r of stays; and as for the dozen, I believe we drank
nearer three dozen of different expensive wines, which were tasted one
after the other with a quickness of succession, which at last left no
taste, but a taste for more drink, and for all sorts of wickedness.

"This tasting plan is a very successful trick of tavern keepers, which
enables them to carry off half bottles of wine, to swell the reckoning
most amazingly, and so to bewilder people as to the qualities of the
wine, that any thing, provided it be strong and not acid, will go down
at the heel of the evening. It is also a grand manouvre; to intoxicate
a Johnny Raw, and to astonish his weak mind with admiration for the
founder of the feast. Therefore, the old trick of 'I have got some
particularly high-flavoured Burgundy, which Lord Lavender very much
approved t'other day;' and, 'Might I, Sir, ask your opinion of a new
importation of Sillery?' or, 'My Lord, 1 have bought all the Nabob's
East India Madeira,' &c. was successfully practised.

"Through the first course we were stag-hunting, to a man, and killed
the stag just as the second course came on the table. This course was
occupied by a great number of long shots of Sir M. M., and by Lavender
offering to back himself and the buck Parson against any other two
~219~~men in England, as to the number of head of game which they would
bag from sun-rise to sun-set upon the moors. A foot race, and a dispute
as to the odds betted on the second October Meeting, occupied the
third course. The desert was enlivened by a list of ladies of all
descriptions, whose characters were cut up full as ably as the haunch of
venison was carved; and here boasting of success in love was as general
as the custom is base. One man of fashion goes by the name of Kiss and
tell.

"After an hour of hard drinking, as though it had been for a wager, a
number of very manly, nice little innocent and instructive amusements
were resorted to. We had a most excellent maggot race for a hundred; and
then a handycap for a future poney race. We had pitching a guinea into a
decanter, at which the young one lost considerably. We had a raffle
for a gold snuff box, a challenge of fifty against Lord Lavender's
Dusseldorf Pipe, and five hundred betted upon the number of shot to be
put into a Joe Manton Rifle. We played at _te-to-tum_; and the young
one leaped over a handkerchief six feet high for a wager: he performed
extremely well at first, but at last Laven