European Correspondence

From our Regular Correspondent. London, July 10, 1883. A boat race f or amusement or for a prize is Brand's definition of the Anglo-Italian word "regatta.'' Dr. Ogilvie, inore explicit than the popular antiquary and historian of sports and pastimes, interpreta the original ineaning of the term as a góndola race in Venice; and adds that it is now applied to "any important or showy sailing or rowing race in which a number of yachts or boats contend for prizes." The air yesterday on the grassy banks and on the silver stream breathed wooingly. If the sun was hidden now and agiiin by fleetlng clouds, the brightness lost nothing of its charm for being, like beauty itself, liglitly veiled. It was in iact a perfect day for such r.n occasion. The sky was not Italian, which was fortúnate, because an Italian sun might uot have precisely harmonized with a scène so thoroughly English. Seldom, if ever, were so many craft seen on the course as were thickly dotted over its rippled surface yesterday. There is at the present time a fanciful variatiou in the build of pleasu ie boats; but no outlandish rigs, no copied character of huil, ranging from the góndola of tradition and romance to the canoe of picturesque Canadiun custom, could destroy the essentially Engüsh aspect of the Thames. Curious, indeed, is it to think that sorne kind of human settlement existed here, by local habitation as by name, when the wild indigenous cattle and red deer roamed around, and the river teemed with salmón and other fish, now, but moderately to be captured in its waters, if at all. The salmon, yesterday, presenting itself in the agreeable form of mayonaise, was an alien to the gentle stream, near which it was levoured witli the crisp lettuce and the creamy mixture of olive oil, yolk of, egg, and the vinegar of Orleans or Bordeaux. Hints of primeval life, in savage days of hunting and fowling, and of the eci sauce caiieu iiunger, were lew in tliat panoramic view of motley sophistication yesterday. Still they were there. Loitering or prowling outside the groups of well dressed merry-maker8 were stragglers i'rom the wild tribes of precarious vagabondage tliat follow sport and pleasure whithersoever the.y may go. Pree and untrammelled, thejolly mountebankoutlaws of modern civilization made continual mock of the convi'ntionalities in whicli they boldly mixed. There was a cockle shell of a boat with sorne sort of a jurymast flying two halves of a calicó unioiijack, and dressecl with odd scraps of chintz or other stuff on lines running all marnier of ways. Manned and oflïcered was thia vessel by a solitary being with a blackcned face and a banjo, who sat so low and heavy in the stern as to lift the stem clean out ot the water. He had moored himself, uninvited, to one of the house boats, and was making himself quite at home. His bark, named the Masher.leaked somewhat; and, with a tankard or loving-cup of pewter, or commoner and cheaper metal, he coolly and gravely baled out bis huil, pouring every pintor quart of water into another boat next him, when the occupants were not looking. The Hungarian band, secured a month in adyance, played their liveliest and most entrancing melodie?, with now aud then a solo on the zitheror the violin. Greatand general as was the enjoyment along the entire mile of the coure, it was not easy to perceive any where signs of heartier gratification than in this enclosure of the Isthnmns, and on board their carpeted barge. As for the program, it went off more or less observed by those who took the picnic view of this regatta. Principal themes of commentwere thecontinued good form of Exeter College, who won last year, and the remarkable pace shown by Twiekenham, rowing as they did, f rom the Bucks station, which sliglit disadvantage in the start was in all other cases associated with loss of the race. Among the ladies' dresses a great increase in the number of real serviceable boating costumes was to be observed, many of these white serge or rlannel robes simply suited to the motion and play of the figure, being at once healthful and becomi'ig-