Our joints are contracted, our anguish so sore,
We fly to the Doctors we laugh'd at before."
One of the strange and perverse customs practised by the Society of Quakers is, their determination to open their shops on those days held sacred by other classes of Religion. On the Fast-day of February 1757, the Lord Mayor sent the proper officers to close their windows per force, which they did to the number of 70: yet a person of this persuasion had the presumption to wait on the Chief Magistrate with an anonymous letter he had received, threatening to destroy his house if his windows were opened, at the same time soliciting him to go there and read the Riot Act; thus demanding protection from the vengeance he provoked, by insulting the piety of others, exclusive of the impiety of opposing respect and supplication, directed to the same Divinity he worships.
Curiosity may be said to have become so prevalent throughout all classes of the inhabitants of London, that it is actually a distinguishing trait in their general character; nor is it by any means
a new one, an assertion that might be supported by many proofs. An essayist of 1757 says: "I have that opinion of the ladies and gentlemen of the present age, that if the French were in full march along the New-road, and they had no engagement of pleasure on their hands, they would go out to see a new army, as, indeed, there would be a variety in it; the clothes, standards, &c. being different; nor do I believe that any one person would put off their intended pleasure, even though they heard the enemy's drums beating."
PORTRAIT OF A BEAU, 1757.
"Would you a modern beau commence,
Shake off that foe to pleasure, sense;
Be trifling, talkative, and vain;
Of ev'ry absent friend complain.