This is in the natural depravity of the
common people, of course! It is not at all
because real education is wanted, or because
the common folk must get their open-air
entertainments by stealth and while the law
is winking, or because anybody—saint or
sinner, pot or kettle—proceeds on the
prodigious assumption that the question lies
between the worst amusements and none;
between the declarations of a pet prisoner
gnashing his teeth at sour grapes, and the
striving fancy that there is in most of us,
which even a lecture or a steam-engine will
not always satisfy! No doubt.

And now, good people, for the first fair I
saw this holiday time—I have been treating
all this time of the second—a fair on the
Saturday following Good Friday; a fair at
Lewes, some eight or nine miles inland from
Brighton.

I was at this last-named place early on the
Saturday morning, on business. There was
but little wind, and, when the sun shone,
which it did almost without cessation throughout
the day, it was as hot as though the
day were July. My business was over by
a little after ten o'clock. I strolled a few
minutes on the cliff, admiring the pretty
Amazons and the bold riding-masters, so
conscious of their proud position. I held
mute converse with one of the most
melancholy monkeys I have ever beheld,
crouching mournfully before an organ on
which a child of sunny Italy was grinding
dolefully an anatomical preparation (so
cadaverous was it) of the Marseillaise. In the
midst of the hot, dusty Steyne, with its brown
herbage, and waterless fountain, and fareless
cabs, and memberless club and princeless
palace, it looked (the monkey, I mean) like the
ghost of George the Fourth lamenting over
the ruins of the Pavilion. He (the monkey)
spat on the penny I gave him, for luck, or
seemed to do so; and I left him scratching his
head with an aspect of the most dreadfully
woebegone perplexity. I looked in at the
Town Hall, where the Judge of the County
Court was giving a dreary decision about a
smoky chimney; I looked in at the Police Court,
where an agricultural labourer (with at least
fourteen pounds of hardened clay on each of
his boots) was under examination, charged
with breaking another A. L.'s head (he might
have been his twin brother, he was so like
him, clay and all), with a bench, or a four-
legged table, or some light article of that sort,
in a beer-shop. But I did not incline to
Brighton, that hot Saturday morning. Brill's
bath, Wright's library, bathing-machines,
shell-picking, beach-wandering, or the Ocean
Queen yacht, with its three cruises a-day at
a shilling per head, had no charms for me.
I determined to walk to the station and go
back to London.

The first feat I accomplished, just as the
clock struck the half-hour after ten. I found
the station crammed with people—men,
women, and children—in their holiday clothes.
Sussex in general, and Brighton in particular
had come out in immense strength. Coventry
had done its duty nobly, for the ribbons were
prodigious. Manchester had not flinched, and
the display of printed cottons was enormous.
There were married couples with their
families, loving couples, old men and young.
"Ha! " I said to myself, " I see—a fair!"

I was confirmed in my impression by the sight
of bottles, and baskets, and bundles. " A fair,"
I said, "certainly! Where are they going?"
"To Lewes," said the guard, with a knowing
wink. Now, I wanted a little pleasure, a
little excitement, for I was dull; hipped, to
tell the truth, by the heat, and the dust, the
smoky-chimney decision, and the melancholy
monkey in the Steyne. I will go to Lewes
and see the fair! I thought. I put my London
return ticket in my pocket, and bought a
return ticket to Lewes. The train was very
full, and to Lewes I went—to the FAIR.

The newspapers said there were between
three and four thousand persons present, and
they know best; to my mind and to my
eyes there were ten thousand living souls
screaming, fighting, roaring with gipsy jollity
in front of LEWES GAOL, where the fair was
held. Besides the crowds of holiday-makers
who had come with me from Brighton, there
were thousands more who had poured in
from the whole country-side—from Hove,
Chiddingley, Patcham, Allinghurst,
Hayward's Heath—even from Chichester on the
one side, and Crawley and Reigate on the
other. It was a rare sight! Stout yeomen
on horseback, with flowers in their coats and
in their horses' headstalls; lounging dragoons
from the cavalry barracks on the Lewes road;
women in crowds, gaily dressed, very merry,
holding up their little children to see the
show; white-haired old agriculturists in
snowy smock frocks, and leaning on sticks;
picturesque old dames in scarlet cloaks, that
might have been worn by their grandmothers
when George the First was king; tribes of
brown-faced urchins, farm-labourers, bird-
catchers, and bird-scarers; crowds of navvies,
rough customers—ugly customers to say the
truth—very chalky indeed, striped night-
capped, gigantic-shoed, and carrying little
kegs of beer slung by their sides. Also,
gangs of true genuine British scamps, the
genuine agricultural vagabonds—incorrigible
poachers, irreclaimable drunkards at
wakes and feasts, enlisting in foot-regiments
and deserting the day afterwards—hawking
crockery-ware, or doing dawdling work in
Kent—sometimes, in hopping time—brawlers
in ale-houses—not averse to a little bit of
burglary on the quiet, with crapes over their
faces and shirts over their clothes. Also a
great many policemen on horseback, and on
foot. What could so many of them be wanting,
now, at a fair?

At a fair, too, where there were hawkers of
cakes and fruit; where there were games and