natural attitudes and true colours; descended from their
pedestals, and divested of their formal draperies, undisguised by
art and affectation -- Here we have ministers of state, judges,
generals, bishops, projectors, philosophers, wits, poets,
players, chemists, fiddlers, and buffoons. If he makes any
considerable stay in the place, he is sure of meeting with some
particular friend, whom he did not expect to see; and to me there
is nothing more agreeable than such casual reencounters. Another
entertainment, peculiar to Bath, arises from the general mixture
of all degrees assembled in our public rooms, without distinction
of rank or fortune. This is what my uncle reprobates, as a
monstrous jumble of heterogeneous principles; a vile mob of noise
and impertinence, without decency or subordination. But this
chaos is to me a source of infinite amusement.

I was extremely diverted last ball-night to see the Master of the
Ceremonies leading, with great solemnity, to the upper end of the
room, an antiquated Abigail, dressed in her lady's cast-clothes;
whom he (I suppose) mistook for some countess just arrived at the
Bath. The ball was opened by a Scotch lord, with a mulatto
heiress from St Christopher's; and the gay colonel Tinsel danced
all the evening with the daughter of an eminent tinman from the
borough of Southwark. Yesterday morning, at the Pump-room, I saw a
broken-winded Wapping landlady squeeze through a circle of peers,
to salute her brandy-merchant, who stood by the window, propped
upon crutches; and a paralytic attorney of Shoe-lane, in
shuffling up to the bar, kicked the shins of the chancellor of
England, while his lordship, in a cut bob, drank a glass of water
at the pump. I cannot account for my being pleased with these
incidents, any other way, than by saying they are truly