Front matter (continued 2)

'You must not speak to me. You have your solicitor here.'

'But,' I replied, 'my solicitor cannot know that these assertions are false!'

'Be silent!' thundered the judge. 'If you say another word I shall commit you for contempt.'

Of course I said no more, but, like the parrot, thought a lot. I knew that a judge, a mere County Court judge, who passes his life amidst the most sordid and depressing scenes of wretchedness, had the power of sending me to prison, and to keep me there till I made the most abject apology for a speech which was never intended to be offensive. Persons have been kept in prison for twenty years by the mere order of a judge, who was plaintiff, jury, and judge in every such case. This is scarcely in accordance with our ideas of justice. But this relic of a barbarous age will be abolished in time, as the Courts of Doctors' Commons, or the Palace Court, where a number of sleepy old gentlemen

'Were sittin' at their ease,

A-sendin' of their writs about,

And drorin' in their fees,'

have been abolished. And there is no doubt that our modern judges are superior in talent, adroitness, and acuteness to those of former days. They are men of high-breeding, combining in their characteristics those of the courtier and of the lawyer. Judges of the past were different; in fact, some of the old judges were noted for their eccentricities. Lord Thurlow was one of them. When he was still an aspirant for forensic fame, he was one evening at Nando's Coffee-house—now a hairdresser's shop, opposite Chancery Lane, falsely called the palace of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey. Arguing keenly about a celebrated case then before the courts, he was heard by some lawyers, who were so pleased with his handling of the matter that next day they appointed him junior counsel, and the cause won him a silk gown. This was in 1754. It is asserted that he was singularly ugly, and that when his portrait was shown to Lavater, the physiognomist said: 'Whether that man is on earth or in another place, which shall be nameless, I know not; but wherever he is, he is a born tyrant, and will rule if he can.' And the opinion thus formed was a correct one, for Lord Thurlow was fierce and overbearing as a statesman, and was more feared than any other member of the Cabinet. In 1778 he had become Lord Chancellor, and been raised to the Peerage. His ugliness must have been a fact, for the Duke of Norfolk, who had at Arundel Castle a fine breed of owls, named one of them, on account of its ugliness, Lord Thurlow. Great fun was caused by a messenger coming to the Duke in the Lobby of the House of Peers with the news that Lord Thurlow had laid an egg.

In 1785 Lord Thurlow purchased Brockwell Green Farm, and other lands in the neighbourhood of Dulwich and Norwood, and chose Knight's Hill as a suitable site for a house. The house was finished, but Lord Thurlow considered it too dear—it is said to have cost £30,000—and would never live in it, but remained in a smaller house, called Knight's Hill Farm. As he was coming from the Queen's Drawing-room, a lady asked him when he was going into his new house. 'Madam,' he replied, 'the Queen has just asked me that impudent question, and, as I would not tell her, I will not tell you.' Both the mansion and the farmhouse disappeared long ago.

The romantic marriage of Lord Eldon, then plain Mr. John Scott, of the Northern Circuit, forms a pleasant episode in legal history. Bessie Surtees was the daughter of Aubone Surtees, a banker and gentleman of honourable descent at Newcastle. Scott had met and danced with her at the assemblies in that town, and his pretensions were at first favoured by her family; but Sir William Blackett, a patrician but aged suitor, presenting himself, Bessie was urged to throw over Scott and become Lady Blackett. But Bessie was faithful, and one night descended from a window into her lover's arms, and they were married at Blackshiels, North Britain. The future Lord Eldon came to London with his young and pretty wife, and settled in a humble, small house in Cursitor Street. Their housekeeping at first must have been on a somewhat restricted scale, for Lord Eldon, in after-life, used to relate that, in those days, he frequently ran into Clare Market for sixpennyworth of sprats. It was probably owing to these privations in the early days of their married life that her husband had afterwards to complain of her stinginess and her repugnance to society. In fact, she seems to have ruled him rather sternly, for we read of his often stealing into the George Coffee House, at the top of the Haymarket, to get a pint of wine, as Lady Eldon did not permit him to enjoy it in peace at home. Cyrus Redding, who tells us this, did not like Eldon either as a Tory or as a man. 'His words,' he writes, 'were no index to his real feelings. He had a sterile soul for all things earthly, except money, doubts, and the art of drawing briefs.'

Cyrus Joy, who was present at the funeral of Lord Gifford, who was buried in the Rolls Chapel, relates that Lord Eldon and Lord Chief Justice Abbott were placed in a pew by themselves, and that he saw Lord Eldon, who was very shaky during the most solemn part of the service, touch the Chief Justice, evidently for his snuff-box, for the box was produced, and he took a large pinch of snuff, but the moment he had taken it he threw it away. 'I was astonished,' says Joy, 'at the deception practised by so great a man, with the grave yawning before him.' Whilst Lord Eldon held the Great Seal, in 1812, a fire occurred at Encombe, his country seat in Dorsetshire. As soon as it broke out, Lord Eldon buried the Seal in the garden whilst the engine played on the burning house. All the men-servants were helping to supply it with water. 'It was,' wrote Lord Eldon, 'a very pretty sight, for all the maids turned out of their beds, and formed a line from the water to the fire-engine, handing the buckets. They looked very pretty, all in their shifts.' When the fire was subdued, Lord Eldon had forgotten where he had buried the Seal, and all the gardeners and maids who had looked so pretty by firelight were set to work to dig up the garden till the Seal was found. Lord Eldon could be very rude at times. He and the Archbishop dined with George III., when he said: 'It is a curious fact that your Majesty's Archbishop and your Lord Chancellor married clandestinely. I had some excuse, certainly, for Bessie Surtees was the prettiest girl in all Newcastle; but Mrs. Sutton was always the same pumpkin-faced thing that she is at present.' The King was much amused, as we are told.

Lord Eldon's brother, Sir William Scott, had a strange matrimonial experience. His brother eloped with a man's daughter, and thus entered the wedded state somewhat illegally. Sir William may be said to have entered it, in the true sense of the word, legally—that is, as a result of his legal status. He and Lord Ellenborough presided at the Old Bailey at the trial of the young Marquis of Sligo for having, while in the Mediterranean, lured into his yacht two of the King's sailors, for which offence he was fined £5,000, and sentenced to four months' imprisonment in Newgate. Throughout the trial his mother sat in the court, hoping that her presence would rouse in the bench or the jury feelings favourable to her son. When the above sentence was pronounced, Sir William accompanied it by a long moral jobation on the duties of a citizen. The Marchioness sent a paper full of satirical thanks to Sir William for his good advice to her son. Sir William read it as he sat on the bench, and, having looked towards the lady, received from her a glance and a smile which sealed his fate. Within four months he was tied fast (on April 10, 1813) to a voluble, shrill termagant, who rendered him miserable and contemptible. He removed to his wife's house in Grafton Street, and, ever economical in his domestic expenses, brought with him his own door-plate from Doctor's Commons, and placed it under the pre-existing plate of Lady Sligo. Jekyll, the punster of the day, condoled with Sir William at having to 'knock under.' Sir William had the plates transposed.

'You see, I don't knock under now,' he said to Jekyll.

'Not now,' replied the punster; 'now you knock up.'

This was said with reference to his advanced age.

Lord Erskine, another famous judge, when dining one day at the house of Sir Ralph Payne, afterwards Lord Lavington, found himself so indisposed as to be obliged to retire after dinner to another room. When he returned to the company, Lady Payne asked how he found himself. Erskine took out a piece of paper and wrote on it:

''Tis true I am ill, but I cannot complain,

For he never knew pleasure who never knew Payne.'

After he had ceased to hold the Seals as Lord Chancellor—and the time he held the office was one year only—he met Captain Parry at dinner, and asked him what he and his crew lived on in the Frozen Sea. Parry replied that they lived on seals. 'And capital things too, seals are, if you only keep them long enough,' was Erskine's reply. Being invited to attend the Ministerial fish dinner at Greenwich when he was Chancellor, 'To be sure,' he answered; 'what would your dinner be without the Great Seal?' When Erskine lived at Hampstead he was asked at a dinner-party he attended, 'The soil is not the best in that part of Hampstead where your seat is?' 'No,' he answered, 'very bad; for though my grandfather was buried there as an Earl near a hundred years ago, what has sprouted from it since but a mere Baron?' Erskine married when very young, and had four sons and four daughters. When a widower and getting old he married a second time, and his latter days were passed in a state bordering on indigence. He died in 1823, in poverty. On July 17, 1826, a woman, poorly dressed, was brought before the Lord Mayor by a chimney-sweep as a person deserving assistance. The woman, being interrogated, declared herself to be Lady Erskine. The Lord Mayor conducted her into his private room, where he heard her sad story. She had lived with Lord Erskine several years before he married her, which he did in Scotland, whereby their children (four) were legitimatized. His death left her destitute, though she had been promised a pension from Government of twelve shillings a week, which had been paid very irregularly, and finally withdrawn altogether, because she would not be parted from her youngest child. The others had been taken care of by Government. She had for years endeavoured to maintain herself by female labour, but now she was totally destitute and actually starving. The Lord Mayor liberally supplied her present wants, and promised to intercede for her with Government, with what result we have been unable to ascertain. It was Mr. H. Erskine, brother of Lord Erskine, who, after being presented to Dr. Johnson by Boswell, slipped a shilling into the latter's hand, whispering that it was for showing him his bear. Erskine could mould a jury at his pleasure, yet in Parliament he was not successful as an orator. But when pleading he was always ready with repartee. Once, when insisting on the validity of an argument before Lord Mansfield, the latter said: 'I disproved it before you were born!' 'Yes, my Lord,' replied Erskine, 'because I was not born.' Lord Erskine owned that the most discreditable passage in his life was his becoming Lord Chancellor. Some other judges seem to have had no faith in their own works. Lord Campbell was seated one day next to Chief Baron Pollock, when they were both Members of the House of Commons, and said: 'Pollock, we lawyers receive the highest wages of an infamous profession.'

