“So early as four o’clock the drums beat to arms in every quarter, and various other music summoned the reviewers and the reviewed to the field. Even then the clouds were surcharged with rain, which soon began to fall; but no unfavourableness of weather could damp the ardour of even the most delicate of the fair. So early as six o’clock, all the avenues were crowded with elegantly dressed women escorted by their beaux; and the assemblage was so great, that when the King entered the Park, it was thought advisable to shut several of the gates to avoid too much pressure. The circumstance of the weather, which, from the personal inconvenience it produced, might be considered the most inauspicious of the day, proved in fact the most favourable for a display of beauty, for a variety of scene, and number of incidents. From the constant rain and the constant motion, the whole Park could be compared only to a newly ploughed field. The gates being locked, there was no possibility of retreating, and there was no shelter but an old tree or an umbrella. In this situation you might behold an elegant woman with a neat yellow slipper, delicate ankle, and white silk stocking, stepping up to her garter in the mire with as little dissatisfaction as she would into her coach—there another making the first _faux pas_ perhaps she ever did and seated reluctantly on the moistened clay. [Illustration: THE LOYAL DUCKING; OR, RETURNING FROM THE REVIEW ON THE FOURTH OF JUNE, 1800.] “Here is a whole group assembled under the hospitable roof of an umbrella, whilst the exterior circle, for the advantage of having one shoulder dry, is content to receive its dripping contents on the other. The antiquated virgin laments the hour in which, more fearful of a speckle than a wetting, she preferred the dwarfish parasol to the capacious umbrella. The lover regrets there is no shady bower to which he might lead his mistress, ‘nothing loath.’ Happy she who, following fast, finds in the crowd a pretence for closer pressure. Alas! were there but a few grottos, a few caverns, how many Didos—how many Æneas’? Such was the state of the spectators. That of the troops was still worse—to lay exposed to a pelting rain; their arms had changed their mirror-like brilliancy[7] to a dirty brown; their new clothes lost all their gloss, the smoke of a whole campaign could not have more discoloured them. Where the ground was hard they slipped; where soft, they sunk up to the knee. The water ran out at their cuffs as from a spout, and, filling their half-boots, a squash at every step proclaimed that the Austrian buckets could contain no more.” [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER III. High price of gold—Scarcity of food—Difference in cost of living 1773-1800—Forestalling and Regrating—Food riots in the country—Riot in London at the Corn Market—Forestalling in meat.