bish that ought to be swept off the stage with
the Filth and Dust."[A] Time has avenged the actress for this slight;
who, excepting the student of theatrical history, remembers Gildon?

[Footnote A: From the "Comparison Between the Two Stages."]

What is more to the purpose, Nance was able to avenge herself in the
flesh, only a few months after these contemptuous lines had been
penned. It happened at Bath, in the summer of 1703, and the story of
her triumph, brief as it is, sounds quaint and pretty, as it comes
down to us laden with a thousand suggestions of fashionable life in
the reign of Queen Anne--a life made up of gossip and cards, drinking,
gaming, patches and powder, fine clothes, full perriwigs and empty
heads. What a picturesque lot of people there must have been at the
great English spa that season, all anxious to get a glimpse of her
plump majesty, who was staying there, and all willing enough to do
anything except to test the waters or the baths from which the place
first acquired fame. They were all there, the pretty maids and
wrinkled matrons, the young rakes of twenty, ready for a frolic, and
the old rakes of thirty too weary to do much more than go to the
theatre and cry out, "Damme, this is a damn'd play." Then the
children, who were always in the way, and the aged fathers of families
who liked to swear at the dandified airs and newly imported French
manners of their sons. And such sons as some of them were too--smart
fellows, of whom the beau described in "The Careless Husband," may be
taken as an example: one "that's just come to a small estate, and a
great perriwig--he that sings himself among the women--he won't speak
to a gentleman when a lord's in company. You always see him with a
cane dangling at his button, his breast open, no gloves, one eye
tuck'd under his hat, and a toothpick."

What of the belles of the Bath? They seem to have been much after the
fashion of their modern sisters, with their harmless little vanities,
their love of expensive finery, and their pretty eyes ever watching
for the main chance, or a chance man. Odsbodkins! but the world has
changed very little, for even then we hear of dashing specimens of the
New Woman, in the persons of ladies who affected men's hats, feathers,
coats, and perriwigs, to such an extent that our dear friend Addison
will gently rebuke them during the reign of the _Spectator_. He
doubts if this masculinity will "smite more effectually their male
b