England and the English in the Eighteenth Century: Chapters in the Social History of the Times, Volume 1

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Page 90 - ... high, that at present want some inches of five: how they came to be thus curtailed I cannot learn; whether the whole sex be at present under any penance which we know nothing of, or whether they have cast their head-dresses in order to surprise us with something in that kind which shall be entirely new ; or whether some of the tallest of the sex, being too cunning for the rest, have contrived this method to make themselves appear...
Page 90 - THERE is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's headdress. Within my own memory I have known it rise and fall above thirty degrees. About ten years ago it shot up to a very great height, insomuch that the female part of our species were much taller than the men.* The women were of such an enormous stature, that "we appeared as grasshoppers before them...
Page 28 - Fleet Ditch with disemboguing streams Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames, The king of dykes ! than whom no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver flood.
Page 277 - Last Friday was Valentine's Day, and the night before, I got five bay-leaves, and pinned four of them to the four corners of my pillow, and the fifth to the middle ; and then, if I dreamt of my sweetheart, Betty said we should be married before the year was out.
Page 133 - Miss Sparre, who desired nothing so much as the fun of seeing a duel ; a thing which, though she is fifteen, she has never been so lucky to see, took due pains to make Lord March resent this : but he, who is very lively and agreeable, laughed her out of this charming frolic with a great deal of humour. Here we picked up lord Granby, arrived very drunk from Jenny's...
Page 182 - Jones' immortal hands, Columns with plain magnificence appear, And graceful porches lead along the square: Here oft my course I bend, when lo! from far, I spy the furies of the football war: The 'prentice quits his shop to join the crew, Increasing crowds the flying game pursue.
Page 349 - Christianity, have this fortnight been pondering methods to make more effectual that horrid traffic of selling negroes. It has appeared to us that six-and-forty thousand of these wretches are sold every year to our plantations alone !—it chills one's blood.
Page 296 - I could send you volumes on the ghost, and I believe if I were to stay a little, I might send its life, dedicated to my lord Dartmouth, by the ordinary of Newgate, its two great patrons. A drunken parish clerk set it on foot out of revenge, the methodists have adopted it, and the whole town of London think of nothing else. Elizabeth Canning and the Rabbit-woman were modest impostors in comparison of this, which goes on without saving the least appearances. The archbishop, who would not suffer the...
Page 230 - MY DEAR GEORGE: I have undone myself, and it is to no purpose to conceal from you my abominable madness and folly, though perhaps the particulars may not be known to the rest of the world. I never lost so much in five times as I have done to-night, and am in debt to the house for the whole.
Page 204 - One evening at the [Ivy Lane] Club, Johnson proposed to us the celebrating the birth of Mrs. Lenox's first literary child, as he called her book, by a whole night spent in festivity. Upon his mentioning it to me, I told him I had never sat up a whole night in my life ; but he continuing to...

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