Sir Nicholas Bacon was so learned in the law that he was appointed attorney in the Court of Wards, and made a Privy Councillor and Keeper of the Great Seal under Elizabeth. When the Queen visited him at Redgrave, she observed, alluding to his corpulence, that he had built the house too little for himself. 'Not so, madam,' he answered; 'but your Majesty has made me too big for my house.' A man was brought before Sir Nicholas accused of a crime which, under the Draconian laws then in force, involved the penalty of death. He was found guilty, and, asked whether he had anything to say for himself, appealed to the judge's compassion, seeing that he was a kind of relation to him, his name being Hogg. 'True,' replied Bacon; 'but Hog is not Bacon till it's hung.' And hung, or hanged, to speak correctly, he was, and thus did not save his bacon. But the jest was a cruel one.

VII.

SOME FAMOUS LONDON ACTRESSES.

Distance lends enchantment to the view, but the view frequently does not return it, a common practice with borrowers! Distance alone invests the East with a halo of romance and beauty, to which it really can lay no claim. The romance is the invention of Western imagination, and the beauty, if not tawdry, is monstrous. In no respect is this excess of imagination over the reality more apparent than in the eidolon the European forms in his mind of Eastern female beauty. He hears or reads of houris, and nautch-girls, and bayaderes, and the dancing-women of Japan and Burmah; but if ever he sees any of them he will be disenchanted, for awkward figures they are, wrapped up in clothes like so many sacks, twisted and tied over one another—if not old, at least middle-aged women with rings in their noses. Pooh! enough of them! The real beauties the European never gets a sight of, they are shut up in harems. But still he thinks the East the region of beauty, and longs for it, even when he sees beauty in perfection in the West, where alone it is to be found, because in Western lands alone physical and intellectual or perfect beauty exists in combination. And this combination is most frequently seen, as may be surmised from the nature of her avocation, in the actress. Women first appeared on the English stage in 1660. On December 6 in that year, at the performance of 'Othello' at the Duke's Theatre, Lincoln's Inn Fields, the prologue spoken is entitled: 'A prologue to introduce the first woman that came to act on the stage.' Pepys went to see 'The Beggar's Bush' at the same theatre on January 3, 1661, and reports: 'Here the first time that ever I saw a woman come upon the stage.' But the Queen had long before then, namely, in 1633, acted in a pastoral given at Court. The practice having, however, been introduced at the Duke's Theatre, was continued, to the disgust of moralists, who looked upon the 'enormous shamefulness' of female acting as a sinful practice. Even the intelligent and generally liberal-minded Evelyn speaks of the drama as abused to 'an atheistical liberty,' by the circumstance of women being suffered to become performers. In his Diary, October 18, 1666, he writes: 'This night was acted my Lord Broghill's tragedy, called "Mustapha," before their Majesties at Court, at which I was present, very seldom going to the public theatres for many reasons now, as they were abused to an atheistical liberty, foul and indecent women now (and never till now) permitted to appear and act, who, inflaming several young noblemen and gallants, became their misses, and to some their wives, witness ye Earl of Oxford, Sir R. Howard, P. Rupert, the Earl of Dorset, and another greater person than any of them, who fell into their snares, to ye reproach of their noble families, and ruin of both body and soul.' By 'another greater person,' Evelyn no doubt intended the King himself, Charles II., who had at least three avowed mistresses taken from the stage—Madam Davis, Mrs. Knight, and Nell Gwynne. Miss Davis was, according to Pepys, a natural daughter of the Earl of Berkshire. He went to see her perform on March 7, 1666, in 'The English Princess,' and 'little Miss Davis did dance a jigg after the end of the play, and there telling the next day's play, so that it came in by force only to see her dance in boy's clothes.' Mrs. Knight was a famous singer. Kneller painted her portrait. Of Nell Gwynne we shall have occasion to speak further on. At the same theatre Mrs. Davenport, the lady who played the part of Roxalana in 'The Siege of Rhodes,' was taken to be the Earl of Oxford's misse, as at this time they began to call lewd women, as Evelyn says. But Evelyn evidently was badly informed. Mrs. Davenport for a long time refused the Earl of Oxford's presents and overtures, but, on his offering to marry her, she consented. The ceremony was performed, and they lived together for some time, and then the Earl informed her that the marriage was a sham, and that the mock parson was one of his trumpeters. In vain the deluded woman appealed to the laws, in vain she threw herself at the King's feet to demand justice. She might consider herself lucky to obtain a pension of £300. Pepys saw her afterwards at the theatre, and says: 'Saw the old Roxalana in the chief box, in a velvet gown, as the fashion is, and very handsome, at which I was glad.'

Moll Davies was another of the King's favourites, and he is said to have fallen in love with her through her singing 'My Lodging is on the Cold Ground' in 'The Rivals,' a play altered by Davenant from Beaumont and Fletcher's 'The Two Noble Kinsmen.' Pepys frequently mentions her as a rival to Nell Gwynne. She had one daughter by Charles, who was christened Mary Tudor, and was married in 1687 to the son of Sir Francis Ratcliff, who became Earl of Derwentwater. When the King grew tired of her he settled a pension on her of £1,000 a year. It was as a descendant of this Earl that the lady who called herself Amelia, Countess of Derwentwater, in 1868 took possession of the old baronial castle of Devilstone, or Dilston, claiming it and the estates belonging thereto, but then and now vested in Greenwich Hospital, as hers. But the Lords of the Admiralty, in 1870, defeated her claim, and she disappeared from public view.

Another famous actress in the days of Charles II. was Margaret Hughes, of whom Prince Rupert became enamoured. At first she pretended to be fiercely virtuous, so as to secure a higher price for her favours. And, in fact, the Prince settled on her Brandenburgh House, near Hammersmith, in which she lived about ten years. The house afterwards became the residence of Queen Caroline, who died there, shortly after which it was demolished.

Whatever may be said against women appearing on the stage, there is something more repulsive in men and boys taking female parts in a play, at least, so it seems to our moral feelings, and æsthetically the practice is still more objectionable. Male performers can never represent the spontaneous grace, melting voice, and tender looks of a female, and the ludicrous contretemps the custom frequently caused further showed its absurdity. Thus, on one occasion, Charles II. inquired why the commencement of the play was delayed. The manager stepped forward and craved his Majesty's indulgence, as the queen was not yet shaved. And whatever Prynne might say in his 'Histrio Mastix' against female actors, the practice caught on and became general. Of course, the opposition did not cease at once; even in France it raised its head as late as 1733. A speaker against the stage spoke thus at the Jesuits' College in Paris: 'They (the actresses) do not form the deadly shafts of Cupid, but they level them with the eye, and shoot with the utmost dexterity and skill. Such women I mean as represent destructive love characters.... How artfully do they hurl the most inconsiderable dart! What multitudes are wounded by a single one!' And, indeed, what multitudes have our Nancy Oldfields, Bracegirdles, Gwynnes, Kitty Clives, Perditas, Meltons, and the whole galaxy of theatrical beauties not only wounded, but conquered, and sometimes killed!

The life of an actress had many ups and downs—as it has now—in former days. There was the eccentric Charlotte Charke, daughter of Colley Cibber, who for some mysterious reason for many years went in male attire, and who acted on the stage if she could get employment. There was then in Bear Yard, Clare Market, a theatre, occasionally used as a tennis-court and as an auction-room. 'Thither,' she says in her Memoirs, 'I adventured to see if there was any character wanting—a custom very frequent among the gentry who exhibited in that slaughter-house of dramatic poetry. One night, I remember, the "Recruiting Officer" was to be performed.... To my unbounded joy Captain Plume was so unfortunate that he came at five o'clock to say that he did not know a word of his part.... The question being put to me, I immediately replied that I could do such a thing, but was ... resolved to stand upon terms ... one guinea paid in advance, which terms were complied with.'

We mentioned above that the life of an actress has many ups and downs even now. In justification of that statement let us quote from the Star of September 12, 1896: 'A pathetic story of an aged lady, who had been a popular actress, but upon whom evil days had come, and who was found dead in a poorly-furnished bedroom in a third-floor back at Whitfield Street, Tottenham Court Road, was told yesterday to the coroner. The old lady was Louisa Marshall, aged seventy, sister of a celebrated clown at Drury Lane, who died before her. She used to teach the piano, and had a small pension from the Musical and Dramatic Sick Fund. The contents of her room, an old piano and some theatrical dresses, were said to be worth fifty shillings at most.' But, as Byron says, let us lay this sheet of sorrow on the shelf, and speak of lively, joyous Nell Gwynne, who drove that amorous Pepys nearly mad. His Diary is full of her. First she is simply 'pretty, witty Nell' (April 3, 1665). On January 23, 1666, Nelly is brought to him in a box at the theatre. 'A most pretty woman.... I kissed her, and so did my wife, and a mighty pretty soul she is.' On March 2, in the same year, 'Nell ... comes in like a young gallant, and hath the motions and carriage of a spark the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, I confess, admire her.' On May 1, 1667, he writes: 'To Westminster. In the way many milkmaids with their garlands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddler before them, and saw pretty Nelly standing at her lodging's door in Drury Lane, in her smock sleeves and bodice, looking upon one. She seemed a mighty pretty creature.' But, according to her ardent admirer, this 'mighty pretty creature' could use mighty strong language too, for he says of her (October 5, 1667): 'But to see how Nell cursed for having so few people in the pit was strange.' And again, on October 26, he reports: 'Nelly and Beck Marshall (one of the great Presbyterian's daughters) falling out the other day, the latter called the other my Lord Buckhurst's mistress. Nell answered her: "I was but one man's mistress, though I was brought up in a disreputable house to fill strong waters to the gentlemen, and you are a mistress to three or four, though a Presbyter's praying daughter."' And Nell may have been right, for Beck Marshall seems to have been a trifle fast. Pepys says, on May 2, 1668: 'To the King's (play) house, where ... the play being over, I did see Beck Marshall come dressed off the stage, and look mighty fine and pretty, and noble; and also Nell, in her boy's clothes, mighty pretty. But, Lord! their confidence, and how many men do hover about them as soon as they come off the stage, and how confident they are in their talk!' Pepys, in the end, seems to have cooled in his devotion to pretty Nell, for on January 7, 1669, he wrote in his Diary: 'My wife and I to the King's play-house.... We sat in an upper box, and the jade Nell came and sat in the next box, a bold, merry slut, who lay laughing there upon people, and with a comrade of hers, of the Duke's house, that came in to see the play.'

