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First View of the elegant City-Meeting with Old
Blackstrap Domicile at the Castle Tavern-
Matthew and Mrs. Temple worthy Characters-
Sportsman's Hall-Bath Heroes of the Turf, the
Ring, and the Chace-Portraits and Peculiarities
drawn from the Life.

MAY I ne'er flutter in the thoughtless train
With fashion's elves, the giddy, and the vain;
May I ne'er stroll again with Milsom swells
To Tully's shop, or lounge with pump-room belles ;
May I no more to Sidney Gardens stray,
If, Bath, I wrong thee in my hum'rous lay.
Court of King Blad', where crescents circling rise
Above each other till they reach the skies;
And hills o'er-topping with their verdant green
The Abbey Church, are in the distance seen:

Where inns invite ye, and where lodgings smile
A ready welcome to some Grecian pile;
Where chairmen wait ye, ready to attend
And box ye up upon your latter end;

Where summer breezes on Hygeia wait,

And cards and fashion hold their courts of state.
Hither we're come to Bath, to spy and tell
What reigning follies mark the beau and belle;
What stars eccentric move within thy sphere,
Or who's the greatest lion of the year.
"Have at ye all," we satirists give no quarter;
Yet shall our mirth prove grateful as Bath water.

The distant appearance, or first glimpse of the city of Bath, is enough to impress a stranger with the most favourable opinions of the place. The regularity of the streets, and the tasteful character of the architecture of the principal buildings, are certainly superior to that of any other place of public resort in England; added to which, there is an attention to cleanliness apparent in the costume of the lower classes that is not so conspicuous in other places.

"Blest source of health! seated on rising ground,
With friendly hills by nature guarded round;
From eastern blasts and sultry south secure,
The AIR's balsamic, and the soil is pure."

Surrounded by delightful scenery, and guarded from the piercing north winds by the hilly barriers of nature, the spot seems above all others best calculated to restore the health of the valetudinarian, whose constitution has become shattered and infirm by a course of fashionable dissipation, or a lengthened residence in the pestilential climates of the Indies.

"Sweet Bath! the liveliest city of the land;

Where health and pleasure ramble hand in hand,
Where smiling belles their earliest visit pay,

And faded maids their lingering blooms delay.
Delightful scenes of elegance and ease!

Realms of the gay, where every sport can please."

Thus sings the Bath poet, BAYLY; who, if he is somewhat too servile an imitation of Moore in his style, has certainly more of originality in his matter than generally distinguishes poems of such a local nature. One of the greatest characters in the city of Bath was the worthy host of our hotel, the Castle; at whose door stood the rubicund visage of our Cheltenham friend, Blackstrap, ready to give us a hearty welcome, and introduce us to Matthew Temple, who making one of his best bows, led the way into the coffee-room, not forgetting to assure us that Mistress Temple, who was one of the best women in the world, would take the greatest care that we had every attention paid to our commands and comforts; and, in good truth, honest Matthew was right, for a more comely, good-humoured, attentive, kind hostess exists not in the three kingdoms of his Gracious Majesty George the Fourth. In short, Mrs. Temple is the major-domo of the Castle, while honest Matthew, conscious of his own inability to direct the active operations of the garrison within doors, beats up for recruits without; attends to all the stable duty and the commissariat, keeps a sharp look-out for new arrivals by coach, and a still sharper one that no customer departs without paying his bill; and thus having made his daily bow to the inns and the outs, honest Matthew retires at night to take his glass of grog with the choice spirits who frequent Sportsman's Hall, a snug little smoking room on the left of the gateway, where the heroes of the turf and the lads of the fancy nightly assemble to relate their sporting anecdotes, sing a merry chaunt, book the long odds, and blow a friendly cloud in social intercourse and good fellowship.

I do not know that it matters much at what end of

Bath society I commence my sketches; and experience has taught me, that the more fashionable frivolities of high life seldom present the same opportunity for the

study of character, which is to be found in the merry, open-hearted, mirthful meetings of the medium classes and the lower orders. The pleasure we had felt in Blackstrap's society at Cheltenham, induced us to engage him to dine in the coffee-room, with our early friends Heartly and Eglantine, both of whom being then at Bath, we had invited to meet us, in the expectation that Dick Gradus, having arranged his legal affairs at Berkeley, would, by the dinner hour, arrive to join such a rare assemblage of old Eton cons-a gratification we had the pleasure to experience; and never did the festive board resound with more pleasant reminiscences from old friends: the social hour fled gaily, and every fresh glass brought its attendant joke. Heartly and Eglantine had, we found, been sufficiently long in Bath to become very able instructors to Transit and myself in all that related to the haute class, and old Barnaby Blackstrap was an equally able guide to every description of society, from the mediums down to the strange collections of vagrant oddities which are to be found in the back lanes and suburbs of the city of Bath. It has been well said, in a spirited reply to the Reverend Mr. Ek--r-s-l's illiberal satire, entitled "The Bath Man," that "London has its divisions of good and bad sets as well as Bath; nay, every little set has its lower set; Rank looks down contemptuously upon wealth; those who are asked to Carlton Palace cut the muligatawny set; the ancient aristocracy call law-lords and parvenues a bad set; and so downward through the whole scale of society, from Almack's to a sixpenny hop, 'still in the lowest deep a lower deep,' and human pride will ever find consolation that there is something to be found beneath it. Plain men, accustomed to form their notions of good and evil on more solid foundations than grades of fashionable distinctions, will not consent to stigmatize as bad any class of society because there may happen to

be a class above it." And what better apology could we desire for our eccentric rambles through every grade of Bath society? with us every set has its attractions, and I have known my friend Transit cut a nobleman and half a dozen honourables for the delightful gratification of enjoying the eccentricities of a beggars' club, and being enabled to sketch from the life the varied exhibition of passion and character which such a meeting would afford him. It will not, therefore, create any surprise in my readers, that our first evening in Bath should have been devoted to the social pipe; the pleasant account Blackstrap gave us of the sporting party, in Matthew Temple's snuggery, induced us to adjourn thither in the evening, where we might enjoy life, smoke our cigars, join a little chaffing about the turf and the ring, sip our punch and grog, enjoy a good chaunt, and collect a little character for the pages of the ENGLISH SPY. To such as are fond of these amusements, most heartily do I recommend a visit to the Sporting Parlour at the Castle, where they will not fail to recognise many of the jovial characters represented in the opposite page; and as old Time pays no respect to worth and mellow-hearted mortals, but in his turn will mow down my old friend Matthew and his merry companions, I am desirous to perpetuate their memory by a song, which will include all of note who upon this occasion joined the festive

scene.

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