We shall not attempt to particularise the arrivals, as they were precisely the same set as our readers have invariably met at routs of the second class for these last five years. There was the young gentleman in an orange waistcoat, bilious complexion, and hair à la Petrarch, only gingered; and so also were the two Misses ——, in blue gauze, looped up with coral,—and that fair-haired girl who “detethted therry,” and those black eyes, whose lustrous beauty made such havoc among the untenanted hearts of the youthful beaux;—but, reader, you must know the set that must have visited the Applebites.

All went “merry as a marriage bell,” and we feel that we cannot do better than assist future commentators by giving a minute analysis of a word which so frequently occurs in the fashionable literature of the present day that doubtlessly in after time many anxious inquiries and curious conjectures would be occasioned, but for the service we are about to confer on posterity (for the pages of PUNCH are immortal) by a description of

A QUADRILLE:

which is a dance particularly fashionable in the nineteenth century. In order to render our details perspicuous and lucid, we will suppose—

  1. —A gentleman in tight pantaloons and a tip.
  2. —Ditto in loose ditto, and a camellia japonica in the button-hole of his coat.
  3. —Ditto in a crimson waistcoat, and a pendulating eye-glass.
  4. —Ditto in violent wristbands, and an alarming eruption of buttons.
ALSO,
  1. —A young lady in pink-gauze and freckles.
  2. —Ditto in book-muslin and marabouts.
  3. —Ditto with blonde and a slight cast.
  4. —Ditto in her 24th year, and black satin.

The four gentlemen present themselves to the four ladies, and having smirked and “begged the honour,” the four pairs take their station in the room in the following order:

The tip and the freckles.
The camelia japonica, and the marabouts.The crimson waistcoat, and the slight cast.
The violent wristbands and the black satin.

During eight bars of music, tip, crimson, camellia, and wristbands, bow to freckles, slight cast, marabouts, and black satin, who curtsey in return, and then commence