Our friend Mr. Day—for the friend of mankind never dies—had a small estate, whether hereditary, or a purchase, we do not know, near the Fairlop Oak, and thither he annually resorted, about a fortnight after Midsummer, to receive his rents; the congeniality of his temper would not suffer him to receive the good things of this world alone, and it was his custom to invite a few of his neighbours to accompany him, and there he would treat them with a repast of beans and bacon, &c. under the canopy of the Oak, the accomodations being provided from an adjacent small public-house, the Maypole. Mr. Day’s friends were so well pleased with the rural novelty, that they one and all pledged themselves to accompany him on the same occasion every year, on the first Friday in July, during their lives. In the course of a few years, this amicable meeting greatly increased, and became known to the neighbouring gentry, farmers, and yeomanry; and a vast number of them annually, on the day of Mr. Day’s jubilee, visited the place. Suttling booths were soon found to be necessary for their accommodation, which naturally produced various other booths for sale, arranged around the huge Oak; and about the year 1725, this charming spot began to present every resemblance of a regular fair. It progressively increasing, puppet-shows, wild beasts, fruits, gingerbread, ribbons, and toys, of all descriptions, attended with the usual pastimes of a country wake, soon succeeded, and in a very few years it became one of the most respectable, well-regulated, and harmonious, fairs round the metropolis. This new generation of Mr. Day’s creation became his principal hobby-horse, and he found himself highly flattered by the honest attentions of his numerous visitors. Suffer me here to digress for a few moments: methinks we see the good old man indulging the graceful sensations resulting from a knowledge of his having founded and promoted a meeting of innocent conviviality, and receiving the smiling congratulations of artless beauty, dancing around him and his venerable Tree, with bosoms light and pure as the atmosphere above them. Say, ye sons and daughters of dissipation, who indulge in midnight revelry, are your pursuits equal to the simple joys of a country fair? Is there no difference between the confined and crowded play-house, or opera, where you are all gasping for a little contaminated effluvia, and the healthful and fragrant breezes of sylvan Fairlop? See the ruddy glow of rosy health, so fascinatingly contrasted with the lily’s rival, and the natural ringlets flowing with the playful wind! Behold the modest, yet delightful work of nature! Is there no distinction between these simple beauties, and the artful manufactured face, on which the faithless rouge and poisonous white lay waste God’s best of works, and leave not a wreck behind?