Coal Yard, Drury Lane, seems to have been Nell Gwynne's birthplace, a low, disreputable locality, and she died in a fine house on the south side of Pall Mall. Previously to that, she had lived in a house on the north side, whose site is now occupied by the Army and Navy Club. Though Drury Lane in the days of Nell Gwynne was a fashionable locality, it would seem that only to the southern division this epithet could be applied; the northern end, towards Holborn, had a low and mean character, and Coal Yard consisted of miserable tenements. It has recently been rebuilt, and is now called Goldsmith Street. Nell Gwynne died in 1691, and was pompously interred in the parish church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, Dr. Tennison, the then Vicar, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, preaching her funeral sermon. This sermon was afterwards brought forward at Court to impede the doctor's preferment; but Queen Mary, having heard the objection, answered: 'Well, what then? This I have heard before, and it is a proof that the unfortunate woman died a true penitent, who through the course of her life never let the wretched ask in vain.' This was certainly as noble an answer to give on the part of a Queen as it was mean on the part of King Charles II. to say on his deathbed: 'Don't let poor Nelly starve.' Was it not in his power to make provision for her, instead of leaving her to the charity of the world?

Another both fortunate and unfortunate actress was Mrs. Montford, whose husband was murdered as he had come to escort Mrs. Bracegirdle, after Captain Hill's attempt at abducting this lady, on her leaving the theatre, of which more hereafter. On Mrs. Montford, or Mountfort—the name is found spelt both ways—Gray wrote his ballad of 'Black-eyed Susan.' Lord Berkeley's partiality for her was so great that at his decease he left her £300 a year, on condition that she did not marry; he also purchased Cowley, near Uxbridge, for her—the place had been the summer residence of Rich, the actor—and from time to time made her presents of considerable sums. She fell in love with a Mr. Booth, a then well-known actor, but, not wishing to lose her annuity, she did not marry him, though she gave him the preference over many others of her suitors. Mrs. Montford had an intimate friend, Miss Santlow, a celebrated dancer; but, through the liberality of one of her admirers, she became possessed of a fortune, which rendered her independent of the stage, upon which Mr. Booth proposed to her, and was accepted. This so affected Mrs. Montford that she became mentally deranged, and was brought from Cowley to London to have the best advice. As she was not violent and had lucid moments, she was not rigorously confined, but suffered to go about the house. One day she asked her attendant what play was to be performed that evening, and was told it was 'Hamlet.' In this piece, whilst she was on the stage, she had always appeared as Ophelia. The recollection struck her, and with the cunning always allied with insanity, she found means to elude the watchfulness of her servants, and to reach the theatre, where she concealed herself till the time when Ophelia was to appear, when she rushed on the stage, pushing the lady who was to act the character aside, and exhibited a more perfect representation of madness than the most consummate mimic art could produce. She was, in truth, Ophelia herself, the very incarnation of madness. Nature having made this last effort, her vital powers failed her. On going off, she prophetically exclaimed: 'It is all over!' As she was being conveyed home, 'she,' in Gray's words, 'like a lily drooping, bowed her head and died.'

Lovely Nancy Oldfield, who quitted the bar of the Mitre, in St. James's Market, then kept by her aunt, Mrs. Voss, became, towards the end of the seventeenth century, the great attraction at Drury Lane. Her intimacy with General Churchill, cousin of the great Duke of Marlborough, obtained for her a grave in Westminster Abbey. Persons of rank and distinction contended for the honour of bearing her pall, and her remains lay in state for three days in the Jerusalem Chamber!

We referred above to the attempt made by Captain Hill to carry off Mrs. Bracegirdle. Hill had offered her his hand and had been refused. He determined to abduct her by force. He induced his friend Lord Mahun to assist him. A coach was stationed near the Horseshoe Tavern in Drury Lane, with six soldiers to force her into it, which they attempted to do as she came down Drury Lane about ten o'clock at night, accompanied by her mother and brother, and a friend, Mr. Page. The attempt was resisted, a crowd collected, and Hill ordered the soldiers to let the lady go, and she was escorted home by her friends. She then sent for her friend Mr. Montford, who soon after turned the corner of Norfolk Street, where Hill challenged him, as he attributed Mrs. Bracegirdle's rejection of him to her love for Montford, which suspicion, however, was groundless, and ran him through the body before he could draw his sword. Hill made his escape; Montford died from his wounds.

Even in more recent days actresses have made good matches. Miss Anna Maria Tree, of Covent Garden, in 1825 married James Bradshaw, of Grosvenor Place; in 1831, Miss Foote, the celebrated actress, became Countess of Harrington; Miss Farren, Countess of Derby; Miss Brunton, Countess of Craven; Miss Bolton became Lady Thurlow; Miss O'Neill married a baronet; Miss Kitty Stephens became Countess of Essex; Miss Campion was taken off the stage by the aged Duke of Devonshire. The list might be greatly extended, even to our own times; but the instances quoted are sufficient to show the prizes ladies may draw in the theatrical matrimonial lottery; and there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it.

VIII.

QUEER CLUBS OF FORMER DAYS.

The Virtuoso Club was established by some members of the Royal Society, and held its meetings at a tavern in Cornhill. Its professed object was to 'advance mechanical exercises, and promote useful experiments'; but, according to Ned Ward, their discussions usually ended in a general shindy, and results not to be described by a modern writer. The club claimed the merit of the invention of the barometer; but, for all that, its proceedings afforded fine sport to the satirists: thus, the members were said to aim at making beer without water, living like princes on three-halfpence a day, producing a table by which a husband may discover all the particulars of the tricks his wife may play him. The ridicule showered on the club at last reduced it to a little cynical cabal of half-pint moralists, who continued to meet at the same tavern. Convivially-disposed members of other learned societies have occasionally formed themselves into clubs. Thus some antiquaries, many years since, formed a club styled 'Noviomagians.' Mr. Crofton Croker was its president more than twenty years, and many other distinguished men were members.

A number of roistering companions used to hold a club at the Golden Fleece in Cornhill, after which they named their club. Each member on his admission had a characteristic name assigned to him—as Sir Nimmy Sneer, Sir Talkative Do-little, Sir Rumbus Rattle. They eventually adjourned to the Three Tuns, Southwark.

The No-Nose Club, whether it ever existed or not, was a horrible idea in itself; it flourished only during the lifetime of its founders.

The Club of Beaus was what its name implies—a club of fops and idiots. The only merit they seem to have had was that their habits were always scrupulously clean, though their language usually was filthy. Their meetings were held at an inn in Covent Garden.

The Quacks' Club, or Physical Society, was really an offshoot of the College of Physicians, which met at a tavern near the Exchange, where they discussed medical matters. The College of Physicians at that time was in Warwick Lane, where it remained till removed, in 1825, to Trafalgar Square.

The Weekly Dancing Club, or Buttock Ball, was held at a tavern in King Street, St. Giles, and was patronized by bullies, libertines, and strumpets; footmen who had robbed their masters and turned gentlemen; chambermaids who had stolen their mistresses' clothes and set up for gentlewomen. Though called a club, it was not really a close assembly, but everyone was admitted on the payment of sixpence, and no questions asked. The Dancing Academy was first established about the year 1710 by a dancing-master over the Coal Yard gateway into Drury Lane, and was so successful that it was removed to the more commodious premises mentioned above. But at last it became such a nuisance that the authorities shut it up. The Coal Yard above mentioned, the last turning on the north-east side of Drury Lane, is said to have been the birthplace of Nell Gwynne.

A club cultivating a certain filthy habit, which I can only indicate as one practised by the French peasantry, and as described in one of Zola's novels, was established at a public-house in Cripplegate. The manner in which the proceedings of the club are set forth by their chronicler is as hideous and repulsive as the writer can make it; it could not be reproduced in any modern publication without risk of prosecution, which, indeed, would be well deserved. But the manners of the eighteenth century were excessively coarse.

The Man-Killing Club, besides admitting no one to membership who had not killed his man, also bound itself to resist the Sheriff's myrmidons on their making any attempt to serve a writ on or seize one of them. It was founded in the reign of Charles II. by a knot of bullies, broken Life-Guardsmen, and old prize-fighters. Its meetings were held at a low public-house on the back-side of St. Clement's. The good old times!

The Surly Club was chiefly composed of master carmen, lightermen, and Billingsgate porters, who held their weekly meetings at a tavern near Billingsgate Dock, where City dames used to treat their journeymen with beakers of punch and new oysters. The object of their meetings was the practice of contradiction and of foul language, that they might not want impudence to abuse passengers on the Thames. This society first established the thumping-post at Billingsgate, to harden its members by whipping never to bridle their tongues from fear of corporeal punishment. Billingsgate language was, as may be supposed, much improved by them.

