* The Rotunda was first opened on the 5th of April, 1742, with a public breakfast. At Ranelagh House (Gentleman's Magazine for 1767) on the 12th of May, were performed the much-admired catches and glees, selected from the curious collection of the Catch Club; being the first of the kind publickly exhibited in this or any other kingdom. The entertainment consisted of the favourite catches and glees, composed by the most eminent masters of the last and present age, by a considerable number of the best vocal and instrumental performers. The choral and instrumental parts were added, to give the catches and glees their proper effect in so large an amphitheatre; being composed for that purpose by Dr. Arne. The Masquerades at Ranelagh are represented in Fielding's “Amelia” as dangerous to morals, and the “Connoisseur” satirises their Eve-like beauties with caustic humour. and the illuminated saloons and groves of Vauxhall. * These, and many others, bear testimony to the growing spirit of national jollity during a considerable part of the eighteenth century. How few now remain, “the sad historians of the pensive tale,” of their bygone merriments! * “The extreme beauty and elegance of this place is well known to almost every one of my readers; and happy is it for me that it is so, since to give an adequate idea of it would exceed my power of description. To delineate the particular beauties of these gardens would indeed require as much pains, and as much paper too, as to rehearse all the good actions of their master; whose life proves the truth of an observation which I have read in some other writer, that a truly elegant taste is generally accompanied with an excellency of heart; or in other words, that true virtue is indeed nothing else but true taste.” Amelia, b. ix. c. ix. CHAPTER III. |The Genius of Mirth never hit upon a happier subject than the humours of Cockneyland. “Man made the town and a pretty sample it is of the maker! Behind or before the counter, at home and abroad, the man of business or the beau, the Cockney is the same whimsical original, baffling imitation, and keeping description in full cry. See him sally forth on a fine Sunday to inhale his weekly mouthful of fresh air, * the world all before him, where to choose occupying his meditations, till he finds himself elevated on High-gate Hill or Hampstead Heath. From those magnificent summits he beholds in panorama, woods, valleys, lofty trees, and stately turrets, not forgetting that glorious cupola dedicated to the metropolitan saint, which points out the locality where, six days out of the seven, his orisons are paid to a deity not contemplated by the apostle. * Moorfields, Pimlico Path, and the Exchange, were the fashionable parades of the citizens in the days of Elizabeth and James I.