Batty did not limit his movements to any part of the United Kingdom. In 1838 we find him at Newcastle and Edinburgh, and in 1840 at Portsmouth and Southampton. Some changes had been made in the company, of which James Newsome, now proprietor of one of the best of the provincial circuses, Lavater Lee, the vaulter, and Plége, the French rope-dancer, were prominent members. At the time when Astley’s was burnt for the third time, Batty’s circus was in Dublin, where a good stroke of business had been done. On hearing of the conflagration, Batty started for London by the next steamer, made arrangements for the immediate rebuilding of the Amphitheatre, and returned to Dublin. The receipts were beginning to decline there, and, pending the completion of the new Amphitheatre in Westminster Road, Batty resolved to construct a temporary circus at Oxford. To that city he accordingly proceeded, leaving the circus under the management of Wallett, who, after travelling for several years with Cooke, and two years with Van Amburgh, had joined Batty in Dublin. On the termination of the season in the Irish capital, Wallett took the company and the stud to Liverpool, and, as the circus at Oxford was not yet ready for opening, arranged with Copeland for twelve nights at the Amphitheatre. This engagement, being made without the knowledge and sanction of Batty, caused a warm dispute between the latter and Wallett, which did not, however, have the immediate effect of terminating the clown’s engagement. Wallett tells a humorous story of Pablo Fanque, with whom he became intimately acquainted, and who used to fish in the Isis. The black was a very successful angler, and would pull the golden chub, the silvery roach, and the bearded barbel out of the river by the dozen when Oxonian disciples of Walton could not get a nibble. One intelligent undergraduate came to the conclusion that the circus man’s success must be due to his dusky complexion, and astonished his brothers of the rod by appearing one morning on the bank of the stream with a face suggestive of the surmise that he must have been playing Othello or Zanga at some private theatricals the preceding night, and have gone to bed, as Thornton—well known in the annals of provincial theatres at the beginning of the present century—once did, without wiping the black off. The Oxonian caught no more fish, however, than he had done before. While Batty’s circus was still at Oxford, Pablo Fanque terminated his engagement, and started a circus on his own account. Wallett, always a rolling stone, joined him, and they proceeded to the north together, opening at Wakefield, where, for the present, we must leave them. CHAPTER VI.