up late at cards have their provisions
brought to their bedsides, where they conclude the bargain with the
higler; and then--perhaps after a dish of chocolate--take another nap,
till what they have thus purchased is got ready for dinner."

One single attraction Toland admits Epsom never had--it lacks a river.
"One thing is wanting--and happy is the situation that wants no more;
for in this place notwithstanding the medicinal waters, and sufficient
of sweetes for domestic use, are not to be heard the precipitant murmurs
of impetuous cascades. There are no purling streams in our groves, to
tempt the shrill notes of the warbling choristers, whose never-ceasing
concerts exceed Bononcini and Corelli."

That was in 1711; Epsom never saw better days in spite of the lack of
those miraculous concerts. And in 1715 it had all come to an end.
Epsom's glories tumbled like a pack of cards. It was the fault of one
man: Pownall has gibbeted the rascal; Epsom fell through the "knavery of
Mr. John Livingstone, an apothecary." Mr. Livingstone may have been a
knave, but he was also evidently a fool. He began admirably, as a doctor
with a speculative eye should do, by building a large house with an
assembly room for dancing and music, "and other rooms for raffling,
diceing, fairchance (what a perversion of terms!) and all sorts of
gaming; together with shops for milliners, jewellers, toymen, etc." He
was quite a heathen, for he planted a grove, and he made a
bowling-green, and then spoiled it all by sinking a well, putting a pump
to it, and calling the place the New Wells. The new water was neither
diluent, nor absorbent, nor cathartic, nor anything else that water at a
watering-place should be, and the visitors found out the difference. But
the end was the maddest thing of all. Somehow or other, John Livingstone
got a lease of the old wells, the real, genuine spring. Then he locked
up the old wells, and tried to make money with the new. It killed the
watering-place.

But Epsom revived--to relapse and revive again. First, it was brought to
life again by the South Sea Bubble, which would have brought to life
anything, and for a wild short season the quacks and alchemists and Jews
came back: the ball rooms and the gaming saloons filled again. New
houses were built; "amongst them that of Baron Swasso." To speculate as
to who Baron Swasso may have been is agreeable: but the baronial hall
could not save Epsom. Even a more powerful attraction t