Note 208 — Chapter III · THE PROGRESS OF CARD-PLAYING. (continued 2)

"Uninflammable as the times were, they carried a great mixture of superstition. Masquerades had been abolished, because there had been an earthquake at Lisbon; and when the last jubilee-masquerade was exhibited at Ranelagh, the alehouses and roads to Chelsea were crowded with drunken people, who assembled to denounce the judgments of God on persons of fashion, whose greatest sin was dressing themselves ridiculously. A more inconvenient reformation, and not a more sensible one, was set on foot by societies of tradesmen, who denounced to the magistrate all bakers that baked or sold bread on Sundays. Alum, and the variety of spurious ingredients with which bread, and, indeed, all wares, were adulterated all the week round, gave not half so much offence as the vent of the chief necessary of life on a Sunday."—Earl of Orford's Memoirs, vol. ii, p. 283.