till last night, when, being opera-night, the galleries were victorious.' Walpole tells us a most amusing story of the manner in which these things were managed in his earlier days. The town has been trying all this winter to beat pantomimes off the stage, very boisterously; for it is the way here to make even an affair of taste and sense a matter of riot and arms. Fleetwood, the master of Drury Lane, has omitted nothing to support them, as they supported his house. About ten days ago he let into the pit great numbers of Bear Garden bruisers (that is the term), to knock down everybody that hissed. The pit rallied their forces and drove them out. I was sitting very quietly in the side-boxes, contemplating all this. On a sudden the curtain flew up, and discovered the whole stage filled with blackguards, armed with bludgeons and clubs, to menace the audience. This raised the greatest uproar; and among the rest, who flew into a passion but your friend the philosopher! In short, one of the actors, advancing to the front of the stage to make an apology for the manager, he had scarce began to say, "Mr. Fleetwood- " when your friend, with a most audible voice and dignity of anger, called out, He is an impudent rascal!" The whole pit huzzaed, and repeated the words. Only think of my being a popular orator! But what was still better, while my shadow of a person was dilating to the consistence of a hero, one of the chief ringleaders of the riot, coming under the box where I sat, and pulling off his hat, said, Mr. Walpole, what would you please to have us do next?" It is impossible to describe to you the confusion into which this apostrophe threw me. I sank down into the box, and have never since ventured to set my foot into the playhouse. The next night the uproar was repeated with greater violence, and nothing was heard but voices calling out, “Where is Mr. W.? where is Mr. W.?" In short, the whole town has been entertained with my prowess, and Mr. Conway has given me the name of Wat Tyler."* Tho

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*Horace Walpole to Mann, November 26, 1744.

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participation of people of fashion in theatrical rows is a sufficient evidence of the interest which they took in the theatre. They carried the matter still farther in 1751, by hiring Drury Lane to act a play themselves. The rage

was so great to see this performance, that the House of Commons literally adjourned at three o'clock on purpose.'*

Vauxhall and Ranelagh figure in the descriptions of the 'Spectator' and the Citizen of the World,' in the 'Connoisseur' and in Evelina.'† But none of those passages give us an adequate notion of the fashion of Vauxhall and Ranelagh. Addison, and Goldsmith, and Miss Burney, looked upon the great crowd of all ranks as they would look upon life in general. Walpole saw only his own set; but how graphically has he described them! The mere surface of the shows, the gilding and varnish of the gaiety, fills the imagination. At Vauxhall we see Prince Lobkowitz's footmen, in very rich new liveries, bearing torches, and the prince himself in a new sky-blue watered tabby coat, with gold button-holes, and a magnificent gold waistcoat; and Madame l'Ambassadrice de Vénise in a green sack, with a straw hat; and we hear the violins and hautboys, the drums and trumpets, of the Prince of Wales's barges. Imagine such a sight in our own days! And then, one-and-twenty years later in life, Walpole is again going to Vauxhall to a ridotto al fresco, with a tide and torrent of; coaches so prodigious, that he is an hour and a half on the road before he gets half way from Arlington Street. There is to be a rival mob in the same way at Ranelagh to-morrow; for the greater the folly and imposition, the greater is the crowd.'§ But for a little quiet, domestic party at Vauxhall, composed of the highest in rank and fashion, Walpole is the most delightful, and, we have no doubt, the most veracious of chroniclers. Mrs. Tibbs and the pawnbroker's widow of Goldsmith are mere pretenders to coarseness by the side of Lady Caroline *Horace Walpole to Mann. f London, vol. i. No. 23. Horace Walpole to Conway, June 27, 1748. § Horace Walpole to Montagu, May 11, 1769.

Petersham and Miss Ashe. Walpole receives a card from Lady Caroline in 1750 to go with her to the Gardens. When he calls, the ladies had just finished their last layer of red, and looked as handsome as crimson could make them.' All the town had been summoned; and in the Mall they picked up dukes and damsels, and two young ladies especially, who had been trusted by their mothers for the first time of their lives to the matronly care of Lady Caroline.' They marched to their barge with a boat of French horns attending. Upon debarking at Vauxhall they picked up Lord Granby, arrived very drunk from "Jenny's Whim;" where, instead of going to old Strafford's catacombs to make honourable love, he had dined with Lady Fanny, and left her and eight other • women and four other men playing at brag.' Jenny's Whim' was a tavern at Chelsea Bridge. The party assemble in their booth and go to supper, after a process of cookery which would rather astonish a Lady Caroline of our own day: We minced seven chickens into a china dish, which Lady Caroline stewed over a lamp with three pats of butter and a flagon of water, stirring, and rattling, and laughing, and we every minute expecting to have the dish fly about our ears. She had brought Betty, the fruit-girl, with hampers of strawberries and cherries from Rogers's, and made her wait upon us, and then made her sup by us at a little table. The conversation was no less lively than the whole transaction.' Lady Caroline was not singular in her tastes. Before the accession of George III. it was by no means uncommon for ladies of quality to sup at taverns, and even to invite the gentlemen to be of the company. Walpole says that in 1755 a Frenchman, who was ignorant of the custom, took some liberties with Lady Harrington, through which mistake her house was afterwards closed against him. This practice, which to us seems so startling, was a relic of the manners of a century earlier. The decorum of the court of George III. banished the custom from the upper ranks; but it lingered amongst the middle classes: and Dr. Johnson thought it not in the