The fair resembled a camp; only, instead of standing rank and file, the spectators were shuffled together like little boxes in a sharper's Luck-in-a-Bag. With much ado I reached Pye-Corner, where our English Sampson exhibited. Having paid for a seat three stories high in this wooden tent of iniquity, I beheld the renowned Man of Kent, * equipped like an Artillery Ground champion at the mock storming of a castle, lift a number of weights, which hung round him like bandaliers about a Dutch soldier. “He fired a cannon, and with his own strength Lifted it up, although 'twas of great length; He broke a rope which did restrain two horses, They could not break it with their two joint forces!' * “The English Sampson, William Joy, aged twenty-four years, was horn in the Isle of Thanet, in Kent. He is a man of prodigious strength, of which he hath given proofs before his Majesty King William the Third, at Kensington, their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Denmark, and most of the nobility, at the Theatre Royal in Dorset Garden. AD. 1699.” “James Miles, from Sadler's Wells in Islington, now keeps the Gun Musick Booth in Smithfield Rounds where the Famous Indian Woman lifts six hundred weight with the hair of her head, and walks about the booth with it.” Topham, the Strong Man, lifted three hogsheads of water, weighing 183 lbs. the 28th of May 1741, in honour of Admiral Vernon, before thousands of people, in Bath Street, Cold- Bath-Fields. In his early years he exhibited at Bartholomew Fair. He united the strength of twelve men. The ostler of the Virgin's Inn having offended him, he took one of the spits from the kitchen and bent it round his neck like a handkerchief; but as he did not choose to tuck the ends in the ostler's bosom, the iron cravat excited the laughter of the company, till he condescended to untie it. He died by his own hand, on the 10th August 1749, the victim of his wife's infidelity. “The Wonderful Strong and Surprising Persian Dwarf, three feet six inches high. He is fifty-six years old, speaks eighteen languages, sings Italian songs, dances to admiration, and with ropes tied to his hair, when put over his shoulders, lifts the great stone A.” This “great stone” is half as big as the little Sampson himself! I then jostled to a booth, in which was only a puppet-show, * where, for twopence, I saw Jepthas rash Vow; or, The Virgins Sacrifice. In I went, almost headlong, to Pinkethmans Medley, ** to see the Vaulting of the horse, and the famous wooden puppets dance a minuet and a ballet. * Only a Puppet-show!--Marry-come-up! Goodman Chronicler, doth not the mechanist, a very Prometheus, give life, spirit, and motion to what was a mopstick or the leg of ajoint-stool?