386 The Lord Mayors Journey to Oxford. [ A 



" The Lord Mayor would dine at Cliefden on his way to London ;' preparations 

 had been made for that fete champetre, in a manner corresponding with the rank 

 of the guests expected to be present." 



That the Lord Mayor, and Lady Mayoress, took their seats "at the 

 upper end of a long dining table, crowded with cold dainties ;'' that the 

 children shouted, and " threw up their hats ;" and that the air " echoed 

 with the sound of rejoicings " and that the very Thames 



" Seemed to awe itself into stillness, as if to listen more attentively to the high 

 applause with which the arrival at this spot of its chief conservator was welcomed." 



And, if the mere water felt all this "what will not every reader ask 

 must have been the sensations of the fishes?" 



In giving these facts, however, we give nearly the last lines that we can 

 afford ; we must refer our friends to the book itself, for the comparison be- 

 tween Augustus Caesar, and the late King George the Third ; for the 

 description of Windsor Castle, as shewn to the travellers, by Mr. Wyat- 

 ville ; for the tribute to the merits of the illustrious Monarch who now 

 fills the Throne of these Realms; and for the prayer, that every man in 

 England may sit down " eating of his own vine and fig-tree ;" in which 

 event to let the grapes pass he must unquestionably eat the worst figs 

 that are grown in all Europe. 



All these matters (as regards their detail) must be omitted. Nor can 

 we afford more than a word in passing to the column, which is not built at 

 Runnymede, but which Dr. Akenside wrote an inscription for, against it is 

 built something the easier task of the two. To the visits to the " city 

 stone'* atStaines, round which the whole procession walks most mystically 

 three times ! at the end of which peregrination, Lord Henry Beauclerk, 

 one of three 



* Nice little boys, of the ages of nine, twelve, and fourteen, who were altogether 

 devoid of that petulant volubility, which so commonly renders the young impatient 

 of the conversation and company of their elders; and were so intelligent, so well- 

 behaved, and unassuming in their manners, as to give great promise of their future 

 eminence and deportment in life." 



" mounted the stone," and held the city flag, while the Lord Mayor 

 broke a bottle of wine upon it, and drank " God save the City of Lon- 

 don !" (a prayer, heaven knows, at need !) and " scattered abroad somo 

 hundred newly coined sixpences ;" and then, returning on board the barge, 

 sat down, at three o'clock, to " a cold collation 5" which is the last MEAL 

 commemorated by our author (the Lord Mayor arriving at the Mansion- 

 House a few minutes before ten on that same night) and with which, it 

 can hardly be necessary for us to add, his book draws near to a conclusion. 



A few reflections follow upon " affairs in general ;" and, among other 

 matters, on the cause why this narrative has been written. Should this 

 question be asked, there needs no other answer than that it records the 

 adventures of a party of individuals, who " are never likely to meet again 

 in this world, all together, and in the same society." 



This lamentable truth, the force of which is, in general, too much ne- 

 glected notwithstanding the fact that it applies to every crowd that stands, 

 though but for a minute, round a ballad-singer in the street acquires fresh 

 strength from the circumstance, that, before the sheets of the present work 

 were at press, one of the groupe chronicled an alderman too ! had been 

 gathered to his fathers ! 



Downward, we may imagine as the great bard sings of the departure 

 of aldermen generally 



