The climate of England must often
interfere with this sort of performance; and I can conceive of nothing
drearier for spectators or performers than a drizzly evening. Convenient
to this central spot of entertainment there were liquor and refreshment
rooms, with pies and cakes. The menagerie, though the ostensible staple
of the gardens, is rather poor and scanty; pretty well provided with
lions and lionesses, also one or two giraffes, some camels, a polar
bear,--who plunged into a pool of water for bits of cake,--and two black
bears, who sat on their haunches or climbed poles; besides a wilderness
of monkeys, some parrots and macaws, an ostrich, various ducks, and other
animal and ornithological trumpery; some skins of snakes so well stuffed
that I took them for living serpents till J----- discovered the
deception, and an aquarium, with a good many common fishes swimming among
sea-weed.
The garden is shaded with trees, and set out with greensward and
gravel-walks, from which the people were sweeping the withered autumnal
leaves, which now fall every day. Plaster statues stand here and there,
one of them without a head, thus disclosing the hollowness of the trunk;
there were one or two little drizzly fountains, with the water dripping
over the rock-work, of which the English are so fond; and the buildings
for the animals and other purposes had a flimsy, pasteboard aspect of
pretension.
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