Vauxhall Gardens re-opened in 1854 with the additional attraction of a circus, in rivalry with Cremorne, now become one of the most popular places of amusement in the metropolis. The sensation of the season was the gymnastic performance of a couple of youths known as the Italian Brothers on a trapeze suspended beneath the car of a balloon, while the aërial machine was ascending. The perilous nature of the performance caused it to be prohibited by the Commissioners of Police, by direction of the Home Secretary; a course which was also adopted in the case of Madame Poitevin’s similar ascent from Cremorne, seated on the back of a bull, in the character of Europa, though in that instance on the ground of the cruelty of slinging the bovine representative of Jupiter beneath the car. Some years afterwards, the gymnasts who bore the professional designation of the Brothers Francisco advertised their willingness to engage for a trapeze performance beneath the car of a balloon; but they received no response, probably owing to the official prohibition in the case of the Italian Brothers. ‘Would not such a performance be rather hazardous?’ I said to one of them. ‘Oh, we should only do a few easy tricks,’ he replied. ‘We should soon be too high for anybody to see what we were doing, and need only make believe. Once out of sight, we should pull up into the car.’ ‘Of course,’ I observed, ‘the risk of falling would be no greater than if you were only thirty or forty feet from the ground; but, if you did fall, there would be a difference, you would come down like poor Cocking.’ ‘Squash!’ said the gymnast. ‘As the nigger said, it wouldn’t be the falling, but the stopping, that would hurt us. But the risk would have to be considered in the screw; and then there is something in the offer to do the thing that ought to induce managers to offer us an engagement.’