The Atheistical Club met at an inn in Westminster, and its name sufficiently indicates its object, namely, to take the devil's part. A trick was played on them by a man disguising himself in a bear's skin and making them believe he was the devil, which occurrence, it is said, broke up the club. Similar societies were discovered in Wells Street, and at the Angel, in St. Martin's Lane, and the members arrested; but, it turning out that in these cases the devil was less black than he was painted, the charges against them had to be withdrawn. The societies, in fact, were more political, with republican tendencies, inspired by the French Revolution, which was just then at its height, and the worship of Reason seems to have been one of their principles.

The Split-farthing Club held its weekly meetings at the Queen's Head in Bishopsgate Street, and was supposed to be composed chiefly of misers and skinflints. If any smoker among them left his box behind him, and wanted to borrow a pipe of tobacco of a brother, it would not be lent without a note of hand, which was generally written round the bowl of a pipe so as to prevent the waste of paper.

The Club of Broken Shopkeepers held its meetings at the sign of Tumble-Down Dick, a famous boozing den in the Mint in Southwark, a sanctuary of knaves, sots, and bankrupts, honest or swindling, against arrest for debt. The sign of Tumble-Down Dick was set up in derision of Richard Cromwell, the allusion to his fall from power, or 'tumble-down,' being very common in the satires published after the Restoration. There was a house with the same sign at Brentford. Of course, the professed object of the meetings of the broken shopkeepers was that of driving away and forgetting care; and any new-comer among them, if he had any cash left, was liberally allowed to expend it for the furtherance of the club's object.

The Man-Hunting Club was composed chiefly of young limbs of the law; uncultivated youths, though they were law students, formed themselves into an association to hunt men over Lincoln's Inn Fields and the neighbourhood whom they might happen to meet crossing them at ten or eleven o'clock at night. They would be concealed upon the grass in one of the borders of the fields till they heard some single person coming along, when they would spring up with their swords drawn, run towards him, and cry: 'That's he; bloody wounds, that's he!' Usually the person so attacked would run away, when they would pursue him till he took refuge in an alehouse in some neighbouring street. But if the man-hunters encountered a person of courage, ready to fight them, they would sneak off, like the curs they really were. Their meeting-place was at a tavern close to Bear Yard, Clare Market.

The Yorkshire Club held its meetings on market-days at an inn in Smithfield. It was composed of sharp country-folk, who assumed the innocence of yokels. The most flourishing members among them, says one authority, were needle-pointed innkeepers; nick and froth victuallers, honest horse chaunters, pious Yorkshire attorneys; the rest good, harmless master hostlers, two or three innocent farriers, who had wormed their masters out of their shops, and themselves into them. When met for business, their deliberations were about horseflesh, blind eyes, spavins, bounders and malinders, and how to disguise defects and get rid of the animals.

The Mock-Heroes Club met at an alehouse in Baldwin's Gardens, and was composed chiefly of attorneys' clerks and young shopkeepers. On admission the new member assumed the name of some defunct hero, and ever afterwards was at the meetings called by that name; and as the club held its meetings in the public room, though at a separate table specially reserved for them, this formal and ridiculous way of addressing one another caused no slight amusement to the other persons frequenting the room. In other respects their language was high-flown. Thus, one would face about to his left-hand neighbour, with his right hand charged with a brimming tankard, saying: 'Most noble Scipio, the love and friendship of a soldier to you. The thanks of a brother to my valiant friend Hannibal, whom I cannot but value, though I had the honour to conquer.' 'My respects to you, brave Cæsar,' cries one opposite, 'remembering the battle of Pharsalia.' And so on, till they had drunk themselves under the table.

The Lying Club, which held its meetings at the Bell Tavern, in Westminster, is said to have been established in 1669. Every member was to wear a blue cap with a red feather in it; before admittance he had to give proof of his powers of mendaciloquence; during club hours, that is, from four to ten p.m., no true word was to be uttered without a preliminary 'By your leave' to the chairman; and if any member told a 'whopper' which the chairman could not beat with a greater, the latter had to surrender his office for that evening. Ned Ward gives some exquisite specimens of the 'whoppers' told by members.

The Beggars' Club held its weekly meetings at a boozing ken in Old Street. All the sham cripples, blind men, etc., belonged to it, and there discussed the various stratagems they had adopted to excite public compassion, or intended to adopt for that purpose.

About 1735 a number of young gentlemen, who were pretenders to wit, formed themselves into a society, which met at the Rose Tavern, Covent Garden, and which they christened the Scatter-wit Society. But their literary performances were poor specimens of wit, contributed nothing to the reputation of the Rose Tavern as the resort of 'men of parts,' and consequently is not frequently mentioned in the literature of that day.

Bob Warden was the younger brother of Mr. Warden, a gentleman who, 'after having given a new turn to Jackanapes Lane, and promoted many useful objects for the good of the public, was undeservedly hanged.' We may explain here that Jackanapes Lane was the original name of Carey Street, north of the Law Courts, and the new turn Mr. Warden gave to it is the western bend connecting it with Portugal Street. Bob Warden, after his brother's death, was apprenticed to a painter, but, thinking more of his palate than his palette, he dropped the latter, and with some money left to him, established a convivial club at the Hill, in the Strand, where all sorts of queer characters, such as ruined gamesters, petticoat-pensioners, Irish captains, sharpers and cheats were welcome. As the meetings took place in a cellar, the club became known as the Cellar Club, and was the forerunner of the Coal Hole and the Lord Chief Baron Nicholson. Bob, amidst his roistering customers, drank himself to death.

For about ten years the Mohawks, or Mohocks, kept London in a state of alarm, though they seldom ventured into the City, where the watch was more efficient, but confined themselves chiefly to the neighbourhood of Clare Market, Covent Garden, and the Strand. The Spectator says of them: 'Some of them are celebrated for dexterity in tipping the lion upon them, which is performed by squeezing the nose flat to the face and boring out the eyes with their fingers. Others are called the dancing-masters, and teach their scholars to cut capers by running swords through their legs.... A third sort are the Nimblers, who set women on their heads and commit ... barbarities on them.' Their conduct in the end became so alarming that a reward of £100 was offered by royal proclamation for the apprehension of any one of them. Curious stories were current at various times as to the origin of this society. In the 'Memoirs' of the Marquis of Torcy, Secretary of State to Louis XIV., and a famous diplomatist (born 1665, died 1746), the Duke of Marlborough is said to have suggested to Prince Eugene 'to employ a band of ruffians ... to stroll about the streets by night ... and to insult people by passing along, increasing their licentiousness gradually, so as to commit greater and greater disorders ... that when the inhabitants of London and Westminster were accustomed to the insults of these rioters, it would not be difficult to assassinate those of whom they might wish to be freed, and to cast the whole blame on the band of ruffians.' This project the Prince is reported to have rejected. Swift, in his 'History of the Four Last Years of Queen Anne,' attributes the scheme to the Prince himself on his visit to this country, through his hatred of Treasurer Harley. He proposed that 'the Treasurer should be taken off ... that this might easily be done and pass for an effect of chance, if it were preceded by encouraging some proper people to commit small riots in the night. And in several parts of the town a crew of ruffians were accordingly employed about that time, who probably exceeded their commission ... and acted inhuman outrages on many persons, whom they cut and mangled in the face and arms and other parts of their bodies.... This account ... was confirmed beyond all contradiction by several intercepted letters and papers.' It is just possible that popular panic exaggerated the doings of the Mohawks. Perhaps they did not exceed in savagery the drunken frolics then customary at night-time.

The Hell Fire Club was an institution of a character similar to that of the Mohawks. It was abolished by an order of the Privy Council in 1721, 'against certain scandalous clubs,' but it must have been revived in the country, for John Wilkes, about 1750, was a notorious member of a club with the above name at Medmenham Abbey, Bucks.

The Calves' Head Club for a time had its headquarters at The Cock, an inn long since demolished, in Suffolk Street, Pall Mall. It was one of the many inns at which Pepys was 'mighty merry.' The club is said to have been originated by Milton and other partisans of the Commonwealth; and the author of the 'Secret History of the Calves' Head Club'—probably Ned Ward—gives an account of the melodramatic and diabolical ceremonies observed at their banquets. An axe was hung up in their club-room as a sacred symbol—the destroyer of the tyrant. But the eating and drinking, for which, as Addison says, clubs were instituted, were not neglected by the members. At the banquet held in 1710 there was spent on bread, beer, and ale the sum of £2 10s.; on fifty calves' heads, £5 5s.; on bacon, £1 10s.; on six chickens and two capons, £1; on three joints of veal, 18s.; on butter and flour, 15s.; on oranges, lemons, vinegar, and spices, £1; on oysters and sausages, 15s.; on the use of pewter and linen, £1; and on various other items additional sums, bringing the total up to £18 6s. No wine, it will be noticed, is included in the above bill, but there is no doubt a considerable amount for this item should be added to it.

Early in the last century street clubs became common in various parts of London, that is to say, clubs in which the inhabitants of one or two streets met every night to discuss the affairs of the neighbourhood. Out of these, we suppose, arose the Mug House Club, in Long Acre, which soon found imitators in other parts of London. The members—gentlemen, lawyers, and tradesmen—met in a large room. A gentleman nearly ninety years of age was their president. A harp played at the lower end of the room, and now and then a member rose and treated the company to a song. Nothing was drunk but ale, and every gentleman had his own mug, which he chalked on the table as it was brought in.

