iving with waggon loads of vegetable commodities. Here, over
a bottle of mulled port, Crony gave us the history of ~348~~what Covent
Garden used to be, when the eminent, the eccentric, and the notorious in
every walk of life, were to be found nightly indulging their festivities
within its famous precincts. "Covent Garden," said Crony, once so
celebrated for its clubs of wits and convents of fine women, is grown as
dull as _modern Athens_, and its ladies of pleasure almost as vulgar as
Scotch landladies; formerly, the first beauties of the time assembled
every evening under the Piazzas, and promenaded for hours to the
soft notes of the dulcet lute, and the silver tongues of amorous and
persuasive beaus; then the gay scene partook of the splendour of a
Venetian carnival, and such beauties as the Kitten, Peggy Yates, Sally
Hall the brunette, Betsy Careless, and the lively Mrs. Stewart, graced
the merry throng, with a hundred more, equally famed, whose names are
enrolled in the cabinet of Love's votaries. Then there was a celebrated
house in Charles-street, called the _field of blood_, where the droll
fellows of the time used nightly to resort, and throw down whole
regiments of _black_ artillery; and then at Tom or Moll King's, a
coffee-house so called, which stood in the centre of Covent Garden
market, at midnight might be found the bucks, bloods, demireps,
and choice spirits of London, associated with the most elegant and
fascinating Cyprians, congregated with every species of human kind that
intemperance, idleness, necessity, or curiosity could assemble together.
There you might see Tom King enter as rough as a Bridewell whipper,
roaring down the long room and rousing all the sleepers, thrusting them
and all who had empty glasses out of his house, setting everything to
rights,--when in would roll three or four jolly fellows, claret-cosey,
and in three minutes put it all into uproar again; playing all sorts
of mad pranks, until the guests in the long room were at battle-royal
together; for in those days pugilistic encounters were equally common
as with the present ~349~~times, owing to the celebrity of Broughton and
his amphitheatre, where the science of boxing was publicly taught. Then
was the Spiller's Head in Clare-market, in great vogue for the nightly
assemblage of the wits; there might be seen Hogarth, and Betterton
the actor, and Dr. Garth, and Charles Churchill, the first of English
satirists, and the arch politicia