Their dress
must have contributed to your mistake: they all wear the attire of
the personage they represent; for I wish their whole person to be
picturesque. By these means, I have travelled back several centuries,
and am in possession of beauties whom time had placed at a great
distance."
"Supper was served up. Mr. B---- seated himself between Mary, queen
of Scots, and Anne Bullein. I placed myself opposite to him,"
concludes the gentleman, "having beside me Ninon de l'Enclos, and
Gabrielle d'Estrees. We also had the company of the fair Rosamond and
Nell Gwynn; but at the head of the table was a vacant elbow-chair,
surmounted by a canopy, and destined for Cleopatra, who was coming
from Egypt, and of whose arrival Mr. B---- was in hourly
expectation."
LETTER XXI.
_Paris, November 21, 1801._
Often as we have heard of the extraordinary number of places of
public entertainment in Paris, few, if any, persons in England have
an idea of its being so considerable as it is, even at the present
moment. But, in 1799, at the very time when we were told over and
over again in Parliament, that France was unable to raise the
necessary supplies for carrying on the war, and would, as a matter of
course, be compelled not only to relinquish her further projects of
aggrandisement, but to return to her ancient territorial limits; at
that critical period, there existed in Paris, and its environs, no
less than seventy
PUBLIC PLACES OF VARIOUS DESCRIPTIONS.
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