Fields.

As little mercy was shown by the populace to sufferers of a humbler rank. If an offender was put into the pillory, it was well if he escaped with life from the shower of brick-bats and paving-stones. If he was tied to the cart's tail, the crowd pressed round him, imploring the hangman to give it the fellow well, and make him howl. Gentlemen arranged parties of pleasure to Bridewell on court days, for the purpose of seeing the wretched women who beat hemp there whipped. A man pressed to death for refusing to plead, a woman burned for coining, excited less sympany than is now felt for a galled horse or an over-driven ox. Fights, compared with which a boxing-match is a refined and humane spectacle, were among the favorite diversions of a large part of the town. Multitudes assembled to see gladiators hack each other to pieces with deadly weapons, and shouted with delight when one of the combatants lost a finger or an eye. The prisons were hells on earth, seminaries of every crime, and of every disease. At the assizes, the lean and yellow culprits brought with them from their cells to the dock an atmosphere of stench and pestilence which sometimes avenged them signally on bench, bar, and jury. But on all this misery society looked with profound indifference. Nowhere could be found that sensitive and restless compassion which has, in our time, extended a powerful protection to the factory child, to the Hindoo widow, to the negro slave, which peers into the stores and water-casks of every emigrant ship, which winces at every lash laid on the back of a drunken soldier, which will not suffer the thief in the hulks to be illfed or over-worked, and which has repeatedly endeavored to save the life even of the murderer."*

Macaulay's History of England, Vol. i., pp. 394, 395, (Harper's octavo

edition.)

A hundred years ago, in the habits of the best Englishmen, there existed the traces and consequences of the old demoralization. England was free. The long agony with the Stuarts was over. A new era had begun, of fame, of prosperity, of culture, of opportunity for the people, of literature, of ideas. But the social disease was not cured. The best were still afflicted by it. Drunkenness still remained, as one of its symptoms and expressions, on the upper surface and in the purest society. Bigotry, both religious and political, was a repulsive and characteristic feature of the country gentleman. He hated his neighbor, of different opinions, because they differed. The machinery of both Whig and Tory was unlimited bribery. The "Folly" coffee-house was his resort in town, where rural ladies listened to words of compliment from the wits and beaux of the time, which those of our own time would not dare to read. The duchess and the courtesan were alike visitors, where the gay maskers indulged in the allusions and jests of a corrupt taste and a licensed opportunity. "At the beginning of the eighteenth century," (says a recent historian,) "and long after, we see no struggle against great social evils, on the part of the clergy or the laity. Every attempt at social

reform was left to the legislature, which was utterly indifferent to those manifestations of wickedness and crime, that ought to have been dealt with by the strong hand. Education, in any large sense, there was none. Disease pursued its ravages, unchecked by any attempt to mitigate the evils of standing pools before the cottage door, and pestilent ditches in the towns. *** There were evils so abhorrent to humanity, that their endurance, without the slightest endeavor to mitigate or remove them, was an opprobrium of that age. The horrible state of the prisons was well known. The nosegay laid on the desk of the judge at every assize proclaimed that starvation and filth were sweeping away far more than perished by the executioner, terrible as that number was. London, and all other great towns, were swarming with destitute children, who slept in ash-holes, and at street doors. They were left to starve, and in due course to become thieves, and be hanged. ** One-fifth of the whole population were paupers."*

* * *

Disease, filth, ignorance, licentious manners, neglect of human want and woe, judicial cruelty, and pauperism! It needs only drunkenness to complete the picture. It was not the cause of all

*Popular History of England, by Charles Knight, Vol. v., page 60.

this. But it was a necessary concomitant; a part of the natural expression of an almost infinite inward evil. And I sometimes wonder whether, in permitting so many to yield to this merely sensual indulgence of brutish men, Divine Providence had not saved them from becoming human devils. That feature was not wanting, in the age to which I allude. I will allow the same historian to finish the description.

Quoting from the "Guardian," he goes on to say: "A method of spending one's time agreeably is a thing so little studied, that the common amusement of our young gentlemen, especially of such as are at a distance from those of the first breeding, is drinking.' Yet we have abundant evidence that those of the first breeding' were often the most intemperate. The moralists were not exempt from the common vice of our young gentlemen. Swift says: "I dined with Mr. Addison and Dick Stuart, Lord Mountjoy's brother, a treat of Addison's. They were half fuddled, but not I, for I mixed water with my wine.""

Gaming was the universal passion of the reign of Anne. In the first number of the "Tatler,” it is said of Will's Coffee House: "This place is very much altered since Mr. Dryden frequented it.

A

Where you used to see songs, epigrams and satires, in the hands of every one you met, you have now only a pack of cards. Into these places of public resort the lowest sharpers found their way; and gentlemen were not ashamed to stake their money against the money of the most infamous of society."

In Italy, writes Steele, "a cobbler may be heard working to an opera tune; and there is not a laborer or handicraftman that, in the cool of the evening, does not relieve himself with solos and sonnets." But, "on the contrary, our honest countrymen have so little inclination to music, that they seldom begin to sing until they are drunk." Sir John Hawkins has described the musical entertainments which were offered to the middