“It is scandalous, at my age, to have been carried backwards and forwards to balls and suppers and parties by very young people, as I was all last week. My resolutions of growing old and staid are admirable: I wake with a sober plan, and intend to pass the day with my friends--then comes the Duke of Richmond, and hurries me down to Whitehall to dinner--then the Duchess of Grafton sends for me to loo in Upper Grosvenor Street--before I can get thither, I am begged to step to Kensington, to give Mrs. Anne Pitt my opinion about a bow-window--after the loo, I am to march back to Whitehall to supper--and after that, am to walk with Miss Pelham on the terrace till two in the morning, because it is moonlight and her chair is not come. All this does not help my morning laziness; and, by the time I have breakfasted, fed my birds and my squirrels, and dressed, there is an auction ready. In short, Madam, this was my life last week, and is I think every week, with the addition of forty episodes.” Of course, this confession was not intended to be read quite seriously. It is to be taken with two grains of allowance, one for humour, the other for affectation. It was the writer’s pleasure to overact the part of an idle fine gentleman. But we may fairly conclude from the last two extracts that five o’clock was the dinner-hour of extreme fashion at this time. It would seem that the customary hour was three even with people of rank, and that in the greatest houses it was usual to serve supper. When Horace could escape from the loo-table in Upper Grosvenor Street, had no engagement to supper, and was not forced to pace Whitehall Terrace with a belated spinster till two in the morning, he was able to be at home and in bed--or at work with his books or his pen--by eleven o’clock. CHAPTER V. The Gout.--Visits to Paris.--Bath.--John Wesley.--Bad Weather.--English Summers.--Quitting Parliament.--Madame du Deffand.--Human Vanity.--The Banks of the Thames.--A Subscription Masquerade.--Extravagance of the Age.--The Pantheon.--Visiting Stowe with Princess Amelia.--George Montagu.--The Countess of Ossory.--Powder-Mills Blown up at Hounslow.--Distractions of Business and Pleasure.