A graphic sketch by ‘Boz’ brings back to us the evening when Mr. Samuel Wilkins, the journeyman carpenter of small dimensions, accompanied his sweetheart, Miss Jemima Evans, to the Eagle. On their way from a distant suburb, they stopped at the Crown{59b} in Pentonville, to taste some excellent shrub in the little garden thereto attached, and finally arrived in the City Road. The Eagle garden was gravelled and planted, the refreshment-boxes were painted, and variegated lamps shed their light on the heads of the company. A Moorish band and military band were playing in the grounds; but the people were making for the concert-room, a place with an orchestra, ‘all paint, gilding, and plate glass.’ Here the audience were seated on elevated benches round the room, and ‘everybody’—and this is a touch of the later Dickens—‘was eating and drinking as comfortably as possible.’ Mr. Wilkins ordered rum-and-water with a lemon for himself and ‘sherry-wine’ for the lady, with some sweet caraway-seed biscuits. There was an overture on the organ and comic songs (let us add by the famous singers Henry Howell and Robert Glindon {60}), accompanied by the organ. This must have been in 1835 or 1836, and Dickens would have been pleased at the all-embracing sympathies of the proprietor of the Eagle, who, a little later, organized so many charitable benefits. Thus, there was a benefit for the Blind Hebrew Brethren in the East, and a ball ‘for our friends of the Hebrew nation.’ On another night, a benefit ‘to relieve decayed Druids and their wives and orphans,’ and yet another night ‘for clothing the children of the needy.’ The coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838, like the previous coronation, gave a hint for new developments. The Eagle now, and for some years, took to itself the sub-title of the Coronation Pleasure-Grounds, and this year, or at the close of 1837, the place assumed nearly the form that it retained till its closing years. A covered promenade ran round the gardens; the great tavern at the corner of the City Road was erected, and a ball-room was completed. The Saloon was remodelled, with a pit—part of it railed off for smokers—and tiers of boxes. A new organ was set up by Parsons of Bloomsbury, and the old organ and self-acting piano were advertised for sale. The architectural genius of Rouse was doubtless at the bottom of these changes, but he gave the credit to the professionals, and announced that the whole was ‘planned by P. Punnett, Esq., and surveyed by R. Warton.’ The new Saloon was opened on January 1, 1838—for the Eagle was a winter as well as a summer resort {61a}—with a concert and an appropriate address by Moncrieff the dramatist. A programme of this year includes an overture by Weber, an air from Rossini, ‘Tell me where is Fancy bred,’ ‘All’s Well’ (duet), and ‘It’s all very well, Mr. Ferguson,’ one of several comic songs.