little regard to plan and propriety, that the different lines of
the new rows and buildings interfere with, and intersect one
another in every different angle of conjunction. They look like
the wreck of streets and squares disjointed by an earthquake,
which hath broken the ground into a variety of holes and
hillocks; or as if some Gothic devil had stuffed them altogether
in a bag, and left them to stand higgledy piggledy, just as
chance directed. What sort of a monster Bath will become in a few
years, with those growing excrescences, may be easily conceived:
but the want of beauty and proportion is not the worst effect of
these new mansions; they are built so slight, with the soft
crumbling stone found in this neighbourhood, that I shall never
sleep quietly in one of them, when it blowed (as the sailors say)
a cap-full of wind; and, I am persuaded, that my hind, Roger
Williams, or any man of equal strength, would be able to push his
foot through the strongest part of their walls, without any great
exertion of his muscles. All these absurdities arise from the
general tide of luxury, which hath overspread the nation, and
swept away all, even the very dregs of the people. Every upstart
of fortune, harnessed in the trappings of the mode, presents
himself at Bath, as in the very focus of observation -- Clerks
and factors from the East Indies, loaded with the spoil of
plundered provinces; planters, negro-drivers, and hucksters from
our American plantations, enriched they know not how; agents,
commissaries, and contractors, who have fattened, in two
successive wars, on the blood of the nation; usurers, brokers,
and jobbers of every kind; men of low birth, and no breeding,
have found themselves suddenly translated into a state of
affluence, unknown to former ages; and no wonder that their
brains should be intoxicated with pride, vanity, and presumption.