BATH SOCIETY 251 



perhaps see all the signs of the zodiac exhibited in 

 architecture at Bath." 



Then the select society of fifty years before had 

 given place to a very mixed concourse, if we are to 

 believe the same authority : " Every upstart of 

 fortune, harnessed in the trappings of the mode, 

 presents himself at Bath, as in the very focus of 

 observation. Clerks and factors from the East Indies, 

 loaded with the spoil of plundered provinces ; planters, 

 negro-drivers, Jind hucksters, from our American 

 plantations, enriched they know not how ; agents, 

 commissaries, and contractors, who have fattened, 

 in two successive wars, on the blood of the nation ; 

 usurers, brokers, and jobbers of every kind ; men of 

 low birth, and no breeding, have found themselves 

 suddenly translated into a state of affluence, unknown 

 to former ages ; and no wonder that their brains 

 should be intoxicated with pride, vanity, and presump- 

 tion. Knowing no other criterion of greatness but 

 the ostentation of wealth, they discharge their 

 affluence, without taste or conduct, tln-ough every 

 channel of the most absurd extravagance ; and all 

 of them hurry to Bath, because here, without any 

 further qualification, they can mingle with the 

 princes and nobles of the laud. Even the wives 

 and daughters of low tradesmen, who, like shovel- 

 nosed sliarks, prey on the blubber of those uncoutli 

 whales of fortune, are infected with the same rage 

 of displaying their importance ; and the slightest 

 indisposition serves them for a pretext to insist on 

 Ijeing conveyed to Bath, where they may hobble 

 country-dances and cotillons among lordlings, squires, 



