national comparison is not "odious." Three Sunday fairs are held
within six miles of Paris, in a park, as was once the custom at
Greenwich: the latter, though a royal park, does not boast of
the residence of royalty, as does St Cloud. The objection to the
day of the French fêtes is cleared by another argument. But what
would be the character of a week-day fair, or fête, in
Kensington Gardens? The intuitive answer will make the moral
observer regret that man should so often place the interdict on
his own happiness, and then peevishly repine at his uncheery
lot.

Night, with her poetic glooms, only served to heighten the lustre of the
fairy fête; and as I receded through the wood, the little shoal of light
gleamed and twinkled through "branches overgrown," and the distant
sounds began to fall into solitary silence--even saddening to
meditation--so fast do the dying glories of festive mirth sink into
melancholy--till at once, with the last gleam and echo, I found myself
in a pleasant little glade on the brow of the hill. The day had been
unusually hot--all was hushed stillness. But the darkening clouds were
fast gathering into black masses:--

The rapid lightning flames along the sky.
What terrible event does this portend?

The stifling heat of the atmosphere was, however, soon changed by slight
gusts of wind; the leaves trembled; and a few heavy drops of rain fell
as harbingers of the coming storm; the pattering ceased; an impressive
pause succeeded--broken by the deepening roar of thunder.

The threatening storm hastened my return to the focus of the carnival.