n became, what
the journalists of our time have been called, a fourth Estate of the
realm. The Court had long seen with uneasiness the growth of this
new power in the state. An attempt had been made, during Danby's
administration, to close the coffee houses. But men of all parties
missed their usual places of resort so much that there was an universal
outcry. The government did not venture, in opposition to a feeling so
strong and general, to enforce a regulation of which the legality might
well be questioned. Since that time ten years had elapsed, and during
those years the number and influence of the coffee houses had been
constantly increasing. Foreigners remarked that the coffee house was
that which especially distinguished London from all other cities; that
the coffee house was the Londoner's home, and that those who wished to
find a gentleman commonly asked, not whether he lived in Fleet Street
or Chancery Lane, but whether he frequented the Grecian or the Rainbow.
Nobody was excluded from these places who laid down his penny at the
bar. Yet every rank and profession, and every shade of religious and
political opinion, had its own headquarters. There were houses near
Saint James's Park where fops congregated, their heads and shoulders
covered with black or flaxen wigs, not less ample than those which are
now worn by the Chancellor and by the Speaker of the House of Commons.
The wig came from Paris and so did the rest of the fine gentleman's
ornaments, his embroidered coat, his fringed gloves, and the tassel
which upheld his pantaloons. The conversation was in that dialect which,
long after it had ceased to be spoken in fashionable circles, continued,
in the mouth of Lord Foppington, to excite the mirth of theatres. [129]
The atmosphere was like that of a perfumer's shop. Tobacco in any other
form than that of richly scented snuff was held in abomination. If
any clown, ignorant of the usages of the house, called for a pipe, the
sneers of the whole assembly and the short answers of the waiters soon
convinced him that he had better go somewhere else. Nor, indeed, would
he have had far to go. For, in general the coffee rooms reeked with
tobacco like a guardroom: and strangers sometimes expressed their
surprise that so many people should leave their own firesides to sit
in the midst of eternal fog and stench. Nowhere was the smoking more
constant than at Will's. That celebrated house, situated between Covent
Garden and