The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 287: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

254 THE COURT OF LONDON his lofty mind contemned all the frivolity, the gaud, the grandeur, the pomp, and the display assembled and indeed personified there; it was because his elevated character made him despise that throng, brilliant though it were, as nothing more than a gathering of titled brigands and aristocratic demireps; it was because he regarded them all as the representatives, the votaries, and the supporters of a system which invests the few with inordinate wealth and plunges the millions into the direst poverty. He was there only because he had a self-imposed duty to perform; he was there, also, by virtue of the admission ticket which he had received from the Princess Sophia; and his object, as the reader already knows, was to seek the oppor- tunity of an interview with the prince regent. But, oh, as he glanced around upon those ladies of rank, wealth, and fashion, as he beheld the shameless exposure of their charms, observed the looks which they exchanged with the titled profligates respectively seated next to them, and saw them basking, as it were, in the voluptuous light which the de- vouring eyes of lasciviousness shed upon them in return, and as he unavoidably caught the tenor of the remarks which fell from rosy lips or were wafted in wanton whispers to greedily listening ears, he could not help thanking Heaven that he had been gifted with courage and sense and virtue sufficient to enable him to abjure the atmosphere of fashion, that atmosphere which is like the south wind of Oriental climes, laden with the fragrance of earth’s loveliest flowers, but bearing pestilence upon its wing. But let us now glance into the greenroom where the amateur performers were by this time assembled. All the indelicacies of the real stage costume, or, rather, of the ballet apparel at the opera, had been adopted by these fashionable imitators. It would almost seem as if the positive agreement had been, or at all events as if the tacit under- standing were, that the ladies who were to take part in the proceedings should be attired in a drapery as gauzy and as scanty as possible. Thus the fine person of Venetia was exposed to an extent that left little scope for the exercise of fancy and gave small opportunity for guesses. Not only were her fine plump shoulders completely bare, but the grand amplitude of her bust was revealed to the eye in a manner which outraged all modesty. Indeed, so large a portion Gomicbdooks (E(0)