Apprehensive lest our distress of feeling should be observed in our countenance, we turned our back upon the wretched spectacle, and gazed into the gloomy field before us, till our heart verily ached again. We had known a time when "Richardson's" in giant letters met our view--when wreaths and stars of variegated lamps, brilliant as the rainbow, depended and glittered from red festoons--when, side by side, the insidious conspirator, the valiant disinherited, and beauteous betrothed, paced the platform in mysterious communion--when funny clowns sang funny songs to a sea of delighted faces--when ladies in Scotch costume danced Highland flings--when countless people who had paid, stood conjecturing and anxiously waiting outside for the conclusion of the tragedy and pantomime then being executed inside, and feeling sensations of awe creep over them as the spangled knights, the frowning desperadoes, and Indian chiefs with bracelets on their arms and rings through their ears and noses, stalked past them in their dignified parade. Oh! torturing memory! Once more in thy dimless mirror do we behold "Pavilion Theatre"--see the equestrian "Clarke's"--hear too their cry of "The riders, the riders"--see again the savage combat between the two fierce bandits, who perform north-east south-west, robbers' cut, and guard, with frantic bravery--again we see Master Clarke and Miss Clarke waltzing round and round in the innocence of childhood--again the din of Bartholomew rings in our ears--again is Smithfield thronged with its roystering thousands--again are we surrounded by booths, shows, dwarfs, giants, pigs link-eaters, fat boys, swings, round-abouts, conjurers, and steam glass-works. We should, past doubt, have swooned away at the vision we had raised, had we not turned opportunely to the little show behind us, which made us conscious of the chilling truth of the reality. Despairing and broken-spirited, the proprietor had forsaken his post, and whilst his consort screamed forth invitations to the inanimate crowd to walk forward, he leaned his back dejectedly against the wheel of his yellow habitation. As he stood, he was accosted by a man in knee corduroys, half-boots, and white stockings, who, removing the short pipe from his mouth and looking hard in the showman's face, exclaimed-- "Vot Bill!--vy I ardly know'd yer! Vot a precious long phiz you have got! Vot has give you the blues?" "Blues!" echoed the showman, for an instant raising his eyes; "Ain't it enough to make a heart of stone bleed to see this here Fair? Ain't it enough to--" but here his eyes again fell upon the ground, and superintended a little hole which he was digging with his iron heel. "Vell, but man," rejoined the corduroys, encouragingly, as he glanced about him, "there arn't a wery great squeege to-night, to be sure, but yer vosn't so thin yisterday, and the day afore, vos yer?"