scaramouches in the little open temple on the mount.  On the canal was a sort of gondola, adorned with flags and streamers, and filled with music, rowing about.  All round the outside of the amphitheatre were shops, filled with Dresden china, Japan, etc. and all the shop-keepers in mask.  The amphitheatre was illuminated; and in the middle was a circular bower, composed of all kinds of firs in tubs from twenty to thirty feet high:  under them orange-trees, with small lamps in each orange, and below them all sorts of the finest auriculas in pots; and festoons of natural flowers hanging from tree to tree.  Between the arches too were firs, and smaller ones in the balconies above.  There were booths for tea and wine, gaming-tables and dancing, and about two thousand persons.  In short, it pleased me more than any thing I ever saw.  It is to be once more, and probably finer as to dresses, as there has since been a subscription-masquerade, and people will go in their rich habits.  The next day were the fire-works, which by no means answered the expense, the length of preparation, and the expectation that had been raised; indeed, for a week before, the town was like a country fair, the streets filled from morning to night, scaffolds building wherever you could or could not see, and coaches arriving from every corner of the kingdom.  This hurry and lively scene, with the sight of the immense crowd in the Park and on every house, the guards, and the machine itself, which was very beautiful, was all that was worth seeing.  The rockets, and whatever was thrown up into the air, succeeded mighty well; but the wheels, and all that was to compose the principal part, were pitiful and ill-conducted, with no changes of coloured fires and shapes:  the illumination was mean, and lighted so slowly that scarce any body had patience to wait the finishing; and then, -what contributed to the awkwardness of the whole, was the right pavilion catching fire, and being burnt down in the middle of the show.  The King, the Duke, and Princess Emily saw it from the library,(19) with their courts:  the Prince and Princess, with their children, from Lady Middlesex’s; no place being provided for them, nor any invitation given to the library.  The lords and Commons had galleries built for them and the chief citizens along the rails of the mall:  the lords had four tickets a-piece, and each Commoner, at first, but two, till the Speaker bounced and obtained a third.  Very little mischief was done, and but two persons killed:  at Paris, there were forty killed and near three hundred wounded, by a dispute between the French and Italians in the management, who, quarrelling for precedence in lighting the fires, both lighted at once and blew up the whole.  Our mob was extremely tranquil, and very unlike those I remember in my father’s time, when it was a measure in the Opposition to work up every thing to mischief, the excise and the French players, the convention and the gin-act.  We are