"What! the girl of my heart by another embrac'd? What! the balm of her lips shall another man taste? What! touch'd in the twirl by another man's knee? What! panting recline on another than me?" Very properly rebuked thus:-- "Sir H. E. thinks each waltzing Miss From every partner takes a kiss; Then O! how natural the whim That makes them loath to dance with him." [Illustration: Fashionables of 1816 Taking the Air in Hyde Park.] [Illustration: Belles and Beaus; or, A Scene in Hyde Park, August 12, 1817.] [Illustration: A Dandyess, 1819.] [Illustration: Waltzing.] Read "The Waltz," by Lord Byron, and see what was thought of this dance. On June 9, 1817, we read: "_Quadrilles_ have had but a short run. They have now had a lamentable descent, not from the drawing-room to the kitchen, to supersede the _Contre Danse_, but from Almack's to Hockley in the Hole. Though they have not yet fallen into the kitchen, the kitchen has risen to them. Some days ago the Lady of a Noble Admiral, lately returned from the Mediterranean, happened to come home from a Ball unexpectedly, when her Ladyship found all her domestics busily employed in a _quadrille_ in the drawing-room, with the chandeliers lighted up, and a regular band of two violins, a bass, and a harp. Her Ladyship owns that they danced them with as much grace and spirit as is visible elsewhere." And they did dance in those days--there was no languid walking through a quadrille. All the steps were properly and accurately performed. I have before me engravings of a set of all the figures--_1 Le Pantalon_, _2 L'Été_, _3 La Poule_, _4 La Trenise_, or _4 La Pastorale_ and _La Finale_, which are delicious, but are too large for reproduction in this book. Of course, the _Crême de la crême_ went to Almack's, but numberless were the Peris who sighed to enter that Paradise, and could not. Capt. Gronow, writing of 1814, says: "At the present time one can hardly conceive the importance which was attached to getting admission to Almack's, the seventh heaven of the fashionable world. Of the three hundred officers of the Foot Guards, not more than half a dozen were honoured with vouchers of admission to this exclusive temple of the _beau monde_; the gates of which were guarded by lady patronesses, whose smiles or frowns consigned men and women to happiness or despair. These lady patronesses were the Ladies Castlereagh, Jersey, Cowper, and Sefton, Mrs. Drummond Burrell, the Princess Esterhazy, and the Countess Lieven."