Читать книгу Pyrotechnics. The History and Art of Firework Making онлайн

42 страница из 52

To a certain extent his complaint seems justified; as we have seen, the Aix-la-Chapelle celebrations were conducted by foreigners—Ruggieri and Sarti. Later in the century, Morel Torré, who, as previously mentioned, collaborated with Ruggieri in pyrotechnic displays for Louis XV, and several other pyrotechnists came to this country and conducted displays. At the same time, however, there were undoubtedly many capable pyrotechnists of English nationality, who found scope for their abilities in the exhibitions given in the pleasure gardens of London and the provinces in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

A history of pyrotechny would not be complete without a survey of these popular places of amusement, and we propose in the following chapter to give a brief summary of the better known places of resort.

ssss1

During the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries the Pleasure Gardens filled a position in the lives of a large proportion of the public comparable with that of the Cinema to-day.