THE END.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.

NOTES.

{vii} Prologue de premiere livre.

{ix} A fact. That such a subject for cathedral chimes, and in Scotland,
too, could ever have been chosen, will scarcely be believed. But my
astonished ears often heard it.

{7} W. Gomersal, for many years a leading actor and rider at Astley's
Amphitheatre.

{8} John Esdaile Widdicomb, from 1819 to 1852 riding-master and
conductor of the ring at Astley's Amphitheatre.

{11} Stickney, a very dashing and graceful rider at Astley's.

{12} A not uncommon tribute from the gallery at Astley's to the dash and
daring of the heroes of the ring was half-eaten oranges or fragments of
orange-peel. Either oranges are less in vogue, or manners are better in
the galleries of theatres and circuses in the present day.

{18} The allusion here is to one of Ducrow's remarkable feats. Entering
the ring with the reins in his hands of five horses abreast, and standing
on the back of the centre horse, he worked them round the ring at high
speed, changing now and then with marvellous dexterity their relative
positions, and with his feet always on more than one of them, ending with
a foot on each of the extreme two, so that, as described, "the outer and
the inner felt the pressure of his toes."

{44} The value of these Bonds at the time this poem was written was
precisely nil.

{49} A fact.

{64} The Yankee substitute for the _chapeau de soie_.

{97} The Marquis of Waterford,

{99} The fashionable abbreviation for a thousand pounds.

{117} The reference here and in a subsequent verse is to a song very
popular at the time:--

"All round my hat I vears a green villow,
All round my hat for a twelvemonth and a day,
And if any van should arsk you the reason vy I vears it,
Say, all for my true love that's far, far away.
'Twas agoin of my rounds on the streets I first did meet her,
'Twas agoin of my rounds that first she met my heye,
And I never heard a voice more louder nor more sweeter,
As she cried, 'Who'll buy my cabbages, my cabbages who'll buy?'"

There were several more verses, and being set to a very taking air, it
was a reigning favourite with the "Social Chucksters" of the day. Even
scholars thought it worth turning into Latin verse. I remember reading
in some short-lived journal a very clever version of it, the first verse
of wh