Upon Cookery M. Rouquet is edifying; and concerning the eighteenth-century physician, with his tye-wig and gilt-head cane, sprightly and not unmalicious. But we must now confine ourselves to quoting a few detached passages from this discursive chronicle. The description of Ranelagh (in the chapter on Music) is too lengthy to reproduce. Here is that of the older Vauxhall:--"The Vauxhall concert takes place in a garden singularly decorated. The Director of Amusements in this garden [Jonathan Tyers] gains and spends successively considerable annual sums. He was born for such enterprises. At once spirited and tasteful, he shrinks from no expense where the amusement of the public is concerned, and the public, in its turn, repays him liberally. Every year he adds some fresh decoration, some new and exceptional scene. Sculpture, Painting, Music, bestir themselves periodically to render this resort more agreeable by the variety of their different productions: in this way opportunities of relaxation are infinite in England, above all at London; and thus Music plays a prominent part. The English take their pleasure without amusing themselves, or amuse themselves without enjoyment, except at table, and there only up to the point when sleep supervenes to the fumes of wine and tobacco." Elsewhere M. Rouquet, like M. le Blanc before him, is loud in his denunciation of the pitiful practices of Vails-giving, which blocks the vestibule of every English house with an army of servants "ranged in line, according to their rank," and ready "to receive, or rather exact, the contribution of every guest." The excellent Jonas Hanway wrote a pamphlet reprehending this objectionable custom. Hogarth steadily set his face against it; but Reynolds is reported to have given his man L100 a year for the door. Here, from another place, is a description of one of those popular auctions, at which, in the _Marriage A-la-Mode_, my Lady Squanderfieid purchases the _bric-a-brac_ of Sir Timothy Babyhouse, The scene is probably Cock's in the Piazza at Covent Garden:--"Nothing is so diverting as this kind of sale--the number of those assembled, the diverse passions which animate them, the pictures, the auctioneer himself, his very rostrum, all contribute to the variety of the spectacle. There you see the faithless broker purchasing in secret what he openly depreciates; or--to spread a dangerous snare--pretending to secure with avidity a picture which already belongs to him. There, some are tempted to buy; and some repent of having bought. There, out of pique and bravado, another shall pay fifty louis for an article which he would not have thought worth five and twenty, had he not been ashamed to draw back when the eyes of a crowded company were upon him. There, you may see a woman of condition turn pale at the mere thought of losing a paltry pagoda which she does not want, and, in any other circumstances, would never have desired."