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 condition at the time, and people who came for pleasure liked to be at ease.  Thus ladies lounged into the balls in their riding-hoods or morning dresses, gentlemen in boots, with their pipes in their mouths.  Such atrocities were intolerable to the late frequenter of London society, and in his imperious arrogance, the new monarch used actually to pull off the white aprons of ladies who entered the assembly-rooms with that degage article, and throw them upon the back seats.  Like the French emperor, again, he treated high and low in the same manner, and when the Duchess of Queensberry appeared in an apron, coolly pulled it off, and told her it was only fit for a maid-servant.  Her grace made no resistance.

The men were not so submissive; but the M.C. turned them into ridicule, and whenever a gentleman appeared at the assembly-rooms in boots, would walk up to him, and in a loud voice remark, ’Sir, I think you have forgot your horse.’  To complete his triumph, he put the offenders into a song called ‘Trentinella’s Invitation to the Assembly.’

    ’Come, one and all,
     To Hoyden Hall,
       For there’s the assembly this night: 
     None but proud fools,
     Mind manners and rules;
       We Hoydens do decency slight.

    ’Come trollops and slatterns,
     Cockt hats and white aprons;
       This best our modesty suits: 
     For why should not we
     In a dress be as free
       As Hogs-Norton squires in boots?’

and as this was not enough, got up a puppet-show of a sufficient coarseness to suit the taste of the time, in which the practice of wearing boots was satirized.