In 1770 some young gentlemen, on returning from the grand tour it was then customary to make after leaving college—a tour which was supposed to lick the young cubs into shape and refine their manners, of course an illusion, since, whilst abroad, they associated chiefly with the scum of English society then swarming on the Continent—some of these young gentlemen, on their return, established in St. James's Street the Savoir Vivre Club, where they held periodical dinners, of which macaroni was a standing dish. This club was the nursery of the Macaronis, a phalanx of mild Hyde Park beaux, who were distinguished for nothing but the ridiculous dress they assumed. An unfinished copy of verses found among Sheridan's papers, and which Thomas Moore considered as the foundation of certain lines in the 'School for Scandal,' delineates the Macaronis in a few masterly strokes:

'Then I mount on my palfrey as gay as a lark,

And, followed by John, take the dust in Hyde Park.

In the way I am met by some smart Macaroni,

Who rides by my side on a little bay pony;

... as taper and slim as the ponies they ride,

Their legs are as slim, and their shoulders no wider,' etc.

The Savoir Vivre Club did not outlive the reign of the Macaronis, which lasted about five years, and the club ended its days—the chairmen and linkmen never having understood its foreign appellation—as a public-house bearing the name and sign of The Savoy Weavers. There were, in the last century especially, no end of Small clubs, whose objects in most cases were trivial and ridiculous. Short notice is all they deserve.

The Humdrum Club was composed of gentlemen of peaceable dispositions, who were satisfied to meet at a tavern, smoke their pipes, and say nothing till midnight. The Twopenny Club was formed by a number of artisans and mechanics, who met every night, each depositing on his entering the club-room his twopence. If a member swore, his neighbours might kick him on the shins. If a member's wife came to fetch him, she was to speak to him outside the door. In the reign of Charles II. was established the Duellists' Club, to which no one was admitted who had not killed his man. The chronicler of the club naïvely says: 'This club, consisting only of men of honour, did not continue long, most of the members being put to the sword or hanged.'

The Everlasting Club, founded in the first decade of the last century, was so called because its hundred members divided the twenty-four hours of day and night among themselves in such a manner that the club was always sitting, no person presuming to rise till he was relieved by his appointed successor, so that a member of the club not on duty himself could always find company, and have his whet or draught, as the rules say, at any time.

The tradespeople and workmen of the past seem to have had a passion for clubs; but there is this to be said in their favour, theirs were only drinking clubs. Our modern patrons of low-class clubs establish them for the worse pursuits of gambling and betting.

IX.

CURIOUS STORIES OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE.

In the Weekly Journal of January 2, 1719-20, can be read: 'It was the observation of a witty knight many years ago, that the English people were something like a flight of birds at a barn-door. Shoot among them and kill ever so many, the rest shall return to the same place in a very little time, without any remembrance of the evil that had befallen their fellows.' The pigeons at Monte Carlo, whom the cruel-minded idiots who fire at them have missed, instead of flying at once and for ever from the murderous spot, perch on the cage in which their fellows are kept, and are easily caught again, to be eventually killed. 'Thus the English,' the Weekly Journal concludes, 'though they have had examples enough in these latter times of people ruined by engaging in projects, yet they still fall in with the next that appears.' And thus the Stock Exchange flourishes. That desolation-spreading upastree was planted in the mephitic morass of the national debt. It is considered deserving of blame in an individual to get into debt, yet sometimes his doing so is unavoidable—his means are insufficient for his wants. But a nation has no excuse for taking credit and getting into debt. There is wealth enough in the country to pay cash for all it requires; and if it borrows money merely to subsidize foreign tyrants to enchain their own subjects, it commits a criminal act. But nearly the whole of our national debt has such an origin, and its poisonous produce is the Stock Exchange. The word 'stock-jobber' was first heard in 1688, when a crowd of companies sprang into existence, and it was then that the Stock Exchange was first established as an independent institution at Jonathan's Coffee-house, in Change Alley, in or about 1698. Before then the brokers had carried on their business in the Royal Exchange. London at that time abounded—at what time does it not?—with new projects and schemes, many of them delusory, consequently the legitimate transactions of the Royal Exchange were inconveniently interfered with by the presence of so many jobbers and brokers—that pernicious spawn of the public funds, as Noortbouck calls them—and they were ordered to leave the Exchange. They just crossed the road and went to Jonathan's, 'and though a public nuisance, they serve the purposes of ministers too well, in propagating a spirit of gaming in Government securities, to be exterminated, as a wholesome policy would dictate.' There, at Jonathan's, 'you will see a fellow in shabby clothes,' as we read in the 'Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London,' 'selling £10,000 or £12,000 in stock, though perhaps he may not be worth at the same time 10s., and with as much zeal as if he were a director, which they call selling a bear-skin.' Thus this latter expression seems very old. The business of stock-jobbing increased, in spite of some feeble repressive attempts on the part of Government in 1720, the House of Commons passing a vote 'that nothing can tend more to the establishment of public credit than preventing the infamous practice of stock-jobbing'; and also passing at the same time an Act enabling persons who had been sufferers thereby to obtain an easy and speedy redress.[#] In spite of this the brokers contrived to thrive to such an extent that they found it necessary to take a more commodious room in Threadneedle Street, to which admission was obtained on payment of sixpence. The Bank Rotunda was at one period the place where bargains in stocks were made; but there the brokers were as great a nuisance as they had been at the Royal Exchange, and were turned out. It was then they took the room in Threadneedle Street, and in the year 1799 they raised £12,150 in 1,263 shares of £50 each, and purchased a site in Capel Court, comprising Mendoza's boxing-room and debating forum and buildings contiguous, on which the present Stock Exchange was erected, and opened in 1801. Capel Court was so called from the London residence of Sir William Capel, Lord Mayor of London in 1504. Within the last decade the building has been considerably enlarged and beautified.

[#] An Act passed in 1734 forbade time bargains under a penalty of £500 on brokers and their clients, and of £100 for contracting for the sale of stock of which the person was not possessed. Both these statutes were repealed circa 1860.

Stockbrokers are supposed to lead very harassed and restless lives—yes, if they speculate on their own account and with their own money, a folly which no experienced broker ever thinks of committing. He speculates for other people, and with their money, and, well, if before the official hour of opening—viz., eleven o'clock—a chance presents itself of a deal with a customer's stock on the broker's account, by which a little benefit accrues to the latter, the customer knows nothing about it, and what you are ignorant of does not hurt. The broker is, in this respect, very much like the lawyer. Neither the broker nor the lawyer can be expected to share their clients' anxieties concerning investments or disputed interests, and they don't. When either of them leaves his office for his suburban villa or Brighton breezes, he leaves all thoughts of business behind him in the office, considering that the freedom from care he enjoys at home is honestly earned, and no doubt it is—in his estimation.

Until within the first quarter of this century a singular custom concerning the admission of Jews to the Stock Exchange was in existence. The number of Jew brokers was limited to twelve, and these could secure the privilege only by a liberal gratuity to the Lord Mayor for the time being. 'During the Mayoralty of Wilkes, one of the Jew brokers was taken seriously ill, and Wilkes is said to have speculated pretty openly on the advantage he would derive from filling up the vacancy. The son of the broker, meeting the Lord Mayor, reproached Wilkes with wishing his father's death. 'My dear fellow,' replied Wilkes, with the sarcastic humour peculiar to him, 'you are in error, for I would rather have all the Jew brokers dead than your father.'

The funds are much affected by political events; that goes without saying. Their rise or fall may be very rapid. It was exceptionally so in the early period of the French revolutionary war. In March, 1792, the Three per Cents, were at 96, in 1797 they were as low as 48, the lowest they ever fell to. The possession of prior or exclusive intelligence enables persons to speculate with great success. A broker who casually became acquainted with the failure of Lord Macartney's negotiation with the French Directory, made £16,000 while breakfasting at Batson's Coffee-house, Cornhill, and had he not been timid, might have gained half a million, so great was the fluctuation, owing to the news being entirely unexpected.

But the magnates of the money market did not rely on casual intelligence. They left no stone unturned to obtain reliable information in advance even of Government. Thus Sir Henry Furnese, a bank director, paid for constant despatches from Holland, Flanders, France and Germany. He made an enormous haul by his early intelligence of the surrender of Namur in 1695. King William gave him a diamond ring as a reward for early information; yet he was not above fabricating false news, and he had his tricks for influencing the funds. If he wished to buy, his brokers looked gloomy, and, the alarm spread, they concluded their bargains. Marlborough had an annuity of £6,000 from Medina, the Jew, for permission to attend his campaigns. During the troubles of 1745, when the rebels advanced towards London, stocks fell terribly. Sampson Gideon, a famous Jew broker, managed to have the first news of the Pretender's retreat. He hastened to Jonathan's, bought all the stock in the market, spending all his cash, and pledging his name for more. This stroke of business made him a millionaire.

During the last years of the French wars a difference of 8 per cent., and even 10 per cent., would occur within an hour, and thus great fortunes might be won or lost within that short time. It was also a period of gigantic frauds, but of these later on.

