Other Times, other Manners. 233 



we should represent it as some eastern place of enchant- 

 ment! For, as we entered, such was the flood of 

 diversified rays, we thought the pillars of the fabric 

 had been of glass, prismatically formed 1 We saw the 

 votaries of Bacchus making pantomimic transits from 

 Madeira to Oporto, from Champania to Whitbread's 

 Brewhouse ! — while their attendants were playing at hide- 

 and-seek in a forest of bottles ; letting off signals of where 

 aboutSy here with a cracker of ginger-beer, there with a 

 rocket of spruce ! In one corner we saw CuPID, under 

 the direflion of his mother, discharging his mischievous 

 darts; in another, the somewhat more mortal HOYLE 

 superintending and dire6ling a rubber of Whist. Finally, 

 we saw aerial forms move in celestial drapery ; and as, 

 in the *' tripping on the light fantastic toe," the daughters 

 of the torrid met and left the sons of the temperate zone, 

 the total effe6l was such — that we staid longer than we 

 intended^ 



There was a great deal of hard drinking in the colony, 

 and when in 1834 temperance societies were advocated 

 in the Chronicle^ two correspondents in the Gazette of 

 January 2nd, wrote as follows ;— 



" Sir, — I am at this moment one of FOUR Englishmen 

 sitting over a comfortable glass of old October, at the 

 hospitable residence of one of the party, and, strange to 

 say, our united time in this supposed unhealthy climate 

 dimoviuis to one hundred and forty one years ! One of 

 us has never been to Europe since his first arrival, and 

 two of us a6lually walked for pleasure eight miles before 

 breakfast about a month ago, without feeling the least 

 fatigue ; and even now I engage that at a good piece of 

 roast beef, a plum pudding, and a tankard of real 



GG2 



