Lisbon to get good port. "They took boat at Temple Stairs and prudently laid in by way of provisions a cold venison pasty and two bottles of raspberry brandy; but when they imagined themselves just arrived at Gravesend, they found themselves suddenly overset in Chelsea Reach, and very narrowly escaped being drowned." They must have been as drunk as the Greek revellers at Corinth, described by Athenæus, who seeing the room appear to move up and down, fancied that they were at sea in a storm on board a trireme, and began to throw the tables and couches out of window, in order to lighten the vessel. These were certainly at least half-seas over.

The Clubs-very different from the palaces of Pall Mall-and Coffee-houses were the great resort of politicians and literary men-and, indeed, of everybody who liked to pick up news and retail it over a cup of sack or beer and pipe of tobacco. There were White's Chocolate-house in St. James's Street; Willis's Coffee-house, called also Button's, on the north side of Russell Street in Covent Garden; the Cocoa Tree in St. James's Street; the Grecian, in Devereux Court in the Strand; Child's Coffee-house in St. Paul's Churchyard, where the clergy resorted; the Rose, by Temple Bar, close beside which was the barber's shop, where the young Templar used to have

"his shoes rubbed and his periwig powdered" before he went to the play; the Devil Tavern, not far off Jonathan's in Change Alley, frequented by merchants and brokers, and several others. And the sort of club-life which men of letters led then is pleasantly described by Addison in the first number of the 'Spectator." "Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's, and while I seem attentive to nothing but the 'Postman,' overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Tuesday night at St. James's Coffee-house, and sometimes join the little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes to hear and improve. My face is likewise very well known at the Grecian, the Cocoa Tree, and in the theatres both of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. I have been taken for a merchant upon the Exchange for above three years, and sometimes pass for a Jew in the assembly of stockjobbers at Jonathan's. In short, wherever I see a cluster of people I mix with them, though I never open my lips but in my own club." Dr. Johnson tells us that when Addison had suffered any vexation in his ill-assorted marriage with the Countess of Warwick-which was often enough— he withdrew the company from Button's house, and "from the coffee-house he went again to a tavern, where he often sat late and drank too much wine."

Button had been a servant in the Countess's

family.

Whatever may be said against clubs nowadays, as interfering with domestic life and preventing matrimony, the attractions of the old coffee-houses seem to have been more injurious to the supremacy of the wife. Here are one or two short notes written by Steele to his second wife Miss Scurlock, "his dear Prue," shortly after their marriage in 1707:

"DEAR PRUE:

"DEVIL TAVERN, TEMPLE Bar,

January 8, 1707-'8.

"I have partly succeeded in my business to-day, and enclose two guineas as earnest of more. Dear Prue, I cannot come home to dinner. I languish for your welfare, and will never be a moment careless

more.

"Your faithful husband,

"RICH. STEELE.”

How cunningly he tried to bribe her into good humor with the two guineas! But, alas, for his promises. A few days afterward he writes:

"DEAR WIFE,

"Mr. Edgcombe, Ned Ask, and Mr. Lumley, have desired me to sit an hour with them at the George, in

Pall Mall, for which I desire your patience till twelve o'clock, or that you will go to bed. . . ."

On another occasion he begs her not to send for him, lest he should seem to be a henpecked husband. "Dear Prue, don't send after me, for I shall be ridiculous." But he was, I fear, incorrigible, and must have tried Prue's patience not a little by such letters as the following:

"DEAR WIFE,

"TENNIS-COURT COFFEE-HOUSE, May 5, 1708.

"I hope I have done this day what will be pleasing to you; in the mean time, shall lie this night at a baker's, one Leg, over against the Devil Tavern, at Charing Cross. . . . If the printer's boy be at home, send him hither; and let Mrs. Todd send by the boy my night-gown, slippers, and clean linen. You shall hear from me early in the morning."

And yet he tells her in another letter, that he "knows no happiness in this life comparable to the pleasure he has in her society," although he adds a bit of advice which may, perhaps, have somewhat dashed the compliment. "Rising a little in the morning, and being disposed to a cheerfulness . . . . would not be amiss."

But

It seems that the complaint so often heard that young men will not marry, and therefore that young women are not married, is as old as the times of Richardson, and the causes assigned are nearly the same. Miss Byron, in one of her letters in 'Sir Charles Grandison,' says: "I believe there are more bachelors now in England by many thousands than were a few years ago; and probably the number of them (and of single women of course) will every year increase. The luxury of the age will account a good deal for this, and the turn our sex take in undomesticating themselves, for a good deal more. let not those worthy young women who may think themselves destined to a single life, repine over-much at their lot; since possibly if they have had no lovers, or having had one, two, or three, have not found a husband, they have had rather a miss than a loss, as men go. And let me here add, that I think as matters stand in this age, or, indeed, ever did stand, that those women who have joined with the men in their insolent ridicule of old maids, ought never to be forgiven; no, though Miss Grandison should be one of the ridiculers. An old maid may be an odious character, if they will tell us that the bad qualities of the persons, not the maiden state, are what they mean to expose; but then they must allow that there are old maids of