A fondness for amusements is one of the strongest characteristics of this people.—They may almost be said to live for little else. They pass the whole of that short day which they allow themselves, in making arrangements for spending the ensuing night. Indeed, their preference of night to day is such, that they seem to consider the latter as having no other value than as it leads to the former, and affords an opportunity of preparing for its enjoyment. And hence I suppose it is, that such multitudes among them dine by candle-light, and go to bed by day-light.
This passion for diversions renders the Sunday particularly irksome to persons of any sort of ton in the Fashionable World. A dose of piety in the morning is well enough, though it is somewhat inconvenient to take it quite so early; but then it wants an opera, or a play, or a dance, to carry it off. There are indeed some esprit-forts among the ladies, who are trying with no little success to redeem a portion of the Sabbath from the insufferable bondage of the Bible and the sermon-book; and to naturalize that continental distribution of the day, which gives the morning to devotion, and the evening to dissipation. It is but justice to the gentlemen to say, that they discover no backwardness in supporting a measure so consonant to all their wishes. It is therefore not impossible that some considerable changes in this respect may soon be brought about. That good-humoured legislature which has allowed a Sunday newspaper, [116] will perhaps not always refuse a Sunday opera, or play. People of Fashion will then no longer have to torture their invention for expedients to supply the absence of their diurnal diversions. They may then let their tradesmen go quietly to their parish-churches, instead of sending for them to wear away the sabbath-hours in some supervacaneous employment. In short, Sunday may be set at liberty from its primitive bondage, and exhibit as happy a union of morning solemnity and evening licentiousness, as it has ever displayed among the dissolute adherents of Fashionable Christianity.
But to return:—The rage for amusements [119] is so strong in this people, that it seems to supersede all exercise of judgment in the choice and the conduct of them. To go every where, see every thing, and know every body, are, in their estimation, objects of such importance, that, in order to accomplish them, they subject themselves to the greatest inconveniences, and commit the very grossest absurdities. Hence they will rush in crowds, to shine where they cannot be seen, to dance where they cannot move, and to converse with friends whom they cannot approach; and, what is more, though they cannot breathe for the pressure, and can scarcely live for the heat, yet they call this—enjoyment.
Nor does this passion suffer any material abatement by the progress of time. Many veterans visit, to the last, the haunts of polite dissipation; they lend their countenance to those dramas of vanity in which they can no longer act a part; and show their incurable attachment to the pleasures of this world, by their unwillingness to decline them. The infirmities which attend upon the close of life are certainly designed to produce other habits; and it should seem, that when every thing announces an approaching dissolution, the amusements of the drawing-room might give place to the employments of the closet. Persons, however, of this description are of another mind; and as every difficulty on the score of teeth, hoariness, and wrinkles, can be removed by the happy expedients of ivory, hair-caps, and cosmetics, there is certainly no physical objection to their continuing among their Fashionable acquaintance, till they are wanted in another world.
I cannot illustrate this part of my subject better than by presenting my readers with the following Ode on the Spring, supposed to have been written by a man of Fashion; it expresses, with so much exactness, the sentiments and taste of that extraordinary people, that it will stand in the place of a thousand observations upon their character.
ODE ON THE SPRING.
SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN WRITTEN BY A MAN OF FASHION.
I.
LO! where the party-giving dames,
Fair Fashion’s train, appear;
Disclose the long-expected games,
And wake the modish year:
The opera-warbler pours her throat,
Responsive to the actor’s note,
The dear-bought harmony of Spring;
While, beaming pleasure as they fly,
Bright flambeaus through the murky sky
Their welcome fragrance fling.