inferior to them in intellect and superior in fashion. Instead of playing,
as they sometimes did, a false game to amuse the multitude, they were
obliged now to exert their real skill, and play fair with one another.

Sir James Harrington tells us, that in his days the courtiers who played at
divers games in public, had a way of exciting the admiration and amazement
of the commoner sort of spectators, by producing heaps of golden counters,
and seeming to stake immense sums, when all the time they had previously
agreed among one another, that each guinea should stand for a shilling, or
each hundred guineas for one: so that in fact two modes of calculation were
used for the initiated and uninitiated; and this exoteric practice goes on
continually to this hour, among literary performers in the intellectual, as
well as among courtiers in the fashionable world.

Besides the pleasure of studying celebrated characters, and persons of
eminent merit, at their ease and at her own, Caroline had now opportunities
of seeing most of those objects of rational curiosity, which with Lady Jane
Granville had been prohibited as _mauvais ton_. With men of sense she found
it was not _mauvais ton_ to use her eyes for the purposes of instruction or
entertainment.

With Mrs. Alfred Percy she saw every thing in the best manner; in the
company of well-informed guides, who were able to point out what was
essential to be observed; ready to explain and to illustrate; to procure
for them all those privileges and advantages as spectators, which common
gazers are denied, but which liberal and enlightened men are ever not only
ready to allow, but eager to procure for intelligent, unassuming females.

Among the gentlemen of learning, talents, and eminence in Alfred's own
profession, whom Caroline had the honour of seeing at her brother's, were