Sir Joshua entered his house, and the others hastened northward to the Oxford road, where the Pantheon had scarcely been opened more than a year for the entertainment of the fashionable world--a more fashionable world, it was hoped, than was in the habit of appearing at Ranelagh and Vauxhall. From a hundred to a hundred and fifty years ago, rank and fashion sought their entertainment almost exclusively at the Assembly Rooms when the weather failed to allow of their meeting at the two great public gardens. But as the government of the majority of these places invariably became lax--there was only one Beau Nash who had the cleverness to perceive that an autocracy was the only possible form of government for such assemblies--the committee of the Pantheon determined to frame so strict a code of rules, bearing upon the admission of visitors, as should, they believed, prevent the place from falling to the low level of the gardens. In addition to the charge of half-a-guinea for admission to the rotunda, there were rules which gave the committee the option of practically excluding any person whose presence they might regard as not tending to maintain the high character of the Pantheon; and it was announced in the most decisive way that upon no consideration would actresses be allowed to enter. The announcements made to this effect were regarded in some directions as eminently salutary. They were applauded by all persons who were sufficiently strict to prevent their wives or daughters from going to those entertainments that possessed little or no supervision. Such persons understood the world and the period so indifferently as to be optimists in regard to the question of the possibility of combining Puritanism and promiscuous entertainments terminating long after midnight. They hailed the arrival of the time when innocent recreation would not be incompatible with the display of the richest dresses or the most sumptuous figures. But there was another, and a more numerous set, who were very cynical on the subject of the regulation of beauty and fashion at the Pantheon. The best of this set shrugged their shoulders, and expressed the belief that the supervised entertainments would be vastly dull. The worst of them published verses full of cheap sarcasm, and proper names with asterisks artfully introduced in place of vowels, so as to evade the possibility of actions for libel when their allusions were more than usually scandalous. While the ladies of the committee were applauding one another and declaring that neither threats nor sarcasms would prevail against their resolution, an informal meeting was held at White's of the persons who affirmed that they were more affected than any others by the carrying out of the new regulations; and at the meeting they resolved to make the management aware of the mistake into which they had fallen in endeavouring to discriminate between the classes of their patrons.