eyes of men, that now ungratefully begin to turn them only on the
defeats of their benefactress.

The Christmas functions here were showy, and I thought well-contrived;
the public ones are what I speak of: but I was present lately at a
private merrymaking, where all distinctions seemed pleasingly thrown
down by a spirit of innocent gaiety. The Marquis's daughter mingled in
country-dances with the apothecary's prentice, while her truly noble
parents looked on with generous pleasure, and encouraged the mirth of
the moment. Priests, ladies, gentlemen of the very first quality, romped
with the girls of the house in high good-humour, and tripped it away
without the incumbrance of petty pride, or the mean vanity of giving
what they expressively call _foggezzione_, to those who were proud of
their company and protection. A new-married wench, whose little fortune
of a hundred crowns had been given her by the subscription of many in
the room, seemed as free with them all, as the most equal distribution
of birth or riches could have made her: she laughed aloud, and rattled
in the ears of the gentlemen; replied with sarcastic coarseness when
they joked her, and apparently delighted to promote such conversation as
they would not otherwise have tried at. The ladies shouted for joy,
encouraged the girl with less delicacy than desire of merriment, and
promoted a general banishment of decorum; though I do believe with full
as much or more purity of intention, than may be often met with in a
polished circle at Paris itself.

Such society, however, can please a stranger only as it is odd and as it
is new; when ceremony ceases, hilarity is left in a state too natural
not to offend people accustomed to scenes of high civilization; and I
suppose few of us could return, after twenty-five years old, to the
coarse comforts of _a roll and treacle._