The evening concerts (from May 1742, onwards) generally began, at 6.30 or 7. Between the Acts the company walked in the gardens to the music of horns and clarinets, and a garden-orchestra was erected about 1764. The gardens were illuminated, but fireworks did not become a prominent feature till about 1767. The gardens themselves were somewhat formally laid out. There were several gravel walks, shaded by elms and yews; a flower-garden, and “a beautiful octagon grass plat.” The principal walk led from the south end of Ranelagh House to the bottom of the gardens, where there was a circular Temple of Pan. At night the walks were prettily lit with lamps attached to the trees. There was also a canal with a Temple indifferently described as the Chinese House and the Venetian Temple. [Illustration: _The Chinese House, the Rotunda, & the Company in Masquerade in RENELAGH GARDENS_] In its earliest as well as in its latest days masquerades attracted many to the Rotunda and the gardens, but the chief diversion was the promenade in the Rotunda. A guide-book of 1793 states that “walking round the Rotundo” was “one of the pleasures of the place.” We hear much at all periods of “the circular labour” of the company and “the ring of folly.”[224] Matthew Bramble found one half of the company “following one another’s tails in an eternal circle like asses in an olive mill while the other half are drinking hot water under the denomination of tea.” Mr. Bramble exacted much from places of amusement, but it is to be suspected from other testimonies that there was an atmosphere of dulness, a note of ennui, about the ordinary diversions of this fashionable rendezvous. “There’s your famous Ranelagh (says ‘Evelina’) that you make such a fuss about; why what a dull place is that!” A Frenchman describing Ranelagh about 1800--foreigners were always expected to visit it--calls it “le plus insipide lieu d’amusement que l’on ait pu imaginer,” and even hints at Dante’s Purgatory. Another Frenchman writing much earlier, _circ._ 1749, briefly comments “on s’ennuie avec de la mauvaise musique, du thé et du beurre.”