Of all the sons of Maier Amschel Rothschild, Nathan, born in 1777, was undoubtedly the most prominent. Inheriting his father's spirit, he left his home at the early age of twenty-two, and in 1798 opened a small shop as a banker and money-lender at Manchester. He had left Frankfurt, where his father's house had just been knocked into ruins by the bombardment of Marshal Kleber, with only a thousand florins in his pocket. But the cotton interest was just then beginning to develop itself, and Nathan took such clever advantage of the opportunities this offered him, that at the end of five years he came from Manchester to London with a fortune of £200,000, where he became the son-in-law of Levi Barnett Cohen, one of the Jewish City magnates. The report of his Manchester successes had preceded him to the Capital, and he immediately engaged largely in Stock Exchange speculations. Whilst houses of the oldest standing were tottering or falling, owing to the State loan of 1810 having turned out a failure, and the fortunes of the Peninsular War seemed most doubtful, some drafts of Wellington to a considerable amount came over here, and there was no money in the Exchequer to meet them. Nathan Rothschild, satisfied as to England's final victory, purchased the bills at a large discount, and finally found the means of redeeming them at par. It was a splendid speculation, which resulted in his entering into closer intercourse with the Ministry, and he was chiefly employed in transmitting the subsidies which England furnished—most foolishly indeed—to the Continental Powers. The circumstance that Nathan was supplied by his brothers at Frankfurt and elsewhere with the earliest and most reliable intelligence, and his trustworthy connections and arrangements in London, enabled him to turn such knowledge to immediate and profitable account. But there being then neither railways nor telegraphs, news was slow in coming. Nathan trained carrier pigeons, and organized a staff of agents, whose duty it was to follow the march of the armies, and daily and hourly to send reports in cipher, tied under the wings of the pigeons. His agents, by means of fast-sailing boats, taking the shortest routes, indicated by Nathan himself—the mail-boats between Folkestone and Boulogne of the present day follow one of these routes—carried large sums between the coasts of Germany, France, and England. And when events on the Continent were coming to a crisis, Nathan on more than one occasion hurried over to the Continent to watch the course of affairs. It is said that Nathan Rothschild, on June 18, 1815, was on the field of Waterloo,[#] and watched the battle till he saw the French troops in full retreat, when he immediately rode back to Brussels, whence a carriage took him to Ostend. The sea was stormy; in vain Nathan offered 500 francs, 600 francs, 800 francs, to carry him across; at last a poor fisherman risked his life for 2,000 francs, and his frail barque, which carried Cæsar and his fortunes, landed Nathan in the evening at Dover. When he appeared on June 20, leaning against his usual pillar in the Stock Exchange, everything and everybody looked gloomy. He whispered to a few of his most intimate friends that the allied army had been defeated. The dismal news spread like wildfire, and there was a tremendous fall in the funds. Nathan's known agents sold with the rest, but his unknown agents bought every scrap of paper that was to be had. It was not till the afternoon of June 21 that the news of the victory of Waterloo became known. Nathan was the first to inform his friends of the happy event, a quarter of an hour before the news was given to the public. The funds rose faster than they had fallen, and Nathan still leant against his pillar in the southern corner of the Stock Exchange, but richer by about a million sterling. From that day the career of Nathan was one of ever-increasing prosperity; his firm became the agents of all European Governments; he made bargains with the Czar of Russia and with South American Republics, with the Pope and the Sultan. About the morality of the Waterloo episode the less said the better, but peers and princes of the blood, bishops and archbishops, partook of his sumptuous banquets, whilst he calculated to a penny on what a clerk could live!

[#] To an article I wrote twenty-five years ago on this topic I find appended the following note: 'We give the following on the authority of Martin, but must add that a private friend, who formerly filled an office of trust in the firm of Rothschild Brothers, declares the whole to be a fiction.' But who this friend was we cannot now remember.

Another financier, who almost rivalled Rothschild as a speculator, was Abraham Goldsmid, who was ruined by a conspiracy. He, in conjunction with a banking establishment, had taken a large Government loan. The conspirators managed to cause the omnium stock to fall to 18 discount. The result was Goldsmid's failure and eventually his suicide, whilst the conspirators made a profit of about £2,000,000.

Among other notable stockbrokers we must not omit Francis Bailey, F.S.A., President of the Royal Astronomical Society, who retired from the Stock Exchange in 1825. In 1851 he repeated at his house in Tavistock Place, Russell Square, the Cavendish experiment of weighing the earth, and calculating its bulk and figure, and at the same time verifying the standard measure of the British nation, and rectifying pendulum experiments. In the garden of the house a small observatory was erected for those purposes, and is, we believe, still standing.

We alluded a little while ago to some gigantic frauds in Stock Exchange operations. One of the most extraordinary and elaborate of such frauds was that carried out by De Berenger and Cochrane-Johnstone in 1814. Napoleon's military operations against the allies had greatly depressed the funds. On February 21, 1814, about one o'clock a.m., a violent knocking was heard at the door of the Ship Inn, then the chief hotel at Dover. When the door was opened, a person in a richly-embroidered scarlet uniform announced himself as an aide-de-camp of Lord Cathcart (who was aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington in 1815), and as the bearer of important news. The allies had gained a great victory, and entered Paris; Napoleon had been captured and killed by Cossacks, who had cut his body into a thousand pieces. Immediate peace was now certain. The stranger ordered a post-chaise, and departed for London, but before leaving, he sent a note containing the news to the Port Admiral, who received it about four a.m.; but the morning being foggy, the telegraph could not be worked. The sham aide-de-camp—really De Berenger, an adventurer, afterwards a livery stable-keeper—dashed along the road, throwing napoleons to the post-boys whenever he changed horses. At Bexley Heath it was clear to him that the telegraph could not have worked, so he moderated his pace, spreading at the same time the news of Napoleon's defeat and death. At Lambeth he entered a hackney-coach, telling the post-boys to spread the news, which reached the Stock Exchange about ten o'clock, in consequence of which the funds rose, but fell again when it was found that the Lord Mayor had had no intelligence. But about twelve o'clock three persons, two of whom were dressed as French officers, drove in a post-chaise over London Bridge; their horses were bedecked with laurels. The officers scattered papers among the crowd, announcing the death of Napoleon and the fall of Paris. They then paraded through Cheapside and Fleet Street, passed over Blackfriars Bridge, and drove rapidly to the Marshgate, Lambeth, got out, changed their cocked hats for round ones, and disappeared as mysteriously as their confederate, De Berenger, had done a few hours earlier.

The funds now rose again, but when, after hours of anxious expectation, it was discovered that the news, on which many bargains had been made, was false, there was, of course, wailing and gnashing of teeth. A committee was appointed by the Stock Exchange to track out the conspiracy, as on the two days before stocks to the amount of £826,000 had been purchased by persons implicated. One of the gang had, for a blind, called on Lord Cochrane, and Cochrane-Johnstone, a relation of his, had purchased Consols for him, that he might unconsciously benefit by the fraud. The Tories, eager to destroy a political enemy, concentrated all their rage on him, and he was tried, fined £1,000, and sentenced to stand for one hour in the pillory; but this latter part of the sentence was not carried out, as Sir Francis Burdett had declared that if it was done he would stand beside his friend on the scaffold of shame. Cochrane was further stripped of his knighthood, and his escutcheon kicked down the steps of St. George's Chapel at Windsor. But in his old age his innocence and the injustice done to him were recognised, and his coronet restored to him unsoiled. But could this atone for all the wrong inflicted, and all the misery endured? Those who wish to know all the details of this remarkable fraud will find them in the two volumes of the Gentleman's Magazine for 1814. The first volume gives a full account of the evidence produced at the trial.

X.

WITS AND BEAUX OF OLD LONDON SOCIETY.

A mere beau, a 'man of dress,' as our dictionaries define him, is a pitiful object—a walking and talking doll, painted and bedizened, and as imbecile-looking as a wax figure. The man who chooses to go in for being a beau should, if he does not wish to be thoroughly contemptible, possess, besides physical beauty, a stock of brains, elegant manners, ready wit, and moral courage. The gentleman who at the seaside dresses altogether in white must have a personally distinguished appearance not to be taken for his own chef de cuisine. Beaux are rather out of fashion just now—mashers and fops replace them. In the last century they were more plentiful. Perhaps the then prevailing popinjay style of dress, with its embroidered and many-coloured coats and waistcoats, gaudy breeches, wigs and swords, lent itself more readily to the assumption of the character than does our more subdued costume. In those days the aspirants to the title of beau were termed bucks, gallants, macaronis; and one of their distinguishing features, as the plays and portraits of those days abundantly demonstrate, was their having small legs with slender calves—possibly to show they were not footmen in disguise. And, as a rule, in those days the valet had more brains than his master.

Beaux have always been a fruitful and pleasant theme for the satirist's pen. The Spectator, in No. 275, describes the dissection of a beau's head, which is found to contain no brain, but in the usual place for one, smelling strongly of essences and orange-flower water, a kind of horny substance, cut into a thousand little faces or mirrors. Further, a lot of ribbons, laces, and embroidery, billets-doux, love-letters, snuff, fictions, vows, oaths, and a spongy substance, known as nonsense. A muscle, not often discovered in dissections, was found, the os cribriforme, which draws the nose upwards when by that motion it intends to express contempt. The ogling muscles were very much worn with use. The individual to whom this head had belonged had passed for a man for about thirty years, and died in the flower of his youth by the blow of a fire-shovel, he having been surprised by an eminent citizen as he was paying some attentions to his wife. This analysis of a beau's head, or character, was written in 1712. In 1757 an essayist described him thus in doggerel:

'Would you a modern beau commence,

Shake off that foe to pleasure, sense.

Scorn real, unaffected worth,

Despise the virtuous, good and brave,

To ev'ry passion be a slave....

Be it your passion, joy and fame

To play at ev'ry modish game....

Harangue on fashion, point and lace....

Affect to know each reigning belle

That throngs the playhouse or the Mall.

Though swearing you detest a fool,

Be versed in Folly's ample school....

These rites observed, each foppish elf

May view an emblem of himself.'

