The best Geneva's sold, and love to boot.
See there a sleek Venetian envoy walks;
See here an Alderman more proudly stalks.
Behold the French Ambassador, that's he;
And this is the honest Sire and Captain Leigh.
Here is St. James's street, yonder the Strand:
In this place Bowyer plies; that's Lintot's stand."
The Societies of the two Temples gave grand entertainments at their Halls to the Lord Chancellor and many of the Nobility in February; but the most remarkable accompaniment to these convivial meetings was the representation of the comedy of The Chances, performed within the greater Hall by the Comedians of Drury-lane Theatre.
The present representatives of the Societies will forgive my transition from their elegant amusements to those of a Bear-garden, "the back-side of Soho-square," where the proprietors had an amphitheatre of three gradations; the lowest of which let at 2s. 6d. for each seat, the next 5s. and the third 10s. 6d. There, "at the desire of several persons of Quality," a Leopard, twelve feet in length, was advertised to be baited to death on the 24th of March; and gentlemen who chose to risk their dogs were permitted to assist in the destruction of this monstrous animal, which appears to have been the first so used within the century. The Leopard was shewn with other beasts in a room "at the boarded-house, Mary-le-bon-fields." We will leave the "Quality" in full enjoyment of their classical entertainment; and follow another description of
citizens to Wanstead, where a female had long resided, who annually attracted notice by the following advertisement, in which she then mentioned her age for the first time: "This is to give notice to all my honoured masters and ladies, and the rest of my loving friends, that my lady Butterfield gives a challenge to ride a horse, to leap a horse, or run on foot, or halloo, with any woman in England seven years younger, but not a day older, because I won't undervalue myself, being now 74 years of age. My Feast will be the last Wednesday of this month, April, where there will be good entertainment for that day and all the year after in Wanstead in Essex."