“He set out from the Tower at nine, amidst crowds, thousands. First went a string of constables; then one of the sheriffs in his chariot and six, the horses dressed with ribbons; next Lord Ferrers in his own landau and six, his coachman crying all the way; guards on each side; the other sheriff’s chariot followed empty, with a mourning coach and six, a hearse, and the Horse Guards. Observe that the empty chariot was that of the other Sheriff, who was in the coach with the prisoner, and who was Vaillant, the French bookseller in the Strand.... How will you decipher all these strange circumstances to Florentines? A bookseller in robes and in mourning, sitting as a magistrate by the side of an earl, and in the evening everybody going to Vaillant’s shop to hear the particulars.... ... The sheriffs fell to eating and drinking on the scaffold, and helped up one of their friends to drink with them, as he was still hanging, which he did for above an hour, and then was conveyed back with the same pomp to Surgeon’s Hall to be dissected. The executioners fought for the rope—a silken one—and the man who lost it cried. The mob tore off the black cloth as relics; but the universal crowd behaved with great decency and admiration, as well they might; for sure no exit was ever made with more sensible resolution and with less ostentation.” That journey, which lasted two hours, on account of the mob, must have been a trying ordeal. This was the first execution in which the falling trap was used, and Ferrers is himself supposed to have been its originator. Early in George III.’s reign some severe winters occurred, and a tremendous frost prevailed for weeks. Sleighs glided merrily in Hyde Park, and contests and wagers were carried out on the Serpentine. In fact, the Park was about this time at its gayest, for in the following autumn the King of Denmark and two Princes of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha visited England, when one of the items in the programme of amusement was the shooting of a certain buck in the Park enclosures. The sport would have made those old kingly patrons of the chase thrill with horror, for it took the whole evening and many shots ere that stately stag was brought down. The princes added much to the gaiety of the daily gatherings in Hyde Park, where Society was assuming a more important phase than ever. By this time the beaux of a quarter of a century before were superseded by the Bucks and Macaronis. The Macaronis were the Society men, or fops of the day. It was the thing for Society to make much of them, as we see to-day Society ladies making a fuss and dressing up toy dogs and poodles. The long curled wigs of the Macaronis, tied with streaming ribbons, eye-glasses, patches, paint, velvets, costly canes with gold and silver tassels, made great show without, but little sense was revealed under the paint, the powder, and the patches.