This observation is abundantly confirmed by what occurs in the experience of the parties under consideration. The pleasures which men of Fashion derive from the gratification of their animal appetites at the table, the gaming-house, and the brothel, have a very ample set-off in the inconveniences which they suffer from arthritic, nervous, and a thousand other, painful and retributive complaints. Nor are the gay and dissipated of the other sex exempted from the same contingency of constitutional suffering. Beside the common lot of human nature, they have a class of evils of their own procuring; and, by excesses as imprudent as they are immoral, they bring upon themselves a variety of diseases, for which neither a name nor a remedy can be found. There are those, it is true, who avoid much of this inconvenience, by mixing some discretion with their folly, and setting some bounds to their favourite gratifications: but then it is to be remembered, that these are restraints which render persons of licentious minds singularly uneasy; and they may therefore be considered as administering to pain, nearly in proportion as they abridge indulgence. But supposing that we were to throw these severer items out of the calculation: there would still remain evils enough in a Fashionable condition, to keep the scale from preponderating on the side of pleasure. To shine in a ball-room, is, no doubt, a high satisfaction; but then to be outshone by another, (which is just as likely to happen,) is at least as great a mortification: to be invited to _many_ modish parties, is really delightful; but then to know those who are invited to _more_ than ourselves, is certainly vexatious: to find one’s-self surrounded by people of the first Fashion, is charming; but then to be dying with heat all the time, is something in the opposite scale; to wear a coat or a head-dress of the newest invention, is indeed a pleasure of the highest order; but then to see, by accident, articles of the same mode on the back of a man-milliner, or the head of a lady’s maid, is a species of vexation not easily endured. An opera, a play, a party, a night passed at a dance, or at a cassino, or a faro-table, are all events, to be sure, of the happiest occurrence; but then, to be disappointed of _one_, makes a deeper impression on the side of pain, than to be gratified with _three_, does on that of pleasure: and disappointments will happen, where many objects are pursued, and where the concurrence of many instruments is necessary to their accomplishment. A drunken coachman, a broken pannel, a sick horse, a saucy footman, a mistaken message, a dull play, indifferent company, a head-ach, a heart-burn, an epidemical disease, or the dread of it, a death in the family, Sunday, Fast-day, Passion week, and a thousand other provoking casualties, either deprive these entertainments of their power of pleasing, or even set them wholly aside.