dissipation in the public-houses, combined, as it
would appear, with music and dancing, that
he recommended stringent measures; and
his essay led to the enactment of the statute
of seventeen hundred and fifty-two, whereby
such houses and rooms were placed under
magisterial control.

According to the terms of this act, no
house, room, or garden, for music, dancing, or
such-like entertainment, could be opened within
twenty miles of London, except by a licence
annually renewed at the Middlesex quarter
sessions. If this law were infringed, a penalty
of one hundred pounds would be imposed,
and all persons found in those places would
be treated as rogues and vagabonds. The
  dancing and singing-places were not to be
opened before five in the afternoon. Drury
Lane, Covent Garden, and the Opera House,
were exempt from this law, as having special
crown-licences. It is evident at a glance that
this statute was meant to meet the exigences
of a peculiar state of society; the anomaly
has been, to maintain the act in force when
the state of society has changed.

During the second half of the century there
do not appear to have been many such
  places licensed. One was Saddler's Wells,
which has since grown into a temple of
Shakspeare; another was Bagnigge Wells;
a third was Ranelagh; while others were
Marybone Gardens, the Bell and the Angel
at Edmonton, the King's Head at Enfield,
the Long Rooms at Hampstead, White
Conduit House, Islington Spa, the Adam and
Eve tea-garden, the Shepherd and
Shepherdess, &c. Some of these had much
celebrity in their day. Bagnigge Wells was a
favourite locality; for eighty years ago a
song told of—

               "Drinking tea, on Sunday afternoons,
   At Bagnigge Wells, with china and gilt spoons."

Ranelagh is familiar enough to the readers of
Fielding, Goldsmith, and Johnson, for its
lake, its elegant boat, its rotunda, its boxes
for tea and coffee-drinkers, its orchestra, its
vocal and instrumental performances, its
strolling and flirting, its hooped ladies, and
its powdered gentlemen, its fireworks, and
  its masquerades; it lingered until the beginning
of the present century, when it gave way
to bricks and mortar. Marybone Gardens
belonged to the old manor house of Mary-le-
bone; they were open freely to the public
for many years, but a charge was afterwards
made for admission, as to a favourite promenade,
—and to something worse, if we are
to credit Captain Macheath's expression of
regret that he had lost money playing with
lords at Marybone. The Bell at Edmonton
will never be forgotten until Cowper's
Johnny Gilpin is forgotton. The White
Conduit House lived until a few years
for information as to where it is now, ask the
bricklayers. Islington Spa has given place
to Spa Fields Chapel,—and, in short, nearly
all the old tea-gardens have given place to
buildings and streets.

Evidence, taken before a committee of the
House of Commons two years since, plainly
shows that the old statute, however well
intended a hundred years ago, is not fitted
for our day. The frequenters of Exeter Hall
little dream of the interpretation which
might be put upon the old statute, if rigidly
enforced. The act virtually prohibits all
morning concerts within twenty miles of
London; and two of the Middlesex magistrates
stated, "Such is the present state of
the law, that if the trustees of Exeter Hall
should permit the oratorio of the Messiah to
be once performed in their splendid building,
before the hour of five in the afternoon, their
licence would be forfeited, and the hall must
be for ever closed as a place of public entertainment;
and if the proprietors of Willis's Rooms
should allow a few concerts for charitable
purposes to be holden there in one season without
the machinery of ladies patronesses and
committees, it would be at the hazard of paying
a penalty of one hundred pounds for every
entertainment—nay, it may be doubted
whether the kind-hearted owner of any mansion
within the proscribed district who should
too frequently permit fancy fairs to be held
within his grounds, would not be liable to
fine and imprisonment, as the keeper of a
disorderly house, provided bands of music
were stationed in his park, and his high-born
visitors indulged in polkas and quadrilles;
for the courts of law have decided, not only
that the character of the visitors is immaterial,
but that it is not necessary (to ensure a
conviction) that money should be taken at
the doors, or that the place should be used
solely or principally for public entertainments."
At Exeter Hall, the difficulty is
surmounted by arranging that the morning
performances shall be rehearsals, without
taking money at the doors, while the morning
concerts at Hanover Rooms are considered
subscription concerts, with patrons and
patronesses, and so on.There are many
excellent and highly popular places of amusement
in London which might be placed in
some peril if this musty, antiquated statute
were enforced against them.

But what have the working classes been
doing in the meantime? The extension of
shilling concerts, and the excellent music
performed at them, are at once causes and
consequences of the improved tone of public
intelligence; but working men do not attend
them, except in small sprinklings. Look
round the hall on a shilling night, at Mr.
Hullah's rooms, and at the various parts of
the theatre at one of Jullien's shilling
concerts, and you will see that the listeners are
above the grade of those who are usually
deemed the working classes. The harmonic
meeting at the Pig and Whistle, at which the
celebrated Mr. Baritone will preside, draws a
greater number of those who, in the daytime,