himself from seat to seat, like a fresh fledged robbin, fluttering about alternately the boxes, pit, and gallery, to exhibit his attractions, and win attentions. Amid these vagaries, the nice conduct of a clouded coloured cane was not forgotten; the frequent consequential taps upon his snuff box lid, garnished most commonly with some choice picture; or the graceful presenta tion of the pinch of snuff to his nasal organ, so as to display the rich brilliants on his rings.

It was shockingly vulgar to attend to the play, because there might be a good pointed hit at his eccentricities; therefore, he turned his back upon the stage. From the play, he repaired to the Park, buzzing, and chirping, and fluttering from lady to lady, talking to each a jargon of bad English, worse French, and execrable Latin; and was rewarded, as he wished, by many a rap on the shoulders with the fan, and the soothing epithet of "madfellow,"-" dear tormenting d-1," &c. &c. When that lounge was ended, he dropped into some fashionable party in Pall Mall, or St. James' street, to spend two or three hours, at ombre, or tic tac; where he chatted or rather twitted his empty nothings, and lost his money with an air of apparent fashionable indifference.*

This beau was ably matched by the assembled belles, with their tower or pyramidical head dresses, looking some of those of low stature, soon after in their hoops, as if they were enclosed in molasses puncheons, porter-butts, or moved about in draperied go-carts.

A less elaborately constructed beau, was ably matched by a cane dangling at his button, his breast open, no gloves, one eye tucked under his hat, and a gold tooth pick.†

never

at

But there were many ladies, who required, of course, admirers of sterner stuff; and, therefore, there were also abundance of those to suit them, and they were called bully-beaux, fellows who maintained a reputation for courage (though tained from the cannon's mouth,") and enterprize, by empty swagger, and violent assaults upon the peaceful members of society.

There were those who figured in Ramilies wigs, lined hats, black cockades, and scarlet suits; frequented the tilt-yard coffee-house, the great resort of military men, that they might be taken as belonging to the army; these manfully besought a quarrel, that they might meanfully pull the nose of those quiet citizens who wore no swords. And, at length, plucked up courage, by practising a little upon a tavern keeper, who * If these pretty libertines had lived in the days of Charondas, they might have been punished by the state. See Plutarch's de Curiositate. Spectator, No. 267.

† Cibber's "Careless Husband."

dare not resent, for fear of losing his custom, or on a box keeper at the play house, he fearing he might lose his place. An individual of such a stamp, is thus sketched in Congreve's "Old Bachelor." "He is a pretender, and wears the habit of a soldier. You must know he has been abroad, went purely to run away from a foreign campaign; enriched himself by the plunder of a few oaths, and here vents himself against the general, who, slighting men of merit, and preferring those of slight interest, has made him quit the service." These swaggering blades seem always "big with daring determinations," and also to set at defiance the following couplet, from Dalton's "Country Justice :"

Things must be recompensed by things, buffets with blowes;
And wordes with wordes, and taunts with mocks and mowes.'

To the charms of dress and address, it was an advantage for the gallant if he added something of a literary accomplishment, if he was as graceful with his pen as he was with his cane. To compose a good billet-doux was well; to be, or at least to pass for a linguist was better, but to have a knack of tagging a few rhymes in laudation of a lady or her lap-dog, was a qualification that carried everything before it.

The general style of courtship by which ladies were wooed and won, comported with the character of the unintellectual coxcombs by whom the incense was offered, and in a love speech, "angels, gods, racks, furies, tortures, and demons," ran through all the mazes of metaphorical and hyperbolical composition. This ridiculous medley, seasoned with poetical rant from the plays of Otway, Lee, and Dryden, and uttered with correspondent pomp and fervour, beat down the strongest defences and prior resolves of a female heart, and the fair or the frail "victor stood subdued by sound."

Custom had sanctioned these forced and foul expressions of feeling, the metaphors, tropes, and phraseology were all ready at hand, and the swains had not, they need not, strike into any new beaten path; add to this, that female education, so far as to enable women to detect the absurdity of such vapid and empty lip worship, was not a subject on which they had been taught better knowledge. So that it appeared to them the knowledge of truth, sincerity, and propriety, more especially as it was familiarized to their mind by the constant examples of the heroes of the stage.

They were delighted to be deified by the adoration of an Antony or an Oraandates, and would have broken their fans with disdain had a lover presumed to address them in the cold prosaic language of simplicity, nature, and sincerity. Even

when courtship was of a more refined character, its language was still artificial, being fashioned upon the models of Greece and Italy. In this case, while the enamoured parties shivered under the dripping damp chill of an English December sky, they professed to talk about Arcadian bowers, and to fancy themselves among groves of blooming myrtles-

"Where spring perpetual leads the laughing hours,
And winter wears a wreath of summer flowers."

The spicy gales of Paphos were quoted by the lover, while his teeth chattered in the face of an icy north-eastern blast. To finish the picture, we must fancy the solemn entrances and exits of the parties, much like the measured steps of an antique choral dance, the low and profound congees, the bowings of the gentleman, and the demure but blushing slowly sinking courtesies of the lady, so much in character, and so much in keeping with the stateliness of the tight-laced, hooped, and powdered perriwig, and those formal harangues which, in the present day, so greatly excite an irreverent mirth when we read them in the institute of a Chesterfield or a Richardson.

