On the Regatta Quay might be observed hundreds of elegantly dressed females, with their attentive cavaliers; some of the latter arrayed in divers fantastic styles of costume, intended to resemble the garb of the sailor, and resembling it about as much as their affectation and the swagger of their gait resembled his manner. Naval and military officers added by their brilliant uniforms to the liveliness of the picture. On an erected platform was stationed a brass band, that from time to time played some fine pieces of music and exhilarating airs--a fitting accompaniment to the soft murmur of the wave, the harmony of nature. Outside the gate of the privileged yard were ranged tents of every variety--some few in the form of an oblong square, with a slanting roof--others like an Indian wigwam--some covered with bleached, and some with dirty canvass, while in each of them a piper or a fiddler might be heard discoursing most peculiar music, responded to by the clatter of some score of feet, whose movements would puzzle the eccentric genius of Fanny Elsler herself. Outside these temples, erected equally to Bacchus and the lively Terpsichore, more intellectual food was offered to the youthful mind in the antics of Punch and Judy; and there was, besides, a magnificent theatre, the approach to which was by a _ladder_, and on a platform before which the distinguished company--Turkish warriors and Christian knights, princesses and Columbine, assassin and clown--were threading the intricacies of a fashionable dance, to the sound of three trumpets and a drum. Fun, frolic, and delight, reigned within as well as without. In fine, it was the last day of the regatta, and “_now or never_” was the universal motto.