The combination of wit and beau in one person has, nevertheless, occasionally been seen, and the ordinary, or numskulled, beau has shared in the reputation created by such a combination, just as all judges are assumed to be sober. But in the days when beaux flourished wit of a very attenuated kind tickled the fancy of the public, who haunted the taverns patronized by the so-called wits. Even the jokes which passed at the Mermaid between Shakspere, Ben Jonson, and other professed jesters must appear to modern readers who are not absurdly prepossessed in favour of all that savours of antiquity, as heavy, dull, and often far-fetched. To justify what may appear rank heresy, let me quote one of Tarleton's 'witty' sayings. Tarleton was Shakspere's friend and fellow-actor, the low comedian of Queen Elizabeth's reign, who probably suggested to Shakspere some of his jesters and fools. Now, this is what is transmitted to us as a specimen of his wit: Tarleton, keeping an ordinary in Paternoster Row, would approve of mustard standing before his customers to have wit. 'How so?' inquired one. 'It is like a witty scold, meeting another scold, begins to scold first. So,' says he, 'the mustard, being licked up and knowing that you will bite it, begins to bite you first.' 'I'll try that,' says a gull, and the mustard so tickled him that his eyes watered. 'How now?' says Tarleton. 'Does my jest savour?' 'Ay,' says the gull, 'and bite too.' 'If you had had better wit,' says Tarleton, 'you would have bit first. So, then, conclude with me that dumb, unfeeling mustard has more wit than a talking, unfeeling fool, as you are.' And this was considered 'a rare conceit' in the days of Shakspere. We are rather more exacting now.

The beaux of the days we are speaking of were, indeed, poor specimens of humanity. They were a noisy, swaggering lot, as we learn from the author of 'Shakspere's England.' 'If a gallant,' he says, 'entered the ordinary ... he would find the room full of fashion-mongers ... courtiers, who came there for society and news; adventurers who have no home ... quarrelsome men paced about fretfully fingering their sword-hilts, and maintaining as sour a face as that Puritan moping in a corner, pent up by a group of young swaggerers, disputing over cards.... The soldiers bragged of nothing but of their employment in Ireland and in the Low Countries.... The mere dullard sat silent, playing with his glove, or discussing at what apothecary's the best tobacco was to be bought.'

But let us, in the career of an individual, Beau Fielding, famous in his day, show how beaux then acquired a reputation. Scotland Yard was so called from a palace which stood there, and was the residence of the Kings of Scotland on their annual visit to do homage for their kingdom to the Crown of England. On the union of the Scottish and English Crowns the palace was allowed to go to decay. Parts of it served as occasional residences for various persons, one of whom was Robert Fielding, who died there in the early part of the last century. This Fielding was generally known as Beau Fielding. The Tatler, in August, 1709 (Nos. 50 and 51), thus describes him: 'Ten lustra and more are wholly passed since Orlando (R. Fielding) first appeared in the metropolis of this island, his descent noble, his wit humorous, his person charming. But to none of these advantages was his title so undoubted as that of his beauty. His complexion was fair, but his countenance manly; his stature of the tallest, his shape the most exact; and though in all his limbs he had a proportion as delicate as we see in the work of the most skilful statuaries, his body had a strength and firmness little inferior to the marble of which such images are formed. This made Orlando the universal flame of all the fair sex; innocent virgins sighed for him as Adonis, experienced widows as Hercules. Thus did this figure walk alone, the pattern and ornament of our species, but, of course, the envy of all who had the same passions, without his superior merit, and pretences to the favour of that enchanting creature, woman. However, the generous Orlando believed himself formed for the world, and not to be engrossed by any particular affection.... Woman was his mistress, and the whole sex his seraglio. His form was always irresistible; and if we consider that not one of five hundred can bear the least favour from a lady without being exalted above himself ... we cannot think it wonderful that Orlando's repeated conquests touched his brain. So it certainly did, and Orlando became an enthusiast in love.... He would still add to the advantages of his person that of a profession which the ladies always favour, and immediately commenced soldier.... Our hero seeks distant climes ... after many feats of arms ... Orlando returns home, full, but not loaded, with years.... The beauteous Villaria (Barbara, daughter and heiress of William Villiers, Lord Viscount Grandison, of the Kingdom of Ireland) ... became the object of his affection.... According to Milton,

'"The fair with conscious majesty approved."

Fortune having now supplied Orlando with necessaries for his high taste of gallantry and pleasure, his equipage and economy had something in them more sumptuous and gallant than could be conceived in our degenerate age, therefore ... all the Britons under the age of sixteen ... followed his chariot with shouts and acclamations.... I remember I saw him one day stop, and call the youths about him, to whom he spoke as follows: "Good youngsters, go to school, and do not lose your time in following my wheels. I am loath to hurt you, because I know not but you are all my own offspring.... Why, you young dogs, did you never see a man before?" "Never such a one as you, noble General," replied a truant from Westminster. "Sirrah, I believe thee; there is a crown for thee. Drive on, coachman." ... Fortune being now propitious to the gay Orlando, he dressed, he spoke, he moved as a man might be supposed to do in a nation of pigmies ... he sometimes rode in an open tumbril, of less size than ordinary, to show the largeness of his limbs, and the grandeur of his personage, to the greater advantage.... In all these glorious excesses did ... Orlando live ... until an unlucky accident brought to his remembrance that ... he was married before he courted the nuptials of Villaria. Several fatal memorandums were produced to revive the memory of this accident, and the unhappy lover was for ever banished her presence, to whom he owed the support of his first renown and gallantry.... Orlando, therefore, now rages in a garret.' The Barbara Villiers mentioned by the Tatler was identical with Lady Castlemaine, Duchess of Cleveland, whose scandalous history is notorious. She was sixty-five years old when she fell in love with Fielding and married him. The 'unlucky accident' of the Tatler was the fact that a few weeks before Fielding had been taken in by an adventuress, one Mary Wadsworth, whom, taking her for a rich widow, he had married. On his second—bigamous—marriage, the first wife revealed the fact to Lady Castlemaine, who, having been shamefully treated by Fielding, was glad to get rid of him. The first marriage was proved in a court of law, and sentence passed on Fielding to be burnt in the hand. By interest in certain quarters he was spared this ignominious punishment; but he was left destitute, and died forgotten and forsaken.

The Tatler gave Fielding a noble descent, and he, in fact, claimed descent from the Hapsburgs; and on the strength of his name ventured to have the arms of Lord Denbigh emblazoned on his coach, and to drive about the ring in Hyde Park. At the sight of the immaculate coat-of-arms on the plebeian chariot, 'all the blood of the Hapsburgs' flew to the head of Basil, fourth Earl of Denbigh. In a high state of fury, he at once procured a house-painter, and ordered him to daub the coat-of-arms completely over, in broad daylight, and before all the company in the ring. The beau tamely submitted to the insult.

Fielding had several competitors in the beau-ship; contemporary with him were Beau Edgeworth and Beau Wilson. Of the former but little is on record; the latter's career was cut short at an early date, for when he was not much beyond his twentieth year he was killed in a duel between him and John Law, afterwards so famous as the originator of the Mississippi scheme. The duel took place on the site of the present Bloomsbury Square. A mushroom growth of beaux arose about the year 1770, some of whom having travelled in Italy, and introduced macaroni as a new dish, they came to be designated by that name. They dressed in the most ridiculous fashion, wearing their hair in a very high foretop, with long side-curls, and an enormous chignon behind. Their clothes were tight-fitting, while silk stockings in all weathers were de rigueur. This folly was of but short duration.

In the first half of the eighteenth century flourished Beau Nash—a great contrast in manners, character, social position, and conduct to Beau Fielding; but as his life was passed at Bath he cannot be reckoned among London beaux. Yet we mention him, as in his earlier years he was slightly connected with the Metropolis, by the fact that he was entered for the Temple, though he never followed the law as a profession.

We have to come down to comparatively recent times to encounter a beau of some note; that beau was known as Beau George Brummel. He was born in 1777, and sent to Eton, where he enjoyed the credit of being the best scholar, the best oarsman, and the best cricketer of his day. His father was Under-Secretary to Lord North, and left each of his children some £30,000. At Eton he made many aristocratic friends, and thus obtained the entrée to Devonshire House, where the beautiful Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, held her court, and where she introduced Brummell to the Prince Regent, who gave him a commission in the 10th Hussars. But the army, with its restraints, did not suit the beau; he left it, and then resided in Chesterfield Street, where the Prince, finding in him a kindred spirit of vanity and frivolity, used to visit him in the morning to see him make his toilet, and to learn the art of tying his neckerchief fashionably. And frequently the Prince would stay all day to enjoy his friend's intellectual discourse, stopping to take a chop or steak with him, and not returning home till the next morning, half-seas over. The beau spent his time chiefly at Brighton and at Carlton House, and regularly established himself as a leader of fashion, his horses and carriages, his dogs, walking-sticks and snuff-boxes, but especially his clothes, becoming patterns to all the empty-headed noodles who required guidance in such matters. But such show could not be supported on the income derived from his patrimony; Brummell therefore went in heavily for gambling, with varying luck. Once at Brooks's he played with Alderman Combe, nicknamed 'Mash-tub,' Lord Mayor and brewer. The dice-box circulated. 'Come, Mash-tub,' said the beau, who was the caster, 'what do you set?' 'Twenty-five guineas,' said the Alderman. The beau won, and eleven more similar ventures. As he pocketed the money, he said: 'Thank you, Alderman; henceforth I shall drink no porter but yours.' 'I wish, sir,' replied Combe, 'that every other blackguard in London would say the same.' At the Watier Club, established at the instigation of the Prince of Wales, Brummell suffered heavy losses, so that ever after he was in constant pecuniary difficulties, though Fortune smiled on him at times. Indulging in all the superstitious tendencies of gamblers, he at one time attributed his luck to the finding of a crooked sixpence in the kennel, as he was walking with Mr. Raikes, who tells the story, through Berkeley Square. He had a hole bored in the coin, and attached it to his watch-chain. As for the succeeding two years he had great luck at the table and on the turf, he attributed it to the lucky sixpence. He is supposed to have made nearly £30,000 during that time.

