Giles in the Fields--were dressed from the stores of a receiving house for stolen goods. Perhaps the consciousness of this cheap and easy way of getting one's clothes made the ladies so buoyantly and extravagantly happy, with their sprightly sallies and their high-bred courtesy of adjectives. But the mercer troubled himself not at all about them. The toleration of the mercer ought to endear his memory to us. For in all public assemblies there are things which must be tolerated. Less wise, we shut up the Assembly. We cannot keep out the Lady of the Camellias from the Pleasure Garden. Therefore we shut up the place. In the eighteenth century this lady was told that everybody must behave with a certain amount of restraint: we have improved upon that manner: we cut off our nose to spite our face: we shut up the lovely Garden because we cannot keep her out. For the same reason we have practically forbidden the youth of the lower middle class to practise the laudable, innocent, and delightful diversion of dancing. Not a single place, except certain so-called clubs, where the young people can now go to dance. Why? Because the magistrates in their wisdom have concluded that vice free and unchecked out of doors is better for the people than vice fettered and restrained by the necessity of behaving decently, and compelled to hide itself under the semblance of virtue. The Pleasure Gardens were shut up one after the other for that reason. When will they return? And in what form? The Gardens of South London were not so celebrated as those of the North. Against Ranelagh, Cremorne, Marylebone, Bagnigge Wells, the White Conduit House--the South can only point to Vauxhall as a national institution. They were, however, of considerable note in their time, and were greatly frequented. They lay in a half circle, like pearls on a chain, all round South London. There were the Lambeth Wells, the Marble Hall, and the Cumberland Gardens at Vauxhall, besides Vauxhall itself; the Black Prince, Newington Butts; the Temple of Flora, the Temple of Apollo, the Flora Tea Gardens, the Restoration Spring Gardens, the Dog and Duck, the Folly on the Thames; Cuper's Gardens; Finch's Grotto, the Bermondsey Spa, and St. Helena Gardens, Rotherhithe. No doubt there were others, but these were the principal Gardens.