1825.] OF HAMPSHIRE. 93 



" English women cannot waltz without doino- 

 violence to some invaluable notions of deli- 

 cacy and reserve with which they have been 

 brought up." A writer in Blackwood, 



° L ' From Blach- 



March, 1820, draws a parallel be- wood's Mag. 

 tween the sports of the ring and the 

 graces of the ball-room, and vindicates the 

 superior decency of the former, and says : "It 

 is less indelicate in such a man as Tom Belcher 

 to give Cropley a cross buttock, than an officer 

 of hussars to put one hand on the bare neck 

 of a virgin of eighteen years, another round 

 her waist, and thus to whirl her about for a 

 quarter of an hour in his arms, till both 

 parties are blind, and that too in the presence 

 of three hundred spectators. A waltzing match 

 is, we humbly suggest, a more indecent exhi- 

 bition than a boxing match. What can be 

 more so than to step ready stripped into the 

 ring, and hug in succession a long series of 

 military men, occasionally relieved by civilians. 

 The Amazon dismisses from her embrace cap- 

 tain, and colonel, and knight-at-arms, all pant- 

 ing, and perspiring, and reeling, while she 

 stands victorious and unexhausted in the ring. 

 And who compose the ring ? Judges, senators, 

 soldiers, grandmothers, matrons, maids, and 

 among them our own shrivelled correspondent. 



