female equestrians? Or in an open carriage?
Or a donkey-cart? Or by the South Western
Railway? At all events, you have been to
the Chobham camp and have seen the Fair.
Otherwise I should not presume to address
to you the narrative of my experiences—a
day after the Fair— of this embodiment of
the whole "pomp, pride, and circumstance of
glorious war."

The time is nine A.M.; the place, the
platform of the Waterloo terminus of the South
Western Railway; the people, between two
and three thousand men, women, and
children, yelling with the united force of
their (from four to six thousand) lungs for
trains to Chertsey. Here are dapper young
guardsmen in undress frocks and white ducks
going down as amateurs, to witness the
manœuvres of their comrades on duty in the
Camp; here are solid-looking policemen;
extras who have been telegraphed for and
who, apparently despairing of being able to
capture a tithe of the evil-doers congregated
here, appear to take themselves into custody,
and keep themselves very close indeed. Here
are militia officers in uniform burning to
acquire a knowledge of their calling at Battle
Fair, trying, in their new-made accoutrements,
to look very professional indeed, and,
all things considering, succeeding pretty
well. Here, with very brilliant epaulettes,
and very neatly brushed blue coatees, and
boots highly blacked, and whiskers carefully
trimmed, and medals complacently though
not ostentatiously displayed, are those lynx-
eyed sergeants of the Honourable East India
Company's Service, who are to be heard of
at small public-houses in the neighbourhood
of Hungerford Market, Whitehall, and King
Street, Westminster, (generally down cellar
steps, or up blind passages), who are always
on the look out for "fine young men" for the
Honourable Company's artillery and infantry,
and whose appetite for fine young men is
insatiable. Here—bolder, more defiant, and
blustering—are recruiting sergeants in scarlet
and ribbons, eager to raise men for the
Queen's troops. Here are mechanics,
artisans, labourers, barristers, solicitors, country
parsons, schoolmasters with timid tribes of
little scholars, "swells" from Pall Mall and
the lodging-houses about St. James's,
over-dressed and over-estimated (by themselves)
gentlemen gents. Then the harmless City
and Government Office gents proper—also
over-dressed and over-estimated, but in a
different fashion—cheap young butterflies of
the Strand and Haymarket. Then long-
haired dirty lads, in gangs of threes and
fours who, evidently, are up to no good; the
suspicious but shrewd-looking gentlemen who
are going down with the evident intention of
exercising in the outskirts of Battle Fair
the honourable and ancient arts of thimble-
rigging, card-spinning, pip-counting, garter-
pricking, all still pursued, despite Sir James
Graham's rigorous Epsom onslaught, but
carried on now in a peripatetic manner, and
classed under the generic name of
"Charleypitching." Then next, brothers, and first
cousins to the Charleypitchers; here are
also gentlemen, better dressed, but more
suspicious and shrewd-looking, whom I may,
without any scandal, simply denominate
"gonophs," and for further information about
whom I must refer to the officers of the
Detective Police. Here, to sum up,
scrambling, jostling, fighting, screaming, clinging
round pillars, adjuring railway policemen,
waylaying porters, putting clerks to the
question, wiping their hot faces, groaning
''Shame," and asking each other all at once
(without waiting for, or seeming to expect an
answer), "When does the next train start?"
are samples of every grade, class, rank, and
station, in this Behemoth of London;
deputations from every part of Babylon, from
Hyde Park Gardens to Short's Gardens,
Drury Lane; from Park Lane to Field Lane;
from the Serpentine to the Fleet Ditch. Is
this no masquerade? Is Vauxhall a patch on
this parti-coloured robe? Can you name the
Bal de l'Opéra, the Carnival of Venice, the
Descent of the Courtille, after this, the
Carnival prelude to Battle Fair. Altogether
Hanwell Lunatic Asylum, together with
Colney Hatch, and some moderate draughts
from Bedlam and St. Luke's, appear to have
been emptied into the terminus and on to the
platform; and the clerks and porters,
transformed into keepers, seem to have too many
patients, and not to know what to do with them.

Still, in all the pay-boxes the clipping of
tickets goes on with as much rapidity as if
suet were being chopped for a monster plum-
pudding. Still, at all the pay-places there is
a struggling, rushing, kicking mass of people
thrusting half-crowns and shillings into the
clerks' hands, ears, eyes, and mouth, and
fighting for tickets like famished wolves. Still, the
train-bell is continually ringing, and trains
moving out of the station; yet, still to the
general view there are quite as many
despairing or impatient passengers on the
platform as before.

One individual has provided himself with,
a first-class return ticket, by a process of his
own invention, and which he confidentially
told me he intended (as soon as Hanaper
and Chaffwax have been delivered over to
torment,) to patent. It consists in the
execution of a species of rotatory war-dance in
the thickest part of the crowd, taking care to
stamp violently on all the toes near him, and
to fling his arms about after the manner of
the sails of a windmill. A temporary circle
being thus cleared, he rushes up to the
wicket, takes his ticket, places it in his mouth,
folds his arms; and, butting with his head
foremost in the mode of an ancient battering
ram, effects a triumphant exit.

With my ticket, after much pushing, and
stamping, and swaying to and fro, I reach the
extreme verge of the platform. A train is