Mr Caldwell says it is. I believe with him that it is as respectably conducted as establishments of the kind can be; but at the same time Mr Caldwell confesses it leads to drinking, and that is quite reason enough, independently of other obvious considerations, why I come away thankful that no wife or sister of mine is amongst the parties nightly to be met at Mr Caldwell’s _soirées dansantes_. CREMORNE. “In a set of pictures illustrative of Greek customs, it was quite impossible to leave out the _hetæræ_ who gave such a peculiar colouring to Grecian levity, and exercised so potent a sway over the life of the younger members of the community. Abundant materials for such a sketch exist, for the Greeks made no secret of matters of this kind; the difficulty has been not to sacrifice the vividness of the picture of the ordinary intercourse with these women to the demands of our modern sense of propriety,” says Professor Becker, in his truly admirable work on the Private Life of the Ancient Greeks. In the same manner, and for the same reason, the modern sense of propriety is supposed to be in the way of any very graphic description of Cremorne; yet we have hetæræ almost as bewitching as Aspasia or the Corinthian Lais; and if our students, and learned clergy, and holy bishops write long articles about the Athenian Dionysia only held once a year, why should we not speak of ours which last all the summer, and the scene of which is Cremorne? At the Dionysia the most unbridled merriment and drunkenness were the order of the day, and were held quite blameless. For a while the most sober-minded bade adieu to the stringency of habit, following the well-known Greek maxim— “Ne’er blush with drink to spice the feast’s gay hour, And, reeling, own the mighty wine-god’s power.”