The Symposium opened on May 1, 1851, and the Metropolitan Sanitary Association and other festively inclined societies began to banquet in its halls. The average attendance was 1,000 a day, and the takings amounted to £21,000; but none the less the great chef was £7,000 out of pocket, and the Symposium closed suddenly and for ever on October 14, 1851. There had, in fact, been many complaints of bad dinners and imperfect management. It is not easy—or was not in those days—to provide simultaneously sightseers’ luncheons and dinners for epicures. Even at this remote period, and without aspiring to the Bower of Ariadne, one is appalled at the idea of dining in an Encampment of All Nations at a table 307 feet long. The roasting of a bullock whole, which took place in the Pré d’Orsay on May 31, no doubt brought many shillings to the treasury, but was reminiscent of Battersea Fields or of a Frost Fair on the Thames. In February, 1852, the place was dismantled, and the Hall and the Encampment were sold by auction. The Gore estate was purchased the same year by the Commissioners of the Exhibition, and the grounds in later years formed part of those of the Royal Horticultural Society. {33} [Volant and Warren, _Memoirs of Alexis Soyer_; Davis’s _Knightsbridge_, p. 142; Walford, _Old and New London_, v., p. 118 _f._; _Illustrated London News_, May 10 and 17, 1851 (views of the garden and the Baronial Hall); ‘Gore House,’ a water-colour by T. H. Shepherd, _circa_ 1850, in Kensington Public Library; Timbs’s _Clubs_, quoting Sala’s account from _Temple Bar Magazine_.] THE HIPPODROME, NOTTING HILL THIS was a race-course of some two and a half miles in circuit. In 1837 a Mr. John Whyte had turned his attention to the slopes of Notting Hill, and to the Portobello meadows west of Westbourne Grove, and prepared a course, not for golf, but for horse-racing and steeple-chasing, with the accompaniments of a training-ground and stables for about eighty horses. The Hippodrome was opened on June 3, 1837. The public were admitted for a shilling, and those who could not enter the carriage enclosure mounted a convenient hill from which a splendid view of the racing—also of much adjacent country—could be obtained. No gambling-booths or drinking-booths were permitted, but iced champagne, or humbler beverages were to be obtained on this eminence. Lord Chesterfield and Count d’Orsay were the first stewards, and the Grand Duke of Russia, the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of Brunswick, and many noble personages, condescended to visit this London Epsom, to which gay marquees and ‘splendid equipages’ lent éclat on a race-day. These races were held for four years, and were duly recorded in _Bell’s Life_, with the usual details of horse, owner, and jockey. Cups of fifty and a hundred guineas were offered. The proceedings generally began at two, and on one occasion lasted till nine.