A coolness between the Prince and the beau arose after a few years; various reasons are assigned for it. He was, for instance, said to have taken the part of Mrs. Fitzherbert, who had been privately married to the Prince Regent at Carlton House; he is reported to have asked Lady Cholmondeley, in the hearing of the Prince, and pointing to him, 'Who is your fat friend?' Though it is also reported that this question was put to Jack Lee, as he was walking up St. James's Street, arm-in-arm with the Prince, a few days after the beau had quarrelled with the latter. But this blew over, and Brummell was again invited to Carlton House, where he took too much wine. The Prince said to his brother, the Duke of York: 'I think we had better order Mr. Brummell's carriage before he gets quite drunk.' Another version of the second rupture is that Brummell took the liberty of saying to the Prince: 'George, ring the bell.' The Prince rang it, and told the servant who answered it: 'Mr. Brummell's carriage.' This Brummell always denied; however, he was a second time forbidden Carlton House. For a few years he was a hanger-on at Oatlands, the seat of the Duke of York, then, having lost large sums at play, he was obliged to fly the country, and having lived for some years in obscurity at Calais, he obtained the post of British Consul at Caen—for which his previous career, of course, eminently fitted him! He died in that town in poor circumstances in 1840.

Let us conclude this short account of the poor moth, basking in the royal sunshine for awhile, with one or two anecdotes. One day a youthful beau approached Brummell, and said: 'Permit me to ask you where you get your blacking?' 'Ah,' said the beau, 'my blacking positively ruins me. I will tell you in confidence—it is made with the finest champagne!' He was once at a party in Portman Square. On the cloth being removed, the snuff-boxes made their appearance; Brummell's was particularly admired; it was handed round, and a gentleman, finding it somewhat difficult to open, incautiously applied a desert-knife to the lid. Brummell was on thorns, and at last could contain himself no longer, and addressing the host, he said, loud enough to be heard by the company: 'Will you be good enough to tell your friend that my snuff-box is not an oyster?'

England has had no regular beau since the time of Brummell, though occasionally some crack-brained individual has attempted to wear his mantle. Such a one was Ferdinand Geramb, a tight-laced German General and Baron, who in the second decade of this century strutted about the parks, conspicuous for his ringlets, his superb moustaches, and immense spurs. It was asserted that he was a German Jew, who, having married the widow of a Hungarian Baron, assumed her late husband's title. His fiery moustaches were closely imitated by many illustrious personages, and gold spurs several inches long became the fashion—one fool makes many. It is to him the British army is indebted for the introduction of hussar uniforms. Having to leave England under the Alien Act, he went to Hamburg, where he set himself to writing against the Emperor Napoleon, who shut him up in the Castle of Vincennes. There, in terrible fear of being shot, he made a vow that should he regain his liberty he would renounce the devil and his works, and join the Trappist community. He was released at the Restoration, and at once entered a Trappist monastery, under the name of Brother Joseph, and in course of time became Abbot and Procurator-General of the Order. No more fighting of duels now, no more keeping the bailiffs who wanted to seize him for debt at bay for twelve days in an English country house which he had fortified; he submitted to the severest rules of the Order, and in 1831 made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and died at Rome in 1848.

XI.

LONDON SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES.

In the year 1765 a Frenchman, who did not give his name, visited London, and afterwards published in Paris an account of his visit.

'I reached London,' he says, 'towards the close of the day ... and at last, quite by chance, I found myself settled in an apartment in the house of the Cruisinier Royal in Leicester Fields. This neighbourhood is filled with small houses, which are mostly let to foreigners.' On the following day he walked down Holborn and the Strand to St. Paul's, then crossed London Bridge, and returned to his hotel by walking through Southwark and Lambeth to Westminster, 'a district full of mean houses and meaner taverns.' The localities named have not greatly altered their character since then. In another place our traveller says: 'Even from the bridges it is impossible to get a view of the river, as the parapets are ten feet high.... The reason given for all this is the inclination which the English, and the Londoners especially, have for suicide. It is true that above and below the town the banks are unprotected, and offer an excellent opportunity to those who really wish to drown themselves; but the distance is great, and, besides, those who wish to leave the world in this manner prefer doing so before the eyes of the public. The parapets, however, of the new bridge [Blackfriars] which is being built will be but of an ordinary height.' Suicidal tendencies must indeed have greatly declined, since the most recently erected bridges, the new Westminster and Blackfriars, have particularly low parapets.

Of the streets our author says: 'They are paved in such a manner that it is barely possible to ride or walk on them in safety, and they are always extremely dirty.... The finest streets ... would be impassable were it not that on each side ... footways are made from four to five feet wide, and for communication from one to the other across the street there are smaller footways elevated above the general surface of the roadway, and formed of large stones selected for the purpose.... In the finest part of the Strand, near St. Clement's Church, I noticed, during the whole of my stay in London, that the middle of the street was constantly covered with liquid stinking mud, three or four inches deep.... The walkers are bespattered from head to foot.... The natives, however, brave all these disagreeables, wrapped up in long blue coats, like dressing-gowns, wearing brown stockings and perukes, rough, red and frizzled.'

Well, we cannot find much fault with this description, unflattering as it is, for in the last century London certainly was one of the most hideous towns to live in, and its inhabitants the most uncouth, repulsive set of 'guys'! Concerning Oxford Street our author makes a false prognostic: 'The shops of Oxford Street will disappear as the houses are sought after for private dwellings by the rich. Soon will the great city extend itself to Marylebone, which is not more than a quarter of a league distant. At present it is a village, principally of taverns, inhabited by French refugees.'

Our traveller sees but four houses in London which will bear comparison with the great hotels in Paris. To the inconvenience of mud, he says, must be added that of smoke, which, mingled with a perpetual fog, covers London as a pall. We, to our sorrow, know this to be true even now.

But we have improved in one respect: our old watchmen or 'Charleys' have disappeared before the modern police. Concerning these watchmen our author says: 'There are no troops or guard or watch of any kind, except during the night by some old men, chosen from the dregs of the people. Their only arms are a stick and a lantern. They walk about the streets crying the hour every time the clock strikes ... and it appears to be a point of etiquette among hare-brained youngsters to maul them on leaving their parties.'

Our Frenchman formed a correct estimate of the London watchman of his day—nay, it held good to the final extinction of the 'Charleys.' In December, 1826, a watchman was charged before the Lord Mayor with insubordination. On being asked who had appointed him watchman, the prisoner replied that he was in great distress and a burden to the parish, who therefore gave him the appointment to get rid of him. The Lord Mayor: 'I thought so; and what can be expected from such a system of choosing watchmen? I know that most of the men who are thus burdens on the parish are the vilest of wretches, and such men are appointed to guard the lives and property of others! I also know that in most cases robberies are perpetrated by the connivance of watchmen.'

But in some cases our author is really too good-naturedly credulous. Says he: 'The people of London, though proud and hasty, are good at heart, and humane, even in the lowest class. If any stoppage occurs in the streets, they are always ready to lend their assistance to remove the difficulty, instead of raising a quarrel, which might end in murder, as is often the case in Paris.' This is really too innocent! And our French visitor must have been very fortunate indeed never to have got into a London crowd of roughs or of pickpockets, who create stoppages in the streets for the only purpose of pursuing their trade, and who seldom hesitate to commit violence if they cannot rob without it. Our author's belief, indeed, in London honesty is boundless. 'In order that the pot-boys,' he says, 'may have but little trouble in collecting them [the pewter pots in which publicans send out the beer], they are placed in the open passages, and sometimes on the doorsteps of the houses. I saw them thus exposed ... and felt quite assured against all the cunning of thieves.' But more astounding is the statement that there are no poor in London! 'A consequence,' says our visitor, 'of its rich and numerous charitable establishments and the immense sums raised by the poor-rates, which impost is one which the little householders pay most cheerfully, as they consider it a fund from which, in the event of their death, their wives and children will be supported.' Fancy a little householder paying his poor-rate cheerfully! And what a mean opinion must our author have had of the spirit of the householder who calmly contemplated his family, after his death, going to the parish!

The Frenchman returns once more to our usual melancholy, 'which,' he says, 'is no doubt owing to the fogs' and to our fat meat and strong beer. 'Beef is the Englishman's ordinary diet, relished in proportion to the quantity of fat, and this, mixed in their stomachs with the beer they drink, must produce a chyle, whose viscous heaviness conveys only bilious and melancholic vapours to the brain.'

It certainly is satisfactory to have so scientific an explanation of the origin of our spleen.

Another French writer in 1784—M. La Combe—published a book, entitled 'A Picture of London,' in which, inter alia, he says: 'The highroads thirty or forty miles round London are filled with armed highwaymen and footpads.' This was then pretty true, though the expression 'filled' is somewhat of an exaggeration. The medical student of forty or fifty years ago seems to have been anticipated in 1784, for M. La Combe tells us that 'the brass knockers of doors, which cost from 12s. to 15s., are stolen at night if the maid forgets to unscrew them'—a precaution which seems to have gone out of fashion. 'The arrival of the mails,' our author says, 'is uncertain at all times of the year.... Persons who frequently receive letters should recommend their correspondents not to insert loose papers, nor to put the letters in covers, because the tax is sometimes treble, and always arbitrary, though in a free country. But rapacity and injustice are the deities of the English.' M. La Combe does not give us a flattering character. 'An Englishman,' he says, 'considers a foreigner as an enemy, whom he dares not offend openly, but whose society he fears; and he attaches himself to no one.' Perhaps it was so in 1784, but such feelings have nearly died out—at least, among educated people. M. La Combe, in another part of his book, exclaims: 'How are you changed, Londoners! ... Your women are become bold, imperious, and expensive. Bankrupts and beggars, coiners, spies and informers, robbers and pickpockets abound.... The baker mixes alum in his bread ... the brewer puts opium and copper filings in his beer ... the milkwoman spoils her milk with snails.'