A strange infatuation prevailed for many years in that class of the community which might be termed demi-fashionables, of sending their daughters to Convents in France for education; if that could be so termed, which amounted to nothing more than speaking the French language tolerably correct, cutting and pasting coloured paper together in silly shapes, and learning tambour, or working in imitation of lace. To mention the disadvantages attending the practice would be futile; the Revolution in France, the dissolution of Monasteries, and our endless wars, have totally abolished the custom, at least as far as relates to Convents; though I have no doubt that,
should Peace ever again smile on us, French boarding-schools will be preferred to British.
Many of the pernicious customs which disgrace the populace of London may, and indeed must be continued, by their attendance at the various Fairs still held near the Metropolis; some that are now suppressed, and that of St. Bartholomew's London, will be noticed hereafter. As long as the Legislature think proper to permit the exhibition of wild beasts, and the anticks of human brutes, the wicked and the curious will attend them: thus the profligate receives legal authority to continue his baneful and licentious manners, and the curious innocent learns to imitate them without restraint as something very worthy of imitation. It is well known that the passions of human nature require the utmost coercion, even in families of undoubted honour and virtue: is it then prudent, much less wise, to send apprentices, youth from schools, girls the offspring of the lower classes, and servants, into these regular scenes of riot and systematic violations of order and decency, where customs must be acquired which will not bear repetition? The very tradition of the origin of Horn fair, held at Charlton and Blackheath, though ridiculously unfounded, was a sufficient cause for its abolition, when we recollect the absurd reference it had to a shocking offence against the laws of society. The frequenters of this fair went to it prepared to laugh at those injured by
seduction; and the exhibition of articles made of Horn invited constant inuendos and vulgar double entendre.
Accident this very day afforded me other arguments against Fairs. Entering the Kingsland-road, I was astonished at the scene before me: the foot-paths and the carriage-way were crowded with pedestrians and vehicles, from the humble dung-cart to the hackney-coach; the two latter filled with every description of persons, and the whole rushing, impelled by one governing mind, to Edmonton fair. Hundreds of carts and waggons, provided with seats placed on the sides, and others lengthways in the midst, were stationed by the owners in the neighbourhood of Shoreditch church, where several principal streets communicate with the road to Edmonton; and were immediately filled by the infant, its sisters, brothers, parents, the journeyman, the apprentice, and the master, and the female servant, all dressed in their best clothing; many of the latter and the daughters of tradesmen in white muslin, silk spencers, and new straw bonnets, worth at least 30s. each. I would ask what the conversation of five-and-twenty persons thus assembled in a cart or waggon, some of whom consisted of the very dregs of society, could well be at noon-day, when sober; but what at night on their return, when some at least were intoxicated? We will say nothing of the fun of the Fair.
The succeeding letters which were published in 1768 require no comment.
"To the Inhabitants of the three united Parishes of St. Mary-le-Bow, St. Pancras, and Allhallows Honey-lane.
"Gentlemen,
"It is a pain and grief to me, after having been your Minister four-and-twenty years, to have any occasion to make any complaint of your behaviour; but complain of you I must, for suffering the subscription for the daily prayers to be so diminished, and reduced almost to nothing; a manifest sign that your Parishes are much poorer or less religious than they were, for either of which I should be very sorry, but more especially for the latter; for the former may be your misfortune, the latter must be your fault.
"The former Inhabitants were so convinced of the reasonableness, the propriety, the expediency, and necessity of the daily prayers, that they thought it just and fitting to make an extraordinary allowance for this extraordinary duty, and entered into a voluntary annual subscription for this purpose, which contributions have in some measure been continued from the first building and opening of your church till within these few years. And will you, Gentlemen, suffer so good a work, which hath been carried on so many years, to perish in your hands? Have you so little concern for the honour of your Church, one