wondering
that any decent people could ever have been
attracted by such a miserable spectacle, I receive
a piece of information which accounted for this
and other strange things which I witnessed
subsequently.  The great Good Friday Hackney-
wick Exhibition of Wrestling had been
transferred to, and was then being held at, the
Agricultural Hall, Islington.  Proceeding now
in a cab towards other famous holiday resorts of
the people, in the neighbourhood of Wood Green
and Hornsey, I am puzzled and astonished to
observe the almost deserted condition of the
gardens and pleasure-grounds, which in former
years used to be thronged.  Here and there I
come upon a mob of costermongers in a field,
offering to a sparse public of their own class the
highly exhilarating sport and pastime of three
sticks a penny; but nowhere can I find the
respectable working classes ruralising and enjoying
themselves in the "Green Lanes."  Where
are they?  Whither have they gone?  Is not this
Good Friday?  I begin to understand at last.
I perceive that pleasure is being centralised.
The great mass of the holiday-makers are at the
Crystal Palace;  the admirers of athletic sports
at the Agricultural Hall; and the irregulars,
jealous perhaps of the principle of centralisation
as applied even to holiday-making, have gone
up to refresh themselves with a sight of the
green leaves and the many-coloured flowers in
the gardens of Kew and Hampton Court.

"Centralisation," I mutter to myself, "bad
thing —dangerous to the rights and liberties of
the people —tendency towards autocratic and
dictatorial government —must be wrong on
principle, therefore no exception to the rule
can be allowed."  I am not so sure about this,
however, when I reflect on the subject.  What
are the amusements provided for the fancy-free
public roving among these green lanes?  Three
sticks a penny, hard biscuits and beer.  Anything
else?  Well; if you press me for a more
full and categorical reply, I will add, ardent
spirits in all their vile holiday varieties.  On
the other hand, if I turn to the programme of
amusements at the Crystal Palace, I find that,
in addition to the normal attractions of the
place, the courts, the statues, the works of art,
and the flowers, the public are offered, for the
small charge of one shilling, a great variety of
entertainments, including a concert by first-rate
singers, an exhibition of the jewels taken at the
sack of Pekin, a skating-hall, a gymnasium, bowls,
archery, cricket, boats, &c.  And I am reminded
that the thousands who crowded the Crystal
Palace on Good Friday joined with great earnestness,
and with evident pleasure, in singing the Old
Hundredth Psalm, rendering it with a steadiness
and precision which showed that they are neither
unaccustomed to, nor indisposed to, religious
exercises, if fitting opportunities were offered to
them.  On Easter Monday the Crystal Palace
opened with extra attractions —the Wizard of
the North, the Alabama Minstrels, and a
pantomimic ballet in the theatre.  On the same
day the South Kensington Museum was open
free, and thousands thronged it all day long,
preserving their appetite for wonders to the last,
and coming away still hungry.

I know now how it was that I found myself
so solitary, so wretched, and so very far from
the jolly dog I had intended to be, down among
the Green Lanes.  The glory of the old-fashioned
seats of rough-and-ready pleasure had departed.
They had been moved up, and the people had
gone up after them.  The mangy little mobs I
saw hanging about the public-houses looked
extremely miserable until the public-houses
opened, and then they had a good excuse in the
rain, which now began to fall, for devoting
themselves to drink.  I looked in at several houses
to see how the people were enjoying themselves.
Enjoying themselves!  It is a mockery to use
the word.  A steaming mob at a dingy sloppy
bar, drinking from dirty pots; the sanded floor
littered with orange-peel and splashed with beer.
Poor, but decent, women, who have come out
with their children for a day's recreation, are
sitting in a squalid dirty room dignified by the
name of a "parlour," cutting their bit of bread
and cheese or cold meat on a deal table that
does not appear to have been washed for months.
Dirty costermongers slopping beer about, and
filling the air with the smoke of the vilest
tobacco, a Babel of hoarse voices, a heavy
vapour of damp fustian, a smoke, a smother, a
scuffling of hob-nailed feet, and through all a
ghastly attempt at hilarity in the never-ceasing
chorus of Slap, bang, here we are again!

Returning homewards late in the afternoon,
I note in the immediate neighbourhood of certain
outlying public-houses, melancholy preparation