it, The mode of passing time amongst these persons, may be conjectured from their characters; their hours are devoted to talking scandal of each other, trying to read Novels, rolling about in their chariots; wasting money (for the benefit of Auctioneers, fixed and itinerant, who rob and laugh at them at the same moment;) in the purchase of damaged furniture, dawbs on canvas, broken china, glittering trinkets, stuffed monkies, and paroquets: plundering one another at cards, feeding and guzzling at their respective homes, and frequenting what are denominated places of Holy Worship, elegantly fitted up, with velvet cushions, warm stoves, and gorgeous curtains; and affecting to think themselves on the high road to Heaven's gate, because they bestow a few annual pounds in ostentatious subscriptions to seeming charities, and have listened

with dulcified aspects once a week to a polite preacher of their own especial choosing; a dear, soft spoken man, with rosy nails, snowy hands, and powdered pate, who whispers for twenty minutes an Olio of mawkish truisms, sprinkled over with drawing-room phraseology, and a little lively abuse of Democrats, and Bonaparte.

A Bath ball, particularly on Thursday evenings, calls together these Grandees, as well as multitudes of a lower degree; and displays scenes which would require a pencil as pointed as that of Hogarth or Gilray, to describe, and a pen as sharp as Churchill's or Crabbes, to expose sufficiently. The apartments for card playing and dancing are under the same ample roof: in the first, the exhibition is even more curious than in the dancing room, and

almost as disgusting; for here, beneath the lustre of candles which shed a light as brilliant as the day, may be seen fifty or three-score of either sex, seated at different tables; in silence eyeing each other with mutual, and well merited scowls of mistrust; and exerting such faculties as age and distempers have left them, to practise deception and to escape it: this card-room, in short, on a crowded evening, includes within its walls as much human vice as Newgate, as much bodily disease as a London hospital, as much folly as Bedlam, and as much vulgarity as Wapping. This is likewise a most exact description of the elements whereof the Ball is composed; for there, although many hundreds meet, those who can boast of youth, soundness and agility are not by any means as numerous as the crippled, decrepit and superannuated, who, from

various motives, flock to this amusement; induced by a wish to escape from home and its chagrins, to promote or prevent marriages, to talk scandal and scurility, pursue plans of intrigue, &c. &c. while the less inactive, under pretence of enjoying the harmless pastime of dancing, are in any state rather than a state of enjoyment or innocent occupation: the females being designedly as nearly naked as they dare, and in the language and behaviour which pass between them and their partners more rank, more nauseous than it is possible for the uninitiated to imagine. Wherever design is concerned, the human creature, like the brute, becomes serious; accordingly, the general expression of countenance, amongst the dancers, is exceedingly dull and formal; the women being engaged in plotting to raise the amorous or the avaricious

passions of the men, and by imposing themselves on them as beauties and heiresses, with the aid of cosmetics, tight Jacing, curled wigs, fantastic robes, and paste ornaments, to snap them up for husbands. And the men, unless such as are elevated with wine, are rendered grave by similar plottings on their part: those whom indulgence in the glass has thrown off their guard, use such license of speech and hand as would hardly be endured elsewhese-even in the bagnios of a civilized country; yet here are not only permitted, but excited by the conduct of the elders who surround them, and who have their private views

to answer.

The superintendant of this select and moral society, is styled the Master of the Ceremonies, who, richly attired, moves about with all the solemn