As we began ascending Greenwich Hill, we were assailed with another kind of game.  The ground was covered with smashed oranges, with which the people above and below were stoutly pelting each other.  Half a dozen heavy ones whizzed uncomfortably near my head as I went up, and I saw several persons get the full benefit of a shot on their backs and breasts.  The young country lads and lasses amused themselves by running at full spend down the steep side of a hill.  This was, however, a feat attended with some risk; for I saw one luckless girl describe an arc of a circle, of which her feet was the centre and her body the radius.  All was noise and nonsense.  They ran to and fro under the long, hoary bough of the venerable oaks that crest the summit, and clattered down the magnificent forest-avenues, whose budding foliage gave them little shelter from the passing April showers.

The view from the top is splendid.  The stately Thames curves through the plain below, which loses itself afar off in the mist; Greenwich, with its massive hospital, lies just at one’s feet, and in a clear day the domes of London skirt the horizon.  The wood of the Park is entirely oak—­the majestic, dignified, English oak—­which covers, in picturesque clumps, the sides and summits of the two billowy hills.  It must be a sweet place in summer, when the dark, massive foliage is heavy on every mossy arm, and the smooth and curving sward shines with thousands of field-flowers.

Owing to the showers, the streets were coated with mud, of a consistence as soft and yielding as the most fleecy Persian carpet.  Near the gate, boys were holding scores of donkeys, which they offered us at threepence for a ride of two miles.  We walked down towards the river, and came at last to a group of tumblers, who with muddy hands and feet were throwing somersets in the open street.  I recognized them as old acquaintances of the Rue St. Antoine and the Champs Elysees; but the little boy who cried before, because he did not want to bend his head and foot into a ring, like a hoop-snake, had learned his part better by this time, so that he went through it all without whimpering and came off with only a fiery red face.  The exercises of the young gentlemen were of course very graceful and classic, and the effect of their poses of strength was very much heightened by the muddy foot-marks which they left on each other’s orange-colored skins.

The avenue of booths was still more diverting.  Here under sheets of leaky awning, were exposed for sale rows of gilded gingerbread kings and queens, and I cannot remember how many men and women held me fast by the arms, determined to force me into buying a pound of them.  We paused at the sign:  “SIGNOR URBANI’S GRAND MAGICAL DISPLAY.”  The title was attractive, so we paid the penny admission, and walked behind the dark, mysterious curtain.  Two bare brick walls, three benches and a little boy appeared to us.  A sheet hung before us upon which