[56]
French dancer the less sure of the distinguishing patronage of the English gentry. (These remarks are vulgar, but who can dispute them?) Pluto and Epicurus seem our only deities. Review the opera-house upon the ruin of Cornwallis—you would imagine the temple of Janus had been shut up, and that Mars was only engaged in cuckolding Vulcan: while the British theatre was perhaps entirely deserted, and Shakespeare and Congreve abandoned for Simonet and Metastasio.
Our glory is, that what others have done from expediency, we do from election. Lewis the Fourteenth blinded the city of Paris with tournaments and festivities, at the very time his own and Madam Maintenon's jewels were fold by public auction at Amsterdam.—His gaiety was artful, ours is entirely natural. Royal personages are very active in our pastimes likewise, but whom I sincerely acquit of having Lewis the Fourteenth for a model, or of being impelled by any political motive under heaven.
Such, or nearly such, was Rome in the days of Sylla[1]—completely such in the days of
- ↑ Urbem venalem, et mature perituram, si emptorem invenerit.
