rich, the gay, the happy, and the fair, glittering with cloth of gold and silver, lace, embroidery, and precious stones. While these exulting sons and daughters of felicity tread this round of pleasure, or regale in different parties and separate lodges, with fine imperial tea and other delicious refreshments, their ears are entertained with the most ravishing delights of music, both instrumental and vocal. . . .

At nine o'clock in a charming moonlight evening, we embarked at Ranelagh for Vauxhall, in a wherry so light and slender that we looked like so many fairies sailing in a nutshell. . . . The pleasure of this little excursion was, however, damped by my being sadly frighted at our landing, where there was a terrible confusion of wherries, and a crowd of people bawling and swearing and quarreling; nay, a parcel of ugly-looking fellows came running into the water, and laid hold on our boat with great violence, to pull it ashore, nor would they quit their hold till my brother struck one of them over the head with his cane. But this flutter was fully recompensed by the pleasures of Vauxhall, which I no sooner entered, than I was dazzled and confounded with the variety of beauties that rushed all at once on my eye. Imagine to yourself, my dear Letty, a spacious garden, part laid out in delightful walks, bounded with high hedges and trees, and paved with gravel; part exhibiting a wonderful assemblage of the most picturesque and striking objects,

pavilions, lodges, groves, grottoes, lawns, temples, and cascades, porticoes, colonnades, and rotundas, adorned with pillars, statues, and paintings; the whole illuminated with an infinite number of lamps, disposed in different figures of suns, stars, and constellations, the place crowded with the gayest company, ranging through those blissful shades or supping in different lodges on cold collations, enlivened with mirth, freedom, and good humor, and animated by an excellent band of music.

Winifred Jenkins to Mary Jones

LONDON, June 3.

.. O Molly! what shall I say of London? All the towns that ever I beheld in my born days are no more than Welsh barrows and crumlecks to this wonderful sitty! Even Bath itself is but a fillitch; in the naam of God - one would think

there's no end of the streets, but the land's end. Then there's such a power of people, going hurry skurry! Such a racket of coxes! Such a noise and hallibaloo! So many strange sights to be seen! O gracious! my poor Welsh brain has been spinning like a top ever since I came hither! And I have seen the park, and the paleass of Saint Gimses, and the king's and the queen's magisterian pursing, and the sweet young princes, and the hillyfents, and pye-bald ass, and all the rest of the royal family.

Last week I went with mistress to the Tower, to see the crowns and wild beasts; and there was a monstracious lion, with teeth half a quarter long! . . . I was afterwards of a party at Sadler's Wells, where I saw such tumbling and dancing upon ropes and wires, that I was frightened, and ready to go into a fit. I tho't it was all inchantment, and believing myself bewitched, began for to cry. You knows as how the witches in Wales fly on broomsticks; but here was flying without any broomstick, or thing in the varsal world, and firing of pistols in the air, and blowing of trumpets, and swinging, and rolling of wheelbarrows on a wire (God bliss us!) no thicker than a sewing-thread; that, to be sure, they must deal with the devil. A fine gentleman, with a pig's tail and a golden sord by his side, came to comfit me, and offered for to treat me to a pint of wind; but I would not stay; and so, in going through the dark passage, he began to show his cloven futt, and went for to be rude. My fellow-sarvant Umphry Klinker bid him be sivil, and he gave the young man a douse in the chops; but, i'fackins, Mr. Klinker wasn't long in his debt; with a good oaken sapling he dusted his doublet, for all his golden cheese-toaster, and fipping me under his arm, carried me huom, I nose not how, being I was in such a flustration. But, thank God! I'm now vaned from all such vanities; for what are those rarities and vagaries to the glories that shall be revealed hereafter! O Molly! let not your poor heart be puffed up with vanity.

I had almost forgot to tell you that I have had my hair cut and pippered, and singed, and bolstered, and buckled in the newest fashion, by a French freezer - "Parley vow Francey -Vee madmansell!" I now carries my head higher than arrow private gentlewoman of Vales. Last night, coming huom from the meeting, I was taken by lamplight for an imminent

poulterer's daughter, a great beauty,-but, as I was saying, this is all vanity and vexation of spirit. The pleasures of London are no better than sower whey and stale cyder, when compared to the joys of the New Gerusalem.

