lamentably scarce, and we may well wish that he had devoted less time to engraving and more to drawing.

Carlisle House stood at the corner of Sutton Street, on the east side of Soho Square. It was kept by Mrs. Cornelys, whom Walpole indirectly stigmatises as the ugliest woman of her day by describing Heidegger as her male counterpart. "On Wednesday evenings," wrote the eighteen-year-old Fanny Burney in her diary, "we went to Mrs. Cornelys' with Papa and Miss Nancy Pascall. The magnificence of the rooms, splendour of the illuminations and embellishment, and the brilliant appearance of the company exceeded anything I ever before saw. The apartments were so crowded we had scarce room to move, which was quite disagreeable; nevertheless, the flight of apartments both upstairs and on the ground floor seemed endless. the rooms were so full and hot that nobody attempted to dance."

It was in 1760 that Mrs. Cornelys—who had appeared in England as an opera singer in 1746-first took Carlisle House, which, under her auspices, was during the next dozen years the scene of some of the most brilliant assemblies that have ever been recorded. Casanova mentions that she had sometimes as many as six hundred people in her saloon at one time at two guineas a head, and even the institution of Almack's, in 1764, seems not to have affected her success to any appreciable extent. "Mrs. Cornelys," writes Walpole in this year, "apprehending the future assembly at Almack's, has enlarged her vast room, and hung it with blue satin, and another with yellow satin; but Almack's room, which is to be ninety feet long, proposes to swallow up both hers, as easily as Moses' rod gobbled down those of the magicians." Mrs. Cornelys, however, replied with an expenditure of a couple of thousand pounds in the year following on furniture and embellishments, including "the most curious, singular, and superb ceiling to one of the rooms that was ever executed or even thought of," an outlay which was amply justified by her future successes. In April 1768, for instance, the following is recorded in the Daily Advertiser :

"On Thursday last there was a remarkably brilliant Assembly at Mrs. Cornelys' in Soho Square. There were present (besides

some of the Royal Family) many of the foreign ministry and first nobility, the Prince of Monaco, and two or three of the principal gentlemen in his Serene Highness' train. The Prince seemed astonished at the profusion of state, elegance, and expense displayed throughout the house, and declared his perfect approbation of the Assembly, as by far exceeding the highest of his expectations, or what he could possibly have conceived of any place of entertainment of that nature."

In the following August the King of Denmark honoured Mrs. Cornelys' with a visit, and next year were added a new room for the dancing of Cotillons and Allemandes, and a suite of new rooms adjoining. In February 1770, one of the most brilliant masquerades of all was held, of which the following account in the papers is printed in Mr. Clinch's most interesting edition of Dr. Rimbault's MSS., with many other details of the history of this remarkable though now totally forgotten house:

"Monday night, the principal nobility and gentry of this kingdom, to the number of near eight hundred, were present at the masked ball at Mrs. Cornelys' in Soho Square, given by the gentlemen of the Tuesday Night's Club, held at the Star and Garter Tavern in Pall Mall. Soho Square and the adjacent streets were lined with thousands of people, whose curiosity led them to get a sight of the persons going to the masquerade; nor was any coach or chair suffered to pass unreviewed, the windows being obliged to be let down, and lights held up to display the figures to more advantage. At nine o'clock the doors of the house were opened, and from that time for about three or four hours the company continued to pour into the assembly. At twelve the lower rooms were opened; in these were prepared the sideboards, containing sweetmeats and a cold collation, in which elegance was more conspicuous than profusion. The richness and brilliancy of the dresses were almost beyond imagination; nor did any assembly ever exhibit a collection of more elegant and beautiful female figures. Among