weather, hardly any dust, and were exceedingly agreeable as we did not speak above once in three miles. We had a very neat chaise from Devizes; it looked almost as well as a gentleman's, at least as a very shabby gentleman's. In spite of this advantage, however, we were above three hours coming from thence to the Paragon, and it was half after seven by your clocks before we entered the house. We drank tea as soon as we arrived; and so ends the account of our journey, which my mother bore without any fatigue."
Bath was not new to Jane Austen, as all readers of Northanger Abbey must perceive; but its palmy days, as we read of them in The Virginians, Evelina and Northanger Abbey, were past before she went to live there; and though there was still a fair amount of small gaieties in the town, they can hardly have been very attractive to a girl of her age. With all her cheerfulness she was a good deal bored by them, and it is not wonderful when we read such an account as this, and remember that ab uno disce omnes. "I hope you honoured my toilette and ball with a thought. I dressed myself as well as I could, and had all my finery much admired at home. By nine o'clock my uncle, aunt, and I entered the rooms, and linked Miss Winstone on to us. Before tea it was rather a dull affair, but then the before tea did not last long, for there was only one dance, danced by four couple. Think of four couple surrounded by about a hundred people, dancing in the upper rooms at Bath." We may well think of it, and this was the liveliest form of dissipation Jane had, for she records soon after "another stupid party last night; perhaps if larger they might be less intolerable, but here there were only just enough to make one card-table, with six
