t led into the yard.
'Twas peopled all o'er in a minute,
As a white flock would cover a plain;
We had seen every soul that was in it,
Then we went round and saw them again.

"But now came a scene worth the showing,
The fireworks, midst laughs and huzzas;
With explosions the sky was all glowing,
Then down streamed a million of stars.
With a rush the bright rockets ascended,
Wheels spurted blue fire like a rain;
We turned with regret when 'twas ended,
Then stared at each other again.

"There thousands of gay lamps aspir'd
To the tops of the trees and beyond;
And, what was most hugely admired,
They looked all upside-down in a pond.
The blaze scarce an eagle could bear
And an owl had most surely been slain;
We returned to the circle, and there--
And there we went round it again.

"'Tis not wisdom to love without reason,
Or to censure without knowing why;
I had witness'd no crime, nor no treason;
'Oh, life, 'tis thy picture,' said I.
'Tis just thus we saunter along;
Months and years bring their pleasure or pain.
We sigh midst the right and the wrong;
And then we go round them again!"

Though Bloomfield's metre can be scarce held faultless, yet his power of
detailed description has preserved us a living picture of Ranelagh in the
height of its glory. Balls and fetes succeeded each other. Lysons tell us
that "for some time previously to 1750 a kind of masquerade, called a
Jubilee Ball, was much in fashion at Ranelagh, but they were suppressed
on account of the earthquakes in 1750."

The masked balls were replaced by other festivities. In 1775 a famous
regatta was held at Ranelagh, and in 1790 a magnificent display of
fireworks, at which the numbers in attendance reached high-water mark,
numbering between 3,000 and 4,000 exclusive of free admissions. In 1802
an aeronaut ascended from the gardens in a balloon, and the last public
entertainment was a ball given by the Knights of the Bath in 1803. The
following year the gardens were closed. Sir Richard Phillips, writing in
1817, says that he could then trace the circular foundation of the
rotunda, and discovered the broken arches of some cellars which had once
been filled with the choicest wines. And Jesse, in 1871, says he
discovered, attached to one or two in the avenue of trees on the site of
the gardens, the iron fixtures to which the variegated lamps h