antries, and lends the merry
group her aid to smuggle signs, alter names, and play off a thousand
fantastic vagaries; while the Eton Townsman, robed in

* The grand aquatic gala, which terminates the week's festi-
vities at Eton, and concludes the water excursions for the
season, was originally fixed in honour of his late majesty's
birthday, and would have been altered to the period of his
successor's, but the time would not accord, the twelfth day
of August being vacation.

~50~~
peaceful slumber, dreams not of the change his house has undergone,
and wakes to find a double transformation; his _Angel_ vanished, or
exchanged for the rude semblance of an Oxford _Bear_, with a cognomen
thereto appended, as foreign to his family nomenclature "as he to
Hercules." In the morning the dames are wailing the loss of their
polished knockers; and the barber-surgeon mourns the absence of his
obtrusive pole. The optician's glasses have been removed to the door of
some prying _domine_; and the large tin cocked hat has been seized by
some midnight giant, who has also claimed old Crispin's three-leagued
boot. The golden fish has leaped into the Thames. The landlord of the
Lamb bleats loudly for his fleece. The grocer cares not a fig for the
loss of his sugar-loaves, but laughs, and takes it as a currant joke.
Old Duplicate is resolved to have his balls restored with interest; and
the lady mother of the black doll is quite pale in the face with sorrow
for the loss of her child. Mine host of the vine looks as sour as his
own grapes, before they were fresh gilded; and spruce master Pigtail,
the tobacconist, complains that his large roll of real Virginia has been
chopped into short cut. But these are by far the least tormenting jokes.
That good-humoured Cad, Jem Miller, finds the honorary distinction of
private tutor added to his name. Dame ----s, an irreproachable spinster
of forty, discovers that of Mr. Probe, man-midwife, appended to her
own. Mr. Primefit, the Eton Stultz, is changed into Botch, the cobbler.
Diodorus Drowsy, D.D., of Windsor, is re-christened Diggory Drenchall,
common brewer; and the amiable Mrs. Margaret Sweet, the Eton pastry-cook
and confectioner, finds her name united in bands of brass with Mr.
Benjamin Bittertart, the baker. The celebrated Christopher Caustic,
Esq., surgeon, has the mortification to find his Esculapian dormitory
decorated with the sign-board of Mr. Slaughtercalf, a Ge