an affray, among porters bent under their loads of merchandise, shopmen stationed at their doors, apprentices, hawkers, sneak thieves, sauntering fops, and big town bullies. The streets were narrow. There were no street numbers, and shopkeepers distinguished their shops by elaborate signs-blue boars, black swans, red lions, and hogs in armor-which swung on creaking hinges over the passers-by. The sidewalks were narrow and divided from the streets by open gutters-kennels they called them then-and by an awkward arrangement of posts and chains. To walk near these kennels in rainy weather was to be drenched from the gutter spouts which, while they hung out a good distance toward the gutters, never sent their stream quite clear of the sidewalk. Rain or shine, men could always pick a quarrel on the privilege of keeping to the wall. One of the most vivid pictures we have of London streets is due to these quarrels regarding the wall. It is from a satirist of the time and runs as follows:

You'll sometimes meet a fop, of nicest tread,
Whose mantling peruke veils his empty head,
At ev'ry step he dreads the wall to lose,
And risks, to save a coach, his red-heel'd shoes,
Him like the miller pass with caution by
Lest from his shoulders clouds of powder fly,
But when the bully with assuming pace

Cocks his broad hat, edg'd round with tarnish'd lace,
Yield not the way; defy his strutting pride,
And thrust him to the muddy kennel's side.
He never turns again, nor dares oppose
But mutters coward curses as he goes.

3. Night in London.

At night, the tin vessels that served for lamps diffused so little light, that every man with an honest errand engaged a torch-bearer to light him on his way. As for protection, every man had to trust to his own rapier. "Apparelled in thick, heavy great-coats, the watchmen perambulated the streets, crying the hour after the chimes, taking precautions for the prevention of fire, proclaiming tidings of foul or fair weather and awakening at daybreak all those who intended setting out on a journey."1 Neither watchman nor constable, however, had enough wit to serve an honest man in time of danger. The greatest fear at night came not from ordinary criminals, though these were common enough, but from bands of aristocratic young rowdies, who seized peaceable men and women on the streets, tattooed or slashed their faces, rolled reputable women round in barrels, or, imitating the fox hunt, chased some citizen about tov till finally they had him at their mercy. Then they kept him dancing with pricks of their swords. Of these ruffians, the most notorious were the Mohocks. It was probably of these that Dr. Johnson was thinking when he wrote the lines:

Some fiery fop with new commission vain,

Who sleeps on brambles till he kills his man-
Some frolic drunkard, reeling from a feast,
Provokes a broil and stabs you for a jest.

1 Sydney: England and the English in the Eighteenth Century.

4. The Beau.

The town was full of young men who had nothing to occupy them but brawls, drinking bouts, card-playing, and fine dress, and of these no small proportion spent all their serious attention on dress. The fashionable fop or beau enveloped his head in a well-powdered wig, which needed constant attention, and his neck and wrists in lace ruffles. His coat he threw open to display his costly shirt. He encased his legs in tight-fitting knickerbockers, and his feet in high-heeled shoes with silver buckles. For the street he added to this costume a cocked hat, a diamond-hilted sword, a cane, which hung by a loop from his coat, and not infrequently, if the weather were cold, a muff.

5. The Woman of Fashion.

The woman of fashion was a spirited coquette. "There is scarce any emotion in the mind," says one of the writers in the Spectator, "which does not produce a suitable agitation in the fan; in so much, that, if I only see the fan of a disciplined lady, I know very well whether she laughs, frowns, or blushes. I have seen a fan so very angry, that it would have been dangerous for the absent lover who provoked it to have come within the wind of it; and at other times so very languishing that I have been glad for the lady's sake the lover was at a sufficient distance from it." Her coquetry, however, though it charmed the men of her own circle, would be altogether too pretentious to please taste today. She was an affected creature. On pleasant days she would throw a scarlet cloak over her shoul

1

ders, and with her lap-dog or her monkey under her arm, mince down the street to see the fashions. She had just given up her towering head-dress; 1 her petticoats, says the Spectator, "were blown into an enormous concave, and her feet were propped up on high-heeled shoes. One device she had for giving dignity to her appearance; she powdered her hair and face, and set off her complexion by little pieces of black silk or velvet, called "patches." Skilful hands made these devices charming, but the hands of the ordinary woman scattered the powder clumsily and multiplied the patches till they became absurd. On depressing days, the great lady stayed at home and nursed her one cherished ailment, for every fashionable women chose to consider herself subject to the blues, or, as she called them, the "vapors." On these occasions she was moody, irritable, and when crossed, might, if she were only fashionable enough, become hysterical.

6. A Fashionable Library.

Sir Roger de Coverley's acquaintance among the ladies was largely confined to

1 Within my own memory I have known it rise and fall above thirty degrees. About ten years ago, it shot up to a very great height, insomuch that the female part of our species were much taller than the men. At present the whole sex is in a manner dwarfed and shrunk into a race of beauties that seems almost another species. I remember several ladies, who were once very near seven foot high, that at present want some inches of five; how they came to be thus curtailed I cannot learn.-The Spectator, June 22, 1711.

those who aspired to learning. It is worth one's while to go over in detail the library which one of these ladies1 is described as having. Her shelves contained four French romances, Cassandra, Cleopatra, Astræa, and Clelia. These stories strung out anywhere from three to ten volumes in length, and were full of sentimental shepherds, romantic knights, flowery meads and purling streams. In Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia, first published by his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, she had another story of the same general sort, though it was far more genuine in feeling. Among those volumes of hers which no lady's library must be without were the famous Elzevir editions of Latin, French, and German classics, Dryden's Juvenal, Ogilby's Virgil, which, though a wretched translation, was beautifully illustrated, and Baker's Chronicle, a popular jumble of the old English histories and a favorite volume of the lady's friend, Sir Roger. Her religious books had all at one time or another been in the fashion. There was Dick Steele's Christian Hero; the author was too gallant not to be popular; there was Sherlock on Death; he was Dean of the great London Cathedral, St. Paul's; there was Sacheverell's speech; he was the idol of all the ladies of the Tory party. Ever since he had undergone trial for making scurrilous attacks on the Whigs, these ladies had chosen to consider him a martyr. Sir William Temple, whose works were on her shelves, was a polished but conventional essayist; Locke and Newton were profound and abstruse writ1 Leonora. See pages 73-78 in this volume.