g of men and
women is offered to the less tragically minded, and in yet another the
world-renowned Faux displays the announcement of his conjuring marvels.
A peep-show of the siege of Gibraltar allures the patriotic.
Toy-shops, presided over by attractive damsels, lure the light-hearted,
and the light-fingered too, for many an intelligent pickpocket seizes
the opportunity to rifle the pocket of some too occupied customer.
There is a revolving swing, and go-carts are drawn by dogs for the
delight of children. Hucksters go about selling gin, aniseed, and
fruits, and large booths offer meat, cider, punch, and skittles. The
place is thronged with visitors and beggars. A portly figure in a
scarlet coat and wearing an order is said to be no less a person than
Sir Robert Walpole, who is rumored to have occasionally honored the
fair with his presence.

Few of the clubs that play so important a part in the history of
last-century London had come into existence in 1714. The most famous
of them either were not yet founded, or lived only as coffee or
chocolate houses. There had been literary associations like the
"Scriblerus" Club, which was started by Swift, and was finally
dissolved by the quarrels of Oxford and Bolingbroke. The {74}
"Saturday" and "Brothers" Clubs had been political societies, at both
of which Swift was all powerful, but they, too, were no more. The
"Kit-Kat" Club, of mystic origin and enigmatic name, with all its
loyalty to Hanover and all its memories of bright toasts, of Steele,
Addison, and Godfrey Kneller, had passed away in 1709, and met no more
in Shire Lane, off Fleet Street, or at the "Upper Flask" Inn at
Hampstead. It had not lived in vain, according to Walpole, who
declared that its patriots had saved the country. Within its rooms the
evil-omened Lord Mohun had broken the gilded emblem of the crown off
his chair. Jacob Tonson, the bookseller, who was secretary to the
club, querulously insisted that the man who would do that would cut a
man's throat, and Lord Mohun's fatal career fully justified Tonson's
judgment. If the Kit-Kat patriots had saved the country, the Tory
patriots of the October Club were no less prepared to do the same. The
October Club came first into importance in the latest years of Anne,
although it had existed since the last decade of the seventeenth
century. The stout Tory squires met together in the "Bell" Tavern, in
narrow, dirty King Street, Westminster, to drink O