New Georgia was as yet unheard of, but, if I remember aright, the bowling-green had not disappeared. The tavern is doing a brisk business; the Long Room is full of fine company, and the walks between the elms and limes in blossom, bright with colour, and gay with mirth, which, more robust than in these artificial times, laughed out merrily and was not ashamed.
Cards, I am obliged to say, were as much in request as ever, but the cheats at them were not professionals; and though Dr. Soames distinctly set his face against the ‘violent exercise of country dances,’ the fortnightly meetings in the Long Room were not thinned thereby. Concerts were of frequent occurrence, and the following ditty,[258] originally printed on a broad-sheet, and which afterwards appeared in the Musical Entertainer, and was set to music by Mr. Abel Whichello, under the title of ‘The beauties of Hampstead,’ was, in all probability, first sung at the Wells:
‘Summer heat the town invades,
All repair to cooling shades;
How inviting, how delighting,
Are the flowery hills and vales!
‘Here, where lovely Hampstead stands,
And the neighbouring vale commands,
What surprising prospects rising,
All around adorn the lands.