" In this way we
rallied our cameleon-selves, until we again found shelter from the dews
of night in Carpenter's coffee-house; a small, but well-conducted place,
standing at the east end of the market, which opens between two and
three o'clock in the morning, for the accommodation of those who are
hourly arriving with waggon loads of vegetable commodities. Here, over
a bottle of mulled port, Crony gave us the history of ~348~~what Covent
Garden used to be, when the eminent, the eccentric, and the notorious in
every walk of life, were to be found nightly indulging their festivities
within its famous precincts. "Covent Garden," said Crony, once so
celebrated for its clubs of wits and convents of fine women, is grown as
dull as _modern Athens_, and its ladies of pleasure almost as vulgar as
Scotch landladies; formerly, the first beauties of the time assembled
every evening under the Piazzas, and promenaded for hours to the
soft notes of the dulcet lute, and the silver tongues of amorous and
persuasive beaus; then the gay scene partook of the splendour of a
Venetian carnival, and such beauties as the Kitten, Peggy Yates, Sally
Hall the brunette, Betsy Careless, and the lively Mrs. Stewart, graced
the merry throng, with a hundred more, equally famed, whose names are
enrolled in the cabinet of Love's votaries.
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