in this garden [Jonathan Tyers] gains and spends successively
considerable annual sums. He was born for such enterprises. At once
spirited and tasteful, he shrinks from no expense where the amusement of
the public is concerned, and the public, in its turn, repays him
liberally. Every year he adds some fresh decoration, some new and
exceptional scene. Sculpture, Painting, Music, bestir themselves
periodically to render this resort more agreeable by the variety of
their different productions: in this way opportunities of relaxation are
infinite in England, above all at London; and thus Music plays a
prominent part. The English take their pleasure without amusing
themselves, or amuse themselves without enjoyment, except at table, and
there only up to the point when sleep supervenes to the fumes of wine
and tobacco."

Elsewhere M. Rouquet, like M. le Blanc before him, is loud in his
denunciation of the pitiful practices of Vails-giving, which blocks the
vestibule of every English house with an army of servants "ranged in
line, according to their rank," and ready "to receive, or rather exact,
the contribution of every guest." The excellent Jonas Hanway wrote a
pamphlet reprehending this objectionable custom. Hogarth steadily set
his face against it; but Reynolds is reported to have given his man L100
a year for the door. Here, from another place, is a description of one
of those popular auctions, at which, in the _Marriage A-la-Mode_, my
Lady Squanderfieid purchases the _bric-a-brac_ of Sir Timothy Babyhouse,
The scene is probably Cock's in the Piazza at Covent Garden:--"Nothing
is so diverting as this kind of sale--the number of those assembled, the
diverse passions which animate them, the pictures, the auctioneer
himself, his very rostrum, all contribute to the variety of the
spectacle. There you see the faithless broker purchasing in secret what
he openly depreciates; or--to spread a dangerous snare--pretending to