e to furnish me with brief notices of the most
attractive of the stars of fashion who usually lounge away the mornings
in Milsom-street, exchanging the familiar nod and "How d'ye do?" and
holding sweet discourse among their fragrant selves upon the pursuits of
the _haute classe_, the merits of the last new novel, or the fortune
of the last unmarried feminine ~330~~arrival. To these may be added
reminiscences of the last night's card-table and remarks upon the Balls
at the rooms; for

"Two musical parties to Bladud belong,
To delight the old rooms and the upper;
One gives to the ladies a supper, no song,
And the other a song and no supper."

"The _jolie_ dame to the right," said Horace, "is the mother of
England's best friend, the Secretary for the Foreign Department, George
Canning, a man to whom we are all indebted for the amalgamation of
party, and the salvation of the country The clerical who follows
immediately behind Mrs. Hunn is a reverend gentleman whose daughters
both recently eloped from his house on the same morning attended by
favoured lovers to bind with sacred wreaths their happy destinies at
the shrine of Hymen." We had now reached the bottom of the street again,
after having made at least a dozen promenades to and fro, and were on
the point of retiring to our hotel to dress for dinner, when Heartly
directed my attention to a dashing roue, who, dressed in the extreme
of superlative style, was accompanied by a beautiful piece of fair
simplicity in the garb of a Puritan. "That," said my friend, "is
the beautiful Miss D**T--one of the faithful, whom the dashing Count
L***c***t has recently induced to say ay for life: thus gaining a double
prize of no mean importance by one stroke of good luck--a fine girl
and a fine fortune into the bargain." I must not forget our friend the
consulting surgeon H***ks, or omit to notice that in Bath the faculty
are all distinguished by some peculiar title of this sort, as, the
digestive Physician, the practical Apothecary, and the operative
Chemist; a piece of quackery not very creditable to their acknowledged
skill and general respectability. At dinner we were again joined by
our facetious ~331~~friend Blackstrap, who, to use his own phraseology,
having made "a good morning's work of it," hoped he might be permitted
to make one among us, a request with which we were most willing to
comply. In the evening, after the bottle had circulat