The English Spy, page 599 by Bernard Blackmantle
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xpectation that Dick Gradus, having arranged his legal affairs at Berkeley, would, by the dinner hour, arrive to join such a rare assemblage of old Eton cons--a gratification we had the pleasure to experience; and never did the festive board resound with more pleasant reminiscences from old friends: the social hour fled gaily, and every fresh glass brought its attendant joke. Heartly and Eglantine had, we found, been sufficiently long in Bath to become very able instructors to Transit and myself in all that related to the haute class, and old Barnaby Blackstrap was an equally able guide to every description of society, from the mediums down to the strange collections of vagrant oddities which are to be found in the back Janes and suburbs of the city of Bath. It has been well said, in a spirited reply to the Reverend Mr. Ek--r--s--l's illiberal satire, entitled "The Bath Man," that "London has its divisions of good and bad sets as well as Bath; nay, every little set has its lower set; Bank looks down contemptuously upon wealth; those who are asked to Carlton Palace cut the muligatawny set; the ancient aristocracy call law-lords and parvenues a bad set; and so downward through the whole scale of society, from Almack's to a sixpenny hop, 'still in the lowest deep a lower deep,' and human pride will ever find consolation that there is something to be found beneath it. Plain men, accustomed to form their notions of good and evil on more solid foundations than grades of fashionable distinctions, will not consent to stigmatize as bad any class of society because there may happen to ~299~~be a class above it." And what better apology could we desire for our eccentric rambles through every grade of Bath society? with us every set has its attractions, and I have known my friend Transit cut a nobleman and half a dozen honourables for the delightful gratification of enjoying the eccentricities of a beggars' club, and being enabled to sketch from the life the varied exhibition of passion and character which