sat many and many a time, more than fifty years ago; but my house is no
Conventicle, and on all weekdays and Lawful Occasions my family is
privileged to partake to their heart's content of innocent and permitted
pastimes. I never set my face against a visit to the Playhouse or to the
Concert-room; although to me, who can remember the most famous players
and singers of Europe, the King's Theatre and the Pantheon, and even
Drury-Lane, are very tame places, filled with very foolish folk. But
they please the young people, and that is enough for me. Nor to an
occasional junketing at Vauxhall do I ever turn queasy. 'Tis true I have
seen Ranelagh and Marylebone Belsize, and Spring Gardens, and seen Folly
on the Thames--to say nothing of the chief Continental Tivolis, Spas,
Lustgartens, and other places of resort of the Great; but fiddlers are
fiddlers, and coloured lamps are coloured lamps, all the world over, I
apprehend; and my children have as much delight in gazing on these
spangled follies now as I had when I and the eighteenth century were
young. Only against Masquerades and Faro-tables, as likewise against the
pernicious game of E. O., post and pair, fayles, dust-point, do I
sternly set my face, deeming them as wholly wicked, carnal, and
unprofitable, and leading directly to perdition.

It rejoices me much that my son, or rather son-in-law,--but I love to
call him by the more affectionate name,--is in no wise addicted to
dicing, or horse-racing, or cock-fighting, or any of those sinful or
riotous courses to which so many of our genteel youth--even to those of
the first Quality--devote themselves. He is no Puritan; (for I did ever
hate your sanctimonious Banbury-men); but he has a Proper Sense of what
is due to the Honour and Figure of his family, and refrains from soiling
his hands with bales of dice and worse implements among the profligate
crew to be met with, not alone at Newmarket, or at the "Dog and Duck,"
or "Hockley Hole," but in Pall-Mall, and in the very ante-chambers of
St. James's, no cater-cousin of the Groom-Porter he. He rides his
hackney, as a gentleman should, nor have I prohibited him from
occasionally taking my Lilias an airing in a neat curricle; but he is no
Better on the Turf, no comrade of jockeys and stablemen, no patron of
bruisers and those that handle the backsword and are quick at finish
with the provant rapier, and agile in the use of the imbrocatto. I would
disinherit him were I to suspect hi