Dear Mary Jones! An please God, when I return I'll bring you a new cap, with a turkey-shell comb, and a pyehouse sermon, that was preached in the Tabernacle. And I pray of all love, you will mind your vriting and your spilling; for, craving your pardon, Molly, it made me suet to disseyffer your last scrabble, which was delivered by the hind at Bath. O voman! voman! if thou hadst but the least consumption of what pleasure we scullers have, when we can cunster the crabbidst buck off hand, and spell the ethnitch vords without lucking at the primmer!

...

FRANCES BURNEY (MADAME D'ARBLAY)

DIARY AND LETTERS

[Madame d'Arblay's Diary and Letters were published in 1842, two years after her death, by her niece Charlotte Barrett. Of the extracts here reproduced, the first dates from the time when the writer had won sudden fame through her first novel, Evelina (1778); the third and fourth are from the period of her service as "second Keeper of the Robes" to the Queen (1786-91).]

[DR. JOHNSON]

August 3, 1778.

WHEN We were summoned to dinner, Mrs. Thrale made my father and me sit on each side of her. I said that I hoped I did not take Dr. Johnson's place, for he had not yet appeared.

"No," answered Mrs. Thrale, "he will sit by you, which I am sure will give him great pleasure."

Soon after we were seated, this great man entered. I have so true a veneration for him that the very sight of him inspires me with delight and reverence, notwithstanding the cruel infirmities to which he is subject; for he has almost perpetual convulsive movements, either of his hands, lips, feet, or knees, and sometimes of all together.

Mrs. Thrale introduced me to him, and he took his place. We had a noble dinner, and a most elegant dessert. Dr. Johnson, in the middle of dinner, asked Mrs. Thrale what was in some little pies that were near him.

"Mutton," answered she, "so I don't ask you to eat any, because I know you despise it."

"No, madam, no," cried he, "I despise nothing that is good of its sort; but I am now too proud to eat it. Sitting by Miss Burney makes me very proud to-day!"

"Miss Burney," said Mrs. Thrale, laughing, "you must take great care of your heart if Dr. Johnson attacks it; for I assure you he is not often successless."

"What's that you say, madam?" cried he. "Are you making mischief between the young lady and me already?"

A little while after he drank Mrs. Thrale's health and mine,

and then added: "T is a terrible thing that we cannot wish young ladies well without wishing them to become old women!"

"But some people," said Mr. Seward, "are old and young at the same time, for they wear so well that they never look old."

"No, sir, no," cried the doctor, laughing; "that never yet was; you might as well say they are at the same time tall and short. I remember an epitaph to that purpose, which is in -" (I have quite forgot what, and also the name it was made upon, but the rest I recollect exactly:

So early wise, so lasting fair,

That none, unless her years you told,

Thought her a child, or thought her old.")

Mrs. Thrale then repeated some lines in French, and Dr. Johnson some more in Latin. An epilogue of Mr. Garrick's to Bonduca was then mentioned, and Dr. Johnson said it was a miserable performance, and everybody agreed it was the worst he had ever made.

"And yet," said Mr. Seward, "it has been very much admired; but it is in praise of English valor, and so I suppose the subject made it popular."

"I don't know, sir," said Dr. Johnson, "anything about the subject, for I could not read on till I came to it; I got through half a dozen lines, but I could observe no other subject than eternal dullness. I don't know what is the matter with David; I am afraid he is grown superannuated, for his prologues and epilogues used to be incomparable."

"Nothing is so fatiguing," said Mrs. Thrale, "as the life of a wit. He and Wilkes are the two oldest men of their ages I know, for they have both worn themselves out by being eternally on the rack to give entertainment to others."

"David, madam," said the doctor, "looks much older than he is; for his face has had double the business of any other man's. It is never at rest; when he speaks one minute, he has quite a different countenance to what he assumes the next. I don't believe he ever kept the same look for half an hour together in the whole course of his life; and such an eternal, restless, fatiguing play of the muscles must certainly wear out a man's face before its real time.”