the noisy geese gabbling o'er the pool, the
sober herd lowing to meet their young, and
the loud laugh which speaks (not always,
dear Goldsmith), the vacant mind.

Two sober horses feed quietly by the side
of the tilted chariot, while the rest of the
landscape is made up by a misanthropic
donkey which appears to have given up
thistles altogether as gross and sensual
luxuries, and browses contentedly on chalk and
stunted thistles; and a big brown dog that
seems to know everybody, and tumbles
everybody, and makes a very fierce pretence of
barking and biting, belying his fierceness all
the time by the wagging of his tail and the
leer on his honest countenance— a landscape
of happiness and plenty, and quietude, and
the Queen's peace.

Of Peace, say I? As I watch the strollers'
booth, there comes across the field of the
river a little black steamer, with a white
funnel, towing a hulkish, outlandish bark,
with her mainmast all gone to pieces, with
an outlandish flag at her mizen, and floating
proudly above it the English ensign. This is
a Russian prize; and, as though looking
through a camera, you suddenly drew a red
slide between the lens and the eye, this field
of peace becomes at once a field of war. See,
transport number forty-two is just going
down river; she is chock full of heavy
guns and munitions of war; yonder little
schooner, painted light-blue, a Fruiterer
from the Azores, laden with peaceful oranges
and lemons, has been chartered by government
for the conveyance of stores to the
Black Sea; transport number nineteen is
expected down shortly with artillery horses,
and transport number seventy with hussars
and lancers. I begin to remember that,
within a few miles of my quiet, peaceful, little
Dumbledowndeary, are the most famous
arsenals and dockyards to be found in this
mortal world— fields of the balls of death—
laboratories of destructive missiles. But
the waters curl and are blue and sparkling,
and the tides have their ebb and
flow, whether their burdens be peaceful
argosies or armed galleys; and the river-
shores remember that they have seen the
Danes in the Thames, and the Dutch in
the Medway, and the mutiny at the Nore,
and that they were none the less green and
smiling.

Messrs. Hayes and Walton do not trouble
themselves about the war, save in so far as it
affects the price of tallow candles and two-
inch rope, or influences the minds of their
audiences, leading them (H. and W.) to
compose and perform pieces of a war turn or of a
military tendency— all to suit the popular
appetite for the drama pugnacious. Thus,
though the piece originally announced for
this evening was the Corsican Brothers, or
the Fatal Resemblance and the Murdered
Twins; H.andW., finding Dumbledowndeary
to be partially a down-to-sea-going place,
including among its population coastguardsmen,
bargemen, watermen, and fishermen—
persons all supposed to have a lively interest
in the progress of the war— changed the drama
to the Russian War and the Gallant Turk;
or, Death, the Danube, and the Tartar
Bride.

We have waited a considerable time
—so considerable indeed that Mr. Sprouts
the peripatetic fishmonger and purveyor of
sundries in general, has driven his little truck,
drawn by a placid little ass, to the brink of
the amphitheatre, and is driving quite a
brisk trade in cakes, nuts, apples, oranges,
and ginger beer. We almost feel inclined
to ask for bills of the play.

By and by a little cheer directs my
attention from the proscenium; and my
spirits are raised to the highest pitch by the
appearance on the platform of an Individual.
He makes his appearance, curiously, much in
the same manner as I have seen Mr. Calcraft
make his appearance on a certain dreadful
stage in front of one of Her Majesty's jails,
where he does the second tragedy business—
cautiously advancing to the front and
curiously peering into and scanning the populace.
But he wears garments far different from
the doomster's sables; having on a pair of
gay boots, which I dare swear have been
originally ankle-jacks, and are now covered
with a coat of red paint; a pair of
ample calico trousers, a broad leathern belt
with a large brass buckle (pattern the Miller
and his Men— size, Grindoff), a velveteen
polka jacket with coarse gold lace sewn down
all the seams, an imitation point-lace collar,
and such a turban! a wondrous combination
of a wide-awake hat with a dirty shawl
twisted round it, and streamers of spangled
gauze, and a broken feather— a turban that
would make any Cheltenham or Leamington
spinster die of envy. This individual, after
a cursory but evidently efficient survey of his
auditory— having reckoned them all up, and
divided the paying from the non-paying ones
—disappears into the place from whence he
came; soon, however, to re-appear with a long
green drum, whose bruised parchments attest
how long and often it has suffered the
discipline of the stick. This drum he discreetly
proceeds to sling by a cord to the posts of the
proscenium, and deliberately performs a solo
upon it— a solo that has very little beginning
and an elastic end— being capable of prolongation
ad infinitum; or of being cut sharp off
when necessity requires.

To him, presently, a man in private
clothes, with a trombone. Next, a man with
a horn, and a troublesome cough, which
makes of his horn-blowing one continual
catarrh. Next, a young lady in long
black ringlets and long white calico; next, a
ditto ditto in red hair braided and short pink
calico spangled trousers to match, and blue
boots; next a diminutive child-woman or
woman-child, I scarcely know which, who