ANDREWS'S EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. * THESE illustrations of the life, manners, &c.,

of England in the eighteenth century, are curious though not recondite, and read- able though frequently weak in the statement or the comment. It is a very difficult thing to revive the common life of the past. The accounts must mostly be drawn from the weakest of chroniclers—penny-a-liners in fact, or from the prints of in- ferior artists ; with the certainty that both classes of recorders have infused into their records a good deal of their own minds, without any certainty as to how much of the reality they have left out. If the compiler attempts to strengthen the, picture by vividly re- producing it as Macaulay has done in his celebrated chapter de-

• The .Eighteenth Century ; or Illustrations of the Manners and Customs of our

Grandfathers. .,By -Alexander Andrews. Published by Chapman and Hall,

scriptive of England in the seventeenth century, there is a pro- bability of the simple truth being transformed into something " better than good." Mr. Andrews generally presents his illus- trations by quotation, and it would have been well had he been even more sparing of original composition. His remarks are

often feeble ; his outline is vague, and apparently incorrect when he attempts to restore the whole figure from the disjecta membra.

.The subjects treated are upwards of twenty in number, mostly concerning London life in its externals. How people were dressed, were married, and were buried, in the last century—at what places and in what way they amused themselves—how they gambled, how they fought (duels)—what was the state of the streets in town and the roads in the country—with various kin- dred topics, are handled pleasantly but superficially. The diffi- culties of travelling in public conveyances—for private locomo- tion is almost overlooked—and the dangers of travel from gentle.. men of the road—are exhibited by instances. Crime, criminals, punishments and prisons, are treated rather fully, but with no- thing new : in fact, Mr. Hepworth Dixon's survey of the prisons, in his Life of Howard, tells all that Mr. Andrews does and a very great deal more. Newspapers are poorly done—very ; literature is chiefly dealt with in its modes : how books were printed, bound, and got rid of ; the dedications that introduced them ; the con- tents of magazines and the like. There are other topics that bear upon the general theme, and a few that do not except by a large interpretation.

The mutations of fashion as regards site are a curious thing in urban history. We do not mean those changes that spring. from a general advance in wealth,. population, and traffic, driving the great noble out of his mansion, and transferring it to other pur- poses. The change in the uses of Baynard Castle since the time of the Plantagenets is very great, but its worth remains. The site of Essex House is of greater value than when the most dis- tinguished of its Earls rushed forth on the mad enterprise that brought Essex to the block. It is the rise and fall of money's worth that we speak of. A century and a half ago, Bloomsbury Square was the abode of rank and fashion : it is respectable now, but only in a business sense. In the days of Walpole and Boling- broke, Chelsea was a nucleus of the great and noble : now it is most memorable for its Cremorne. At that time, and indeed till within about a century ago, the last recess of the temple of modern fashion was a riotous fair, with amusements that neither law nor opinion would tolerate at present.

"May Fair, in 1701, lasted sixteen days, and seems to have struggled on against a presentment of the Grand Jury of Westminster in 1708, and the sharp surveillance of the Grand Jury of Middlesex in 1744, until the year 1756.

" In 1736, we find by the papers that an ass-race attracted vast crowds to May Fair '; but at an earlier period, there appears to have been some business transacted there, as well as sports and pastimes. The following advertisement appeared in the London newspapers of April the 27th, 1700- ' In Brookfield Market-place, at the East corner of Hyde Park, is a fair to be kept for the space of sixteen days, beginning with the 1st of May ; the first three days for live cattle and leather, with the same entertainments as at Bartholomew Fair; where there are shops to be let, ready built, for all manner of tradesmen that usually keep fairs. And so to continue yearly at the same place.' " At May Fair Ducking Pond, on Monday next, the 27th June (1748), Mr. Hooton's dog, Nero, (with hardly a tooth in his head to hold a duck, but well known by his goodness to all that have seen him hunt,) hunts six ducks for a guinea against the bitch called the Flying Spaniel, from the ducking-pond on the other side of the water, who has beaten all she has hunted against excepting Mr. Hooton's Goodblood. To begin at two o'clock. Mr. Hooton begs his customers won't take it amiss to paytwopence admittance at the gate, and take a ticket which will be allowed as cash in their reckon- ing. None are admitted without a ticket, that such as are not liked may be kept out. Note—Bight Lincoln Ale.' "

In like manner, the Five Fields, the present Belgravia, was in our days a dirty, disreputable, and even dangerous place. The ostentation and formality of our ancestors is a stock sub- ject of jest; and, no doubt, they were formal enough. State was not, however, confined to the quality. Merchants and even tip- top tradesmen would lie in state, and all classes that could possibly pay for it went to their last home with lights and ceremony.

" We have before us an undertaker's bill, of a date as late as September 1780, for the funeral of a person of the middle class, which amounts to 611. odd, and contains the following items.

e. d.

To 82 men, for carrying of ye lights, at 2s. 6d 4 0 0 10 45 4: To 2 beadles attending ye corps, with silk dressings and To 32 branches for ditto, 2s. each To 68 lbs. of wax candles for ditto, at 3s. per lb

gowns, &c. 8sc 1 All, however, was not ostentation ; necessity had 10 0 " its share. The state coach was indispensable to resist the jolts of the roads, whose ruts would have made short work with the light modern carriage ; and the four or six horses were necessary to draw the state coach. De Foe, in 1724, thus describes the roads of Sussex— "'Sometimes I have seen one tree on a carriage which they call here a tug, drawn by two-and-twenty oxen ; and even then this carried so little a way, and then thrown down and left for other tugs to take up and carry on, that sometimes it is two or three years before it gets to Chatham ; for if once the rains come in, it stirs no more that year, and sometimes a whole summer is not dry enough to make the roads passable.' And again—' Going to church at a country village not far from Lewes I saw an ancient lady— and a lady of very good quality, I assure you—drawn to church in her coach with six oxen; nor was it done in frolic or humours but mere necessity, the way being so stiff and deep that no horses could go in it.' " So late as 1767, Arthur Young speaks in this way of an Essex road to Tilbury.

" So charged in the original."

41 Of all the cursed roads that ever disgraced this kingdom in the very ages of barbarism, none ever equalled that from Billericay to the King's Head at Tilbury. It is for near ten miles so narrow that a mouse cannot pass by any carriage. I saw a fellow creep under his waggon to assist me to lift, if possible, my chaise over a hedge. The ruts are of an incredible depth, and a pavement of diamonds might as well be sought for as a quarter. The trees everywhere overgrow the road, so that it is totally impervious to the sun except at a few places. And, to add to the infamous circumstances that continually occur to plague a travellvr, I must not forget the eternally meeting with chalk-waggons, themselves frequently stuck fast, till ea col- lection of them are in the same situation, and twenty or thirty horses may be tacked to each other to draw them out one by one. After this descrip- tion, will you, can you believe me, when I tell you that a turnpike was much solicited for by some gentlemen, to lead from Chelmsford to the fort at Tilbury Fort, but opposed by the bruins of this country, whose horses ace torn in pieces with bringing chalk through these vile roads ; and yet in this tract are found farmers who cultivate above a thousand (pounds) [acres ?] a year, but are perfectly contented with their roads." The extracts will convey a fair idea of the matter of Mr. An- drews's Eighteenth Century. It contains a good many curious facts, brought together from occasionally very accessible sources ; but it is far from exhausting the subject of which it treats, or from exhibiting a critical acumen.