The following verses, by Lord Chesterfield, are appropriate to this chapter. He was Cupid's master of the ceremonies at this period :

"Would you engage the lovely fair?
With gentlest manners treat her;
With tender looks and graceful air,
In softest accents greet her.

Verse were but vain, the muses fail,
Without the graces' aid;

The god of verse could not prevail
To stop the flying maid.

Attentions by attentions gain,

And merit care by cares;

So shall the nymph reward your pain,
And Venus crown your prayers."

If a young lady, thus prematurely launched uncontaminated perhaps into the world, and had secured the grand aim, a good settlement, although not equal to the many, many thousands of a Lady Compton, she then displayed the effects of her education and her habits, upon a more extensive scale, and plunged at once into the fashionable vortex proportionate to her means, her lack of moral and intellectual resources.

A busy whirl of daily variety being necessary to occupy the emptiness of her mind, she dashes upon the town on a round of insipid visits in a carriage, with four tawdry, powdered, and laced footmen clinging thereto; and, in paying a visit, she enters.

a house with as much bluster as if she meant to fire it, and departs with the same hurried demeanour as if she had stolen something.*

When she was obliged to stay at home, she regaled herself with frequent libations of tea, sometimes qualified with more vile or potent liquers disguised under gentle appellations.†

When her female friends dropped in, the scandal of the day commenced, and reputations, which really might want some mending, were completely torn by those loose-tongued savages into shreds and tatters, because they were in general incapable of employing their "unruly members " upon more dignified and more charitable subjects. When she had her levee, the dashing rake and notorious profligate had free access, and the lew'd jest or double entendres flew thick and fast, and scarcely raised the fashionable fan to a single cheek.‡

Happy was it, if these venial sentences fell still-born as soon as uttered:

"Or, like as the snow falls in the river,

A moment seen, then melts for ever."

at

"A married lady," according to Cibber, "may have men at her toilette, and invite them to dinner, or appoint them to a party in a stage box at the play, engross the conversation there, call them by their Christian names, talk louder than the players; from thence jaunt it into the city, take a frolicksome supper an Indian house, perhaps in the gaiete-du-cœur, toast a pretty fellow. Then clatter again to the west end, break with the morning into an assembly, crowd to the hazard table, throw a familiar levant upon some sharp lurking man of quality, and, if he demand his money, turn it off with a laugh agreeable to the old maxim in a debate, when you want an argument try to raise a laugh,' and cry out, you'll owe it him to vex him." "§

This gambling might be characterised as the greatest female vice of the whole century. But a lady's debts of honour could not always be thus laughed away; on the contrary, the "sharp lurking man of quality" had often his own ends in view, and many bankrupt female gamesters had to compound with their creditors at the expense of their honour and their domestic happiness.

Many of the plays and tales of the period turn upon this very delicate and critical point. A day so lavishly and so worthlessly spent, necessarily borrowed, or rather stolen largely from the night, late hours, therefore, became fashionable, although they were regarded at first with wonder and alarm. Oft times + Congreve's" Way of the World." Provoked Husband.

*Tatler, No. 109. Spectator, No. 156.

a highly fashionable lady did not return from her racketty tour. before two o'clock. The more sober part of the upper classes had now adopted late hours, not retiring to bed before eleven. o'clock.

A fashionable lady patronized French milliners, French hairdressers, and Italian opera singers. She loved tall footmen, and turbaned negro boys; she doated upon monkeys, paroquets, and lap-dogs; was a perfect critic in old China and India trinkets: and could not exist without a raffle or a sale. And, according to Otway, she also kept squirrels in cages, which they occasionally enlivened by the sprightly tinkling of small silver bells.

In the year 1834, Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley published a volume, entitled "London at Night, and other Poems ;" one of these elegant productions is called "The Careless Lady:" it well applies to the reigns under review. It thus begins, her lady's maid is the speaker:

Lady, lady, how lik'st thou this weary life,

This strange tissue of pleasure, and pain, and strife?
Lady, bright lady, I pray thee to say,

Or art thou mournful-or art thou gay?

Being thus urged, the lady answers, that she is neither merry nor sad :

"I pray thee to pardon, my mind's very bad mood,

And I pray thee to leave me to my solitude.”

The lady is then asked whether she loves hunting or hawking: "Or dost thou love better the champaign," &c.

To all which she answers, definitively and positively, for the last time:

"Thou art wrong-thou art wrong-oh! how sorely thou'rt wrong,

But no parlaunce of that-the words freeze on my tongue;

As the cold careless lady still let me be known,

Though, alas! I have loved, who has not? one alone.

But 'tis done- ""

In Courtenay's "Memoirs of the Life of Sir William Temple," is the following extract from a letter of Mrs, Dorothy Osborne to Mr. Temple, whom he afterward married:* and who made as good a wife, as her sense and affection, as a mistress promised; it finely displays the habits and manners of the period; that shrewd and excellent lady writes:

"There are a great many ingredients must go to the making

* Sir William Temple was ambassador at the Hague; his concern in public affairs extended from 1661 to 1680. The great De Witt wrote to Lord Arlington, to say, "that it was impossible to send a minister of greater capacity, or more proper for the genius and temper of the nation, than Sir W. Temple."