infirmities; a sixth will transport you in a trice to the banks of the Mississippi, or put on a pigtail and a Chinese dress, and entertain you with characteristic songs whilst he takes you up and down the Yang-tse-Kiang in a couple of hours, and brings you home to dinner at the appointed time. Why should not a man like to spend eight or nine weeks in the midst of this Arabian Night’s dream which mortals call the London season? There is something for all ages, and all conditions of men. Whether you are a fat baby, and are rolled about in a perambulator—or a prosy old gentleman, and take your airings upon a steady cob—whether your heart’s desire is for sugarplums, or a good sleepy discussion of the Church Rate Question—you will find the means of gratifying it, better than you would do anywhere else, in London, when the season is at its height.
The season for very serious people is of course during the May Meetings at Exeter Hall, when so many clergymen and their healthy country-looking wives are to be seen about the Strand and Fleet Street. I have not one word to say against them, or their manner of ordering their lives; but I am writing for those—I am one of them myself—who see no harm in spending an evening with “Norma,” or in idling throughout a summer evening in Hyde Park, and criticising the horses and their fair riders. Presently, we will waste a few minutes with them; but I would first ask, in answer to the charge that it is a sin, or a mistake, to abandon the country at the season of the year when it is bursting into beautiful life, if this is really so? What prevents us from riding about Richmond Park, or up the dark avenue of horse-chesnuts in Bushy Park, at our pleasure? There are green lanes Hendon and Edgeware way; there are pleasant heaths in Surrey within a riding distance. There are such events in the career of a Londoner during the season as little excursions to Gravesend and Greenwich. Show me, in any of the English counties, a fairer spot than Cobham Park with its ash trees and its deer leaping amongst the tall fern, while the Medway rolls beneath your feet! He is not a judicious Londoner who, when the season is in full swing, does not steal away once and again for an afternoon up Thames, and spend it in sunny idleness under the shades of lordly Cliefden, or, still better, under the dark cool woods of Marlow. If you long for a whiff of sea-air, is not London situated on the Sussex coast? Depart to our Brighton suburb, and when your nerves are restrung come back to the heart of the town. Woodland, heath, river, sea, park, or common—they are all to be found in and about London, and are in their prime during the height of the season.
Besides, if any one has a licentious taste for floral joys, where can it be gratified so highly as in town? I do not suppose that in any part of the world such floral exhibitions are to be seen as in London. The Directors of the Botanic Gardens in the Regent’s Park and their yoke-fellows of the Crystal Palace will cater for your taste in this kind in a way which will outdo your expectations, or you must be hard, indeed, to please. Flora holds her Derby days and her Cup days in London, and if you care to assist at the Olympian struggles of fruits and flowers, come to London during the season.
If, again, the inclination of your fancy be for painting, you must either be a connoisseur with a hobby, or a sneerer at your own country, or a professed critic, or, generally, a very uncomfortable sort of person, if you do not find much to afford you gratification; and, indeed, far more than the critical stomach of most of us can digest in the three Exhibitions of the Royal Academy, of the Ancient Masters, and of the old Water Colourists. Of late years our French friends have also sent us a collection of pictures during the London season, which always contains some few note-worthy performances—now it is one of those marvellous Horse Fairs, or procession of Spanish Mules by Rosa Bonheur—now the Duel in the Snow after the Masked Ball; but there is always something which will entertain and instruct you, if you are not wilfully resolved not to be instructed or entertained. There is a good week’s occupation for a lover of pictures in the four exhibitions named—to make no mention of the more permanent galleries, such as those which contain the Turner and Sheepshanks Collections in the new buildings at South Kensington.
Do you care for music? London, during the season, may be said to be the very Delphi of the musical world. The most famous singers, the most famous performers in Europe seek, and readily find, engagements at one or other of the London Opera Houses. When they have made their proofs elsewhere they come to us. If a London manager accepts them, and a London audience ratifies his choice, they have gained the blue ribbon of their art, and henceforth are “personages.” Besides the operas there are concerts innumerable, in which the most skilful pianists and violinists, of whom the world knows, are ready to put forth their full strength for your amusement. One year we have a Handel Festival, when the works of the great master are given in a style which would probably have astonished their author as much as he has contrived to astonish the world with the grandeur of his musical conceptions. Recently Germany sent us her Cologne Choir—last week we had amongst us the chosen members from amongst the French Orphéonistes. Whatever may have been the case in by-gone days, it is clear that, in our own, any musical fanatic might, with safety, leave Paris and Vienna, and Milan and Naples unvisited; if his object be to gratify the most morbid craving for melody and harmony, let him come to London during the season.
Thus far we have spoken of a few heads of attraction—of beautiful women in such crowds that beauty ceases to be a distinction; of some of the loveliest forms of English scenery, and by which London is surrounded; of fruits and flowers; of painting and of music. If any one cares for these things, or any of them, here they are to be found. But when you have said all this you have only spoken of the sensuous side of the London season. But one of the chief causes why that time is so delightful to a man of intelligent and energetic mind, is that then the nation is in its full intellectual stride. During the autumn