Transcription
ASTLEY’S.
The great event, to which childhood begins about Christmas to look forward, with an impatience not to be checked by mince-pies, and a curiosity not to be satiated with snap-dragon, has at length occurred! Easter Monday hath arrived, and Astley’s itself fairly opened. Childhood welcomes not the event along; we join with it in its shout of gratulation. The old rejoice with the young; for Astley’s is for all ages. Mr. Ducrow makes his annual visitation in April; and like April, as painted by the divine Spencer—
--“Comes clad in all his trim,
And puts a spirit o youth in everything.”
The opening performance this year is quite to our taste, both in design and execution. It is a tale of Troy—nothing less than the Giant Horse himself! There he is—surrounded by horses as gigantic and marvellous in their powers and accomplishments as himself—steeds of magical capacity, and riders sent annually to “witch the world with noble horsemanship,” We wish that we could describe all the enchantments of this “classical selection of hippodramatic compositions”—the processions simple and complicated—the double and treble stages—the conflicts on foot and horseback—the Olympic exercises, such as Madame Vestris, at her Olympic, never dreamed of venturing upon—the chariots and wild steeds—the racing, and raptures of all sorts; but above all, the galleys and barges, with their splendid said an decorations, floating in a painted ocean, spread over the saw-dust of the equestrian circle! This, like Cleopatra’s voyage, “beggars all description;” besides, why attempt to describe what each will go to see for himself. It is enough to say, that Mr. Ducrow has exercises his inventive faculty, and employed his classical taste, to excellent purpose. If it be not all strictly Greek and Trojan, if Homer have not been invariably kept in sight—what wonder! Our only wonder is, that so much should have been done. In the subsequent performances in the circle, we have Miss Woolford, Mr. Stickney, Mr. Adams, as an eight-horse-power postboy, and Mr. Ducrow himself, with his beautiful and really wonderful horse, Pegasus.
