“I should dislike the Bath much less, if the houses were larger. I always take the largest that can be got in the Circus or Crescent. On the outside it appears a good stone edifice; in the inside, it is a nest of boxes, in which I should be stifled, if the masonry were not so bad as to admit winds at many places. The society and mode of life are infinitely preferable to what one can find in any other country town, but much less agreable than London. I believe if I was to act the part of Minos in this World, I should use it as a kind of purgatory, to which I should send those who had not the taste or qualifications which deserved to be put into the capital city, nor were yet so disagreably unsociable as to merit suffering the terrors and horrors of a long winter in the country.” The devotion of Bath visitors to cards has been satirised in many an epigram, more or less pointed. There were certain individuals among them who were not likely to come under the eye of Mrs. Montagu, but who did not escape the notice of Fielding. “I have known a stranger at Bath,” he says, in the first volume of “Amelia,” “who has happened fortunately (I might almost say unfortunately) to have four by honours in his hand almost every time he dealt for a whole evening, shunned universally by the whole company the next day!” “Mr. Anstey, in a little excursion from home, called here on his way to London, where he arrived just to behold the horrors of the conflagration. On his return back, he made me another visit, and his countenance bore the impression of horror, from the dreadful things he had beheld. He got back to Bath just in time to be present at ye riots there. “Tho’ I am not personally acquainted with the family of Sir E. Knatchbull, I cannot help being glad the heir of it has made so proper a match. I have heard a good character of the young lady. She has a noble fortune, and, by her mother, must be allied to the best families in Kent. Commerce has so enriched this kingdom, that in every county there are some new gentry who eclypse those ancient families which once had the superiority, and I must own I love to see it return to them. The mellow dignity of a gentleman is infinitely preferable to the crude pride of a nabob. I believe you are acquainted with Sir Archer and Lady Croft. They are now come to live in their house in this neighbourhood. It had been lett to a mad West Indian, who ruined his fortune, and then shot himself; after that, to a nabob. I never visit the West Indians in my neighbourhood, because they would teach my servants to drink rum; nor the nabobs, lest they should teach them to want to eat turtle and rich dainties. So I had not been at Dunstan till the other day, since the old proprietor left it. “I find the lower kind of neighbours are not pleased with Sir A. and Lady Croft, because they are not so profuse as the West, nor magnificent as the East, Indian; but they seem to me very well-bred people.