he wife of a reverend
brother, which was soon after made public, added to certain other
peculiarities and eccentricities, have since marked the satirist himself
as one of the most prominent objects for the just application of his own
weapon."

Come hither, Paul Pallet, your portrait I'll paint:
You're a satirist, reverend sir, but no saint.

But as some of his characters are very amusing, and no doubt very
correct portraits of the time, 1808, my readers shall have the advantage
of them, that they may be the better able to contrast the past with the
present, and form their own conclusions how far society has improved
in morality by the increase of methodism, the influx of evangelical
breathings, or the puritanical pretensions of bible societies. I shall
pass by his description of the club; gaming ever was ~309~~and ever will
be a leading fashionable vice, which only poverty and ruin can correct
or cure. The clergy must, however, be greatly delighted at the following
picture of the cloth, drawn by one of their holy brotherhood. "The Bath
church," says the satirist, "is filled with croaking ravens, chattering
jays, and devouring cormorants; black-headed fanatics and white-headed
'dreamers of dreams;' the aqua-fortis of mob politics, and the mawkish
slip-slop of modern divinity; rank cayenne pepper, and genuine powder of
post!" Really a very flattering description of our clerical comforters,
but one which, I lament to say, will answer quite as well for 1826,
with, perhaps, a little less of enthusiasm in the composition, and some
faint glimmerings of light opposed to the darkness of bigotry and the
frauds of superstition. Methodism is said to be on the wane--we can
hear no better proof that true religion and good sense are coming into
fashion. The sketch of Mrs. Vehicle, by the same hand, is said to have
been a true copy of a well-known female gambler; it is like a portrait
of Sir Joshua Reynolds, a picture worthy of preservation from its
intrinsic merits, long after the original has ceased to exist: how
readily might it be applied to half a score card-table devotees of the
present day! "Observe that _ton_ of beauty, Mrs. Vehicle, who is sailing
up the passage, supported like a nobleman's coat of arms by her amiable
sisters, the virtuous widow on one side, and the angelic Miss Speakplain
on the other. By my soul! the same roses play upon her cheeks now that
bloomed there winters ago, the natural tint of