Tunbridge Wells at the end of the eighteenth century, certainly Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, "The Queen of the Blue-Stockings," was the visitor in the middle of that century. Year after year from 1745, almost without intermission, she came to take the water, staying from 1752 at the White Stone House on Mount Ephraim. Though she wrote to the Duchess of Newcastle, complaining," These Houses at Tunbridge have so much the air of Inns, and the whole is such a scrambling life one feels oneself at rest very comfortably when one gets away," yet she was, to judge from the following encomium, very fond indeed of the spa.

66

Mrs. Montagu to Mrs. Anstey.

"Sandelford, 1749.

... Why hesitate a moment about going thither? The waters are good, the air incomparable, the place agreeable, and you cannot make a better summer's campaign. Rural and polite life are happily associated there; you may have the most retired, or the most public walks, as you are disposed; the variety of persons and characters make Tunbridge an epitome of the world. I am apt to

regret the absence of those things which propriety endears, as one's house, gardens, &c.; otherwise I think Tunbridge life far from disagreeable. The reserve and gravity of our nation is less prevailing there than in any place where people are fixed in a domestic establishment, and have a little society of their own towards which they have so strict a fidelity as scarce to bestow a look or smile on a stranger; but in a place of this kind people easily enter into an acquaintance which they can drop at the end of the season, if it does not answer their expectations. You will see beautiful and romantic views; and the place which is now the resort of fine, gay, and polite people, seems designed rather for the retirement of savages, or sages petrified to savageness."

In the year before Mrs. Montagu so heartily recommended Tunbridge Wells, a sketch of the Pantiles was made by Logan. Logan was a celebrated character at "The Wells." It is said that at one time he had been dwarf at the court of the Prince and Princess of Wales, but in the middle of the eighteenth century he had settled at the watering-place, where he kept a shop at the far end of the Pantiles. He sold fans upon which he painted portraits, and these

were much in demand, as also were his more elaborate drawings. This sketch of the company on the Pantiles in August 1748 is his best known work, and it was first published in Mrs. Barbauld's edition of Richardson's Correspondence, when it was labelled, "The remarkable characters who were at Tunbridge Wells with Richardson in 1748, from a drawing in his possession, with references in his own writing." In the picture we see Lord Harcourt and Colley Cibber about to accost Dr. Johnson and the Bishop of Salisbury; David Garrick talking to Mrs. Frasi; and Elizabeth Chudleigh walking with Beau Nash and William Pitt. The Speaker and Lord Powis are conversing with the Duchess of Norfolk, Miss Peggy Banks, Lady Lincoln, and Lyttelton; while close by is Richardson, and some way in the background a German baron who may be Pöllnitz; the Speaker's wife and daughter are chatting to Mrs. Johnson; and Whiston is in solitary communion, doubtless meditating upon the end of the world.

A group more representative of the company than that depicted by Logan could scarcely have been designed, but the artist omitted to insert in the gathering on the Pantiles any of the great leaders of fashion of the day. Happily