first and shortest-lived Ministry, had
it. Now the park is criss-crossed with brand new yellow roads. I walked
through it while it was still ringing with the builder's hammer; and
straying off the gravel, suddenly found myself in the forlornest little
place possible--a formal garden, box-trimmed, tiny, deserted; the
narrow, carefully-planned beds nothing but weeds, the summerhouse at the
side a ruin. A park cut to pieces looks as if it were in anguish. But a
garden cries.

The river at Thames Ditton in 1827 saw a festival which was doubtless
considered one of the most prodigious affairs of the season. Five young
bloods, of whom two were the Lords Castlereagh and Chesterfield of the
day, subscribed L500 each to organise an enormous water party, to which,
presumably, everybody was invited who was worth inviting. It was a
superb occasion, with illuminations, quadrilles on the lawn, singers
from the opera, covers for five hundred people, and all adornments
proper to such gaiety. Afterwards it came to be known as the Dandies'
Fete, and Tom Moore wrote a set of verses about it, which, perhaps,
reflect fairly accurately the wit of the company. Here are nine lines
out of many:--

"Accordingly, with gay Sultanas,
Rebeccas, Sapphos, Roxalanas--
Circassian slaves, whom Love would pay
Half his maternal realms to ransom;--
Young nuns, whose chief religion lay
In looking most profanely handsome!
Muses in muslin--pastoral maids,
With hats from the _Arcade_-ian shades;
And fortune-tellers--rich, 'tis plain,
As fortune-_hunters_, form'd their train."

Moore sent the verses to Mrs. Norton; she, perhaps, was a Circassian or
a nun.

But Thames Ditton has had its own poet. He has been dignified by the
criticism of Charles Lamb, and his accomplishment was the composing of
epitaphs. "What is the reason," Lamb writes to Wordsworth in 1810, "we
have no good epitaphs after all?"

A very striking instance might be found in the churchyard of
Ditton-upon-Thames, if you know such a place. Ditton-upon-Thames has
been blessed by the residence of a poet, who for love or money, I do
not well know which, has dignified every gravestone, for the last
few years, with brand-new verses, all different, and all ingenious,
with the author's name at the bottom of each. This sweet Swan of
Thames has so artfully diversified his strains and his rhymes, that
the same thought never o