hen Jerningham entered, to say the coach would be ready in an instant,
and to bring his master's sword, hat, and cloak.

"Let the coachman draw off," said the Duke, "but be in readiness. And
send to the gentlemen thou wilt find named in this list; say I am but
ill at ease, and wish their company to a light collation. Let instant
expedition be made, and care not for expense; you will find most of them
at the Club House in Fuller's Rents."[*]

[*] The place of meeting of the Green Ribbon Club. "Their place of
meeting," says Roger North, "was in a sort of Carrefour at
Chancery Lance, in a centre of business and company most proper
for such anglers of fools. The house was double balconied in
front, as may yet be seen, for the clubbers to issue forth _in
fresco_, with hats and no perukes, pipes in their mouths, merry
faces, and dilated throats for vocal encouragement of the
canaglia below on usual and unusual occasions."

The preparations for festivity were speedily made, and the intended
guests, most of them persons who were at leisure for any call that
promised pleasure, though sometimes more deaf to those of duty, began
speedily to assemble. There were many youths of the highest rank, and
with them, as is usual in those circles, many of a different class, whom
talents, or impudence, or wit, or a turn for gambling, had reared up
into companions for the great and the gay. The Duke of Buckingham was a
general patron of persons of this description; and a numerous attendance
took place on the present occasion.

The festivity was pursued with the usual appliances of wine, music, and
games of hazard; with which, however, there mingled in that period much
more wit, and a good deal more gross profligacy of conversation, than
the talents of the present generation can supply, or their taste would
permit.

The Duke himself proved the complete command which he possessed over his
versatile character, by maintaining the frolic, the laugh, and the jest,
while his ear caught up, and with eagerness, the most distant sounds, as
intimating the commencement of Christian's revolutionary project. Such
sounds were heard from time to time, and from time to time they died
away, without any of those consequences which Buckingham expected.

At length, and when it was late in the evening, Jerningham announced
Master Chiffinch from the Court; and that worthy personage followed the
annunciation.

"Strange things have