for Easter Monday fairs.  Huddled together
in miserable companionship, a few rickety vans,
that had once been yellow, were already displaying
worn and blurred pictures of pink-eyed
ladies, dwarfs, and boa-constrictors, which were
certainly not to be seen inside; one giving a
foretaste of its " wonders of the wild woods, the
jungle, and the prairie," by hanging out two
guinea-pigs in a rat-trap.  A swing or two, and
a roundabout, and a collection of dirty boards,
evidently the materials for constructing shooting-
galleries and gingerbread-stalls.  And it is
fondly supposed inside those dingy tumble-down
vans that there will be people on Easter Monday
eager to walk up and pay their money to see the
live lions stuffed with straw—that is to say, the
two guinea-pigs in the rat-trap.  I had the
curiosity to revisit these scenes of wild delight
on Easter Monday, and found one of the fairs—
Chalk Farm— tolerably well attended.  On the
stage of the show where the two guinea-pigs
were displayed, the very dirtiest woman it has
ever been my lot to see was banging a drum
with a hole in it, while a man in ragged corduroys,
whose corresponding dirtiness suggested
a close attachment to his wife, belaboured a
cinder-sifter with the handle of a carter's whip.
The "ladies and gentlemen" who were invited
to walk up, and who did walk up in scores, paying
their pennies with a lively anticipation of
pleasure which was pitiful to behold, knowing
the nature of the squalid treat that was in store
for them, were entirely and exclusively boys and
girls of the poorest and most degraded class—
degraded only because neglected and uncared
for.

The Crystal Palace, though the return ticket
and "entrance" amounted to only two shillings,
was above them, and they were obliged to be
content with what poor amusement the gipsy
showman could afford them for a penny.  Their
greatest delight seemed to be the roundabout
and the swing, and in the latter there were none
the fewer female candidates for a seat because
the great aim and pleasure of the proprietor
was to fling them so high up in the air as to
throw their petticoats over their heads.  The
shouts of delight that hailed this exhibition
smote upon me with a saddening effect, when I
remembered that the scene was being enacted
within sight of the oak planted just a year ago
to the memory of the Immortal Bard, the high
priest of all kinds of moral and intellectual elevation.
Here, as elsewhere, the fair was promoted
by the public-house for its own benefit.

It was inexpressibly sad, on the evening of
Good Friday, and again on the evening of Easter
Monday, to see the humble order of holiday-
makers tramping homewards all weary,
depressed, mud-stained, and draggled.  The birds
that had fluttered out so trim and gay in the
morning, looked as birds always look when they
have been in the rain.  The young man —Molly's
star in the dark —was much dimmed in his
lustre.  His gait was heavy and lumpy, and his
eyes looked out with a fishy stare from a great
haze of beer. He had enjoyed himself dismally.

We had all enjoyed ourselves dismally, and if
you had seen us dragging our weary legs
homewards, as flies drag themselves across a
beer-slopped tap table, you would have said we were
the most jolly melancholy dogs you ever saw.

I am afraid the rain was responsible for the
excessive quantities of beer we drank.  Adjourning
to the public-house to escape the rain, we
got out of one form of wet into another.  But
if the day had been never so fine, it would have
been difficult to find real enjoyment in the
Elysian Fields attached to public-houses of the
very worst and lowest class.

Would it not be worth while to centralise
those humblest of the seats of pleasure in some
second-class Crystal Palace, or palaces, where
the open sesame would be the "little sixpence,"
or even less?  The people are over-lectured and
under-amused.  More decent amusement for the
less decent among us, is much wanted on a holiday.
In practical remembrance of Good Friday,
will the Bench of Bishops, or the Bench of
Cabinet Ministers, or the Bench of Magistrates,
or any Bench of all the many Benches that
over-bench us, speak out wholesomely upon that
honest truth?  We should soon see a Better
Friday than the Good Friday we see near
populous places now.

         CIRCUMLOCUTIONAL VACCINATION.

WHEN, towards the close of the last century,
Jenner, after innumerable experiments, devoted
study, and in the face of the ridicule and
antagonism that usually attend the discoveries of
the benefactors of mankind, established the
results of his researches into the great question
of vaccination, it was supposed that that question
was exhausted, in so far as that —the operation
once successfully performed —the scourge of
small-pox which for centuries had spared neither
age nor sex, strength nor feebleness, which made
beauty hideous and destroyed the comeliness of
youth, which brought blindness, deafness, and a
hundred infirmities in its train, was for ever
conquered. And for many years the constant
immunity from small-pox that attended the
performance of the operation, led mankind to regard
themselves as entirely secure by such means.
Certain medical men then, as since, declared that
in transmitting the vaccine from arm to arm,
hereditary diseases were also transmitted, and
that thus it was merely the exchange of one
malady for another —the exchange, moreover, of
a malady to which successive generations became
liable, for one to which only individuals
were, or might be, subjected.  Even these,
however, expressed no doubt as to the certainty of
the prevention of small-pox by means of
vaccination.

During twenty-two years Jenner continued to
experiment with unfailing success; the method
of vaccinating from arm to arm being constantly
employed during this period, and for
nearly twenty-seven succeeding years, without
a question of its perfect efficacy being raised.