Imagine such an animated, whispering, gazing, inquiring scene, as I have here presented you with a slight sketch of, and, reader, you will be able to form some idea of the first appearance of the English Spy and his friend the artist, among the ways and walks of merry Cheltenham. Then here
'At once, I dedicate my lay
To the gay groups that round me swarm,
Like May-bees round the honied hive,
When fields are green, and skies are warm
And all in nature seems alive.'
Time was, a certain amorous colonel carried every thing here, and bore away the belle from all competitors; the hunt, the ball, the theatre, and the card-party all owned his sovereign sway; although it must be admitted, that, in the latter amusement, he seldom or ever hazarded enough to disturb his financial recollections on the morrow. But time works wonders—notoriety is of two complexions, and what may render a man a very agreeable companion to foxhunters and frolicsome lordlings, is not always the best calculated to recommend him in the eyes of the accomplished and the rigid in matters of moral propriety. But other equally celebrated and less worthy predilections have been trumpeted forth in courts and newspapers, until the fame of the colonel has spread itself through every grade of society, and, unlike that wreath which usually decks the gallant soldier's brow, a cypress chaplet binds the early gray, and makes admonitory signal of the ill-spent past. The wrongs of an injured and confiding husband, whose fortunes, wrecked by the false seducer, have left him a prey to shattered ruin, yet live in the remembrance of some honest Cheltenham hearts; and although these may feel for the now abandoned object of his illicit passion, there are but few who, while they drop a tear of pity as she passes them daily in the street, do not invoke a nobler feeling of indignation upon the ruthless head of him who forged the shafts of misery, and pierced at one fell blow the hearts of husband, wife, and children! What father that has read Maria's hapless tale of woe, and marked the progress of deceptive vice, will hereafter hazard the reputation of his daughters by suffering them to mix in Cheltenham society with the branded seducer and his profligate associates? Gallantry, an unrestricted love of the fair sex, and a predilection for variety, may all be indulged in this country to any extent, without betraying confidence on the one hand or innocence upon the other, without outraging decency, or violating the established usages of society. While the profligate confines his sensual pleasures with such objects as I allude to within the walls of his harem, the moralist has no right to trespass upon his privacy; it is only when they are blazoned forth to public view, and daringly opposed to public scorn, that the lash of the satirist is essentially useful, if not in correcting, at least in exposing the systematic seducer, and putting the inexperienced and the virtuous on their guard against the practice of profligacy. It is the frequency and notoriety of such scenes that has at last alarmed the Chelts, who, fearing more for their suffering interests than for their suffering fellow-creatures, begin to murmur rather loudly against the Berkeley Adonis, representing that the town itself suffers in respectability and increase of visitors, by its being known as the rendezvous of the bloods and blacks of Berkeley. The truth of this assertion may be gathered from the following jeu d' esprit, only one among a hundred of such squibs that have been very freely circulated in Cheltenham and the neighbourhood within the last year.
'NEWS FROM CHELTENHAM.
'The season runs smartly in Cheltenham's town,
The gossips are up, and the colonel is down;
He has taken the place of the famous Old Gun {1}
That exploded last year, and created some fun.
Were no lives then lost? some say, Yes! and some, No!
The report even shook the old walls of Glasgow.{2}
And the Bushe was found out to be no safe retreat,
For in love, as in war, you may chance to be beat;
And a hell-shaming fellow can never be reckon'd,
Whate'er he may publish, a capital second.'
"But now having had our fling at his vices, let us speak of him more agreeably; for the fellow hath some qualifications which, if humour suit, enables him to shine forth a star of the first magnitude among bons vivants and sporting characters, who ride, amble, and vegetate upon the banks of the Chelt. Such is his love of hunting, a pleasure in which he not only indulges himself, but enables others, his friends, to participate with him, by keeping up a numerous stud of thirty well trained horses, and a double pack of fox-hounds, that no appropriate day may be lost, nor any opportunity missed, of pursuing the sports of the chase. This is as it should be, and smacks of that glorious spirit which animated his ancestors; although the violence of his temper will sometimes break out even here, in the field, when some young and forward Nimrod, unable to restrain his fiery steed, o'er-caps the hounds, or crosses the scent. As the Chelts are, or have been, greatly benefited by the hounds being kept alternately during the hunting months between
1 A good-morrow to you, Captain Gun.
2 Miss Glasgow, divine perfection of antique virgin purity!
what could the poet mean by this allusion?
Cheltenham and Gloucester, they must at least feel some little gratitude to be due to the man who is the cause of such an increase of society, and consequent expenditure of cash. But, say they, we lose in a fourfold degree; for the respectable portion of the fashionable visitants have of late cut us entirely, to save their sons and daughters from pollution and ruin, by association or the force of example. 'Tis not in the nature of the English Spy rudely to draw aside the curtain, even to expose the midnight revelries and debaucheries, of which he possesses some extraordinary anecdotes; events, which, if recorded here, would, in the language of the poet,
'Give ample room, and verge enough,
The characters of hell to trace;
How through each circling year, on many a night,
Have Severn's waves re-echoed with affright
The shrieks of (maids) through Berkeley's roofs that ring.'
"But let these tales be told hereafter, as no doubt they will be, by the creatures who now pander to vice, when the satiated and the sullen chief sinks into decay, or cuts from his emaciated trunk the filthy excrescences which, like poisonous fungus, suck the sap of honour and of life. The colonel hath had many trials in this life, and much to break down a noble and a proud spirit. In earlier days, a question of birthright, while it cut off one entail, brought on another, which entailed a name, not the ancient gift of a monarch, but one still more ancient, and, according to Dodsley's Chronology of the Kings of England, the origin of British sovereignty itself—a 'filius nullius,' a title that left it open to the wearer to have established his own fame, and to have been the architect of a nobler fortune; for