about two hours, and we can easily imagine that the
rest of the company were delighted when the country dances, which
included everybody, began. The ball opened at six; the country dances
began at eight: at nine there was a lull for the gentlemen to offer
their partners tea; in due course the dances were resumed, and at eleven
Nash held up his hand to the musicians, and under no circumstances was
the ball allowed to continue after that hour. Nash well knew the value
of early hours to invalids, and he would not destroy the healing
reputation of Bath for the sake of a little more pleasure. On one
occasion the Princess Amelia implored him to allow one dance more. The
despot replied, that his laws were those of Lycurgus, and could not be
abrogated for any one. By this we see that the M.C. was already an
autocrat in his kingdom.

Nor is it to be supposed that his majesty's laws were confined to such
merely professional arrangements. Not a bit of it; in a very short time
his impudence gave him undenied right of interference with the coats and
gowns, the habits and manners, even the daily actions of his subjects,
for so the visitors at Bath were compelled to become. _Si parvis
componere magna recibit_, we may admit that the rise of Nash and that of
Napoleon were owing to similar causes. The French emperor found France
in a state of disorder, with which sensible people were growing more and
more disgusted; he offered to restore order and propriety; the French
hailed him, and gladly submitted to his early decrees; then, when he had
got them into the habit of obedience, he could make what laws he liked,
and use his power without fear of opposition. The Bath emperor followed
the same course, and it may be asked whether it does not demand as great
an amount of courage, assurance, perseverance, and administrative power
to subdue several hundreds of English ladies and gentlemen as to rise
supreme above some millions of French republicans. Yet Nash experienced
less opposition than Napoleon; Nash reigned longer, and had no infernal
machine prepared to blow him up.

Everybody was delighted with the improvements in the Pump-room, the
balls, the promenades, the chairmen--the _Rouge_ ruffians of the mimic
kingdom--whom he reduced to submission, and therefore nobody complained
when Emperor Nash went further, and made war upon the white aprons of
the ladies and the boots of the gentlemen. The society was in fact in a
very barbarous conditi