On Easter Monday the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, and Aldermen went in state to Christ Church, formerly the Church of the Grey Friars, and heard service. In the evening there was a great banquet, with a ball. A fatiguing day for my Lord Mayor. Easter Monday was also the day of the Epping Hunt. Greenwich Fair was held on that and the two following days. And in Easter week the theatres played pieces for children. [Illustration: EVENING IN SMITHFIELD (From a Drawing made in 1858, at the gateway leading into Cloth Fair, the place of proclamation of Bartholomew Fair)] On the first Sunday in Easter the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs went in state to St. Paul’s, and had a banquet afterwards. On May Day the chimney-sweeps had their annual holiday. On Ascension Day they made a procession of parish functionaries and parochial schools, and beat the bounds, and, to mark them well in the memory of all, they beat the charity children who attended the beadle, and they beat all the boys they caught on the way, and they banged against the boundaries all the strangers who passed within their reach. When it came to banging the strangers, they had a high old time. On the Queen’s Birthday there was a splendid procession of stage coaches from Piccadilly to the Post Office. [Illustration: BARTHOLOMEW FAIR.] Lastly, on September 3, Bartholomew Fair was opened by the Lord Mayor, and then followed what our modern papers are wont to call a carnival, but what the papers of 1837 called, without any regard to picturesque writing, a scene of unbridled profligacy, licentiousness, and drunkenness, with fighting, both of fists and cudgels, pumping on pickpockets, robbery and cheating, noise and shouting, the braying of trumpets and the banging of drums. If you want to know what this ancient fair was like, go visit the Agricultural Hall at Christmas. They have the foolish din and noise of it, and if the people were drunk, and there were no police, and everybody was ready and most anxious to fight, and the pickpockets, thieves, bullies, and blackguards were doing what they pleased, you would have Bartholomew Fair complete. CHAPTER III. LONDON IN 1837.