The Ayrshire Legatees

The principal topic of conversation at present is about the queen. The

Argents, who are our main instructors in the proprieties of London life,

say that it would be very vulgar in me to go to look at her, which I am

sorry for, as I wish above all things to see a personage so illustrious

by birth, and renowned by misfortune. The Doctor and my mother, who are

less scrupulous, and who, in consequence, somehow, by themselves,

contrive to see, and get into places that are inaccessible to all

gentility, have had a full view of her majesty. My father has since

become her declared partisan, and my mother too has acquired a leaning

likewise towards her side of the question; but neither of them will

permit the subject to be spoken of before me, as they consider it

detrimental to good morals. I, however, read the newspapers.

What my brother thinks of her majesty's case is not easy to divine; but

Sabre is convinced of the queen's guilt, upon some private and authentic

information which a friend of his, who has returned from Italy, heard

when travelling in that country. This information he has not, however,

repeated to me, so that it must be very bad. We shall know all when the

trial comes on. In the meantime, his majesty, who has lived in dignified

retirement since he came to the throne, has taken up his abode, with

rural felicity, in a cottage in Windsor Forest; where he now, contemning

all the pomp and follies of his youth, and this metropolis, passes his

days amidst his cabbages, like Dioclesian, with innocence and

tranquillity, far from the intrigues of courtiers, and insensible to the

murmuring waves of the fluctuating populace, that set in with so strong a

current towards "the mob-led queen," as the divine Shakespeare has so

beautifully expressed it.

You ask me about Vauxhall Gardens;--I have not seen them--they are no

longer in fashion--the theatres are quite vulgar--even the opera-house

has sunk into a second-rate place of resort. Almack's balls, the

Argyle-rooms, and the Philharmonic concerts, are the only public

entertainments frequented by people of fashion; and this high superiority

they owe entirely to the difficulty of gaining admission. London, as my

brother says, is too rich, and grown too luxurious, to have any exclusive

place of fashionable resort, where price alone is the obstacle. Hence,

the institution of these select aristocratic assemblies. The

Philharmonic concerts, however, are rather professional than fashionable

entertainments; but everybody is fond of music, and, therefore,

everybody, that can be called anybody, is anxious to get tickets to them;

and this anxiety has given them a degree of eclat, which I am persuaded

the performance would never have excited had the tickets been purchasable

at any price. The great thing here is, either to be somebody, or to be

patronised by a person that is a somebody; without this, though you were

as rich as Croesus, your golden chariots, like the comets of a season,

blazing and amazing, would speedily roll away into the obscurity from

which they came, and be remembered no more.