 sort of a monster Bath
will become in a few years, with those growing excrescences, may be easily
conceived: but the want of beauty and proportion is not the worst effect of
these new mansions; they are built so slight, with the soft crumbling stone
found in this neighbourhood, that I should never sleep quietly in one of them,
when it blowed (as the sailors say) a cap-full of wind; and, I am persuaded,
that my hind, Roger Williams, or any man of equal strength, would be able to
push his foot through the strongest part of their walls, without any great
exertion of his muscles. All these absurdities arise from the general tide of
luxury, which hath overspread the nation, and swept away all, even the very
dregs of the people. Every upstart of fortune, harnessed in the trappings of the
mode, presents himself at Bath, as in the very focus of observation - Clerks and
factors from the East Indies, loaded with the spoil of plundered provinces;
planters, negro-drivers, and hucksters, from our American plantations, enriched
they know not how; agents, commissaries, and contractors, who have fattened, in
two successive wars, on the blood of the nation; usurers, brokers, and jobbers
of every kind; men of low birth, and no breeding, have found themselves suddenly
translated into a state of affluence, unknown to former ages; and no wonder that
their brains should be intoxicated with pride, vanity, and presumption. Knowing
no other criterion of greatness, but the ostentation of wealth, they discharge
their affluence without taste or conduct, through every channel of the most
absurd extravagance; and all of them hurry to Bath, because here, without any
further qualification, they can mingle with the princes and nobles of the land.
Even the wives and daughters of low tradesmen, who, like shovel-nosed sharks,
prey upon the blubber of those uncouth whales of fortune, are infected with the
same rage of displaying their importance; and the slightest indisposition serves
them for a pretext to insist upon being conveyed to Bath, where they may hobble
country-dances and cotillons among lordlings, 'squires, counsellors, and clergy.
These delicate creatures from Bedfordbury, Butcher-row, Crutched-Friers, and
Botolph-lane, cannot breathe in the gross air of the Lower Town, or conform to
the vulgar rules of a common lodging-house; the husband, therefore, must provide
an entire house, or elegant apartments in the new buildings. Such is the
composition of what is called the fashionable company
