An Accident at the Flying Coaches

A curious passage from Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1748). Lovelace descanting on the fate of the World's Fair at the Great World Fair. Note well the description of an Early Modern Merry-Go-Round:

 

It is certainly as much my misfortune to have fallen in with Miss Clarissa Harlowe, were I to have valued my reputation or ease, as it is that of Miss Harlowe to have been acquainted with me. And, after all, what have I done more than prosecute the maxims by which thou and I and every rake are governed, and which, before I knew this lady, we have pursued from pretty girl to pretty girl, as fast as we had set one down, taking another up; just as the fellows do with the flying coaches and flying horses at a country fair, with a Who rides next! Who rides next!

But here, in the present case, to carry on the volant metahor (for I must either be merry, or mad), is a pretty little miss just come out of her hanging-sleeve coat, brought to buy a pretty little fairing; for the world, Jack, is but a great fair, thou knowest; and, to give thee serious reflection for serious, all its toys but tinselled hobby-horses, gilt gingerbread, squeaking trumpets, painted drums, and so forth.

Now behold this pretty little miss skimming from booth to boothe, in a very pretty manner. One pretty little fellow called Wyerley perhaps; another jiggeting rascal called Biron, a third simpering varlet of the name of Symmes, and a more hideous villain than any of the rest, with a long bag under his arm, and parchment settlements tagged to his heels, ycleped Solmes; pursue her from raree-show to raree-show, shouldering upon one another at every turning, stopping when she stops, and set a spinning again when she moves. And thus dangled after, but still in the eye of her watchful guardians, traverss the pretty little miss through the whole fair, equally delighted and delighting: till at last, taken with the invitation of the laced-hat orator, and seeing several pretty little bib-wearers stuck together in the flying coaches, cutting safely the yielding air, in the one go-up the other go-down picture-oft-the-world vehicle, and all with as little fear as wit, is tempted to ride next. 

In then suppose she slyly pops, when none of her friends are near her: and if, after two or three ups and downs, her pretty head turns giddy, and she throws herself part of the reach when at its elevation, and so dashes out her pretty little brains, who can help it? And would you hang the poor fellow whose professed trade it was to set the pretty little creature a flying?

'Tis true, this pretty little miss, being a  very pretty little miss, being a very much-admired little miss, being a very good little miss, who always minded her book, and had passed though her sampler doctrine with high applause; had even stitched out in gaudy propriety of colours, an Abraham offering up Isaac, a Samson and the Philistines, and flowers, and knots, and trees, and the sun and the moon, and the seven stars, all hug up in frames with glasses before the, for the admiration of her future grandchildren, who likewise was entitled to a very pretty little estate: who was descened from a pretty little family upwards of the hundred years' gentility; which lived in a very pretty little manner respected a very little on their own accounts, a great deal on hers:—

For such a pretty little miss as this to come to so great a misfortune, must be a very sad thing: but, tell me, would not the losing of any ordinary child, of any other less considerable family, of less shining or amiable qualities, have been as great and as heavy a loss to that family, as the losing this pretty little miss could be to hers? 

(Vol. III, 316-17)

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