eater
number of people never left the country. The jolly squire often had never
been twenty miles from home. Those who did go went to the baths, to
Harrogate, or Scarborough, or Bath, or Epsom. Old letters are full of
these places of pleasure. Gay writes to us about the fiddlers at
Tunbridge; of the ladies having merry little private balls amongst
themselves; and the gentlemen entertaining them by turns with tea and
music. One of the young beauties whom he met did not care for tea: "We
have a young lady here," he says, "that is very particular in her desires.
I have known some young ladies, who, if ever they prayed, would ask for
some equipage or title, a husband or matadores: but this lady, who is but
seventeen, and has 30,000_l._ to her fortune, places all her wishes on a
pot of good ale. When her friends, for the sake of her shape and
complexion, would dissuade her from it, she answers, with the truest
sincerity, that by the loss of shape and complexion she could only lose a
husband, whereas ale is her passion."

Every country town had its assembly-room--mouldy old tenements, which we
may still see in deserted inn-yards, in decayed provincial cities, out of
which the great wen of London has sucked all the life. York, at assize
time, and throughout the winter, harboured a large society of northern
gentry. Shrewsbury was celebrated for its festivities. At Newmarket, I
read of "a vast deal of good company, besides rogues and blacklegs"; at
Norwich, of two assemblies, with a prodigious crowd in the hall, the
rooms, and the gallery. In Cheshire (it is a maid of honour of Queen
Caroline who writes, and who is longing to be back at Hampton Court, and
the fun there) I peep into a country house, and see a very merry party:
"We meet in the work-room before nine, eat and break a joke or two till
twelve, then we repair to our own chambers and make ourselves ready, for
it cannot be called dressing. At noon the great bell fetches us into a
parlour, adorned with all sorts of fine arms, poisoned darts, several pair
of old boots and shoes worn by men of might, with the stirrups of King
Charles I, taken from him at Edgehill,"--and there they have their dinner,
after which comes dancing and supper.

As for Bath, all history went and bathed and drank there. George II and
his queen, Prince Frederick and his Court, scarce a character one can
mention of the early last century, but was seen in that famous Pump-room
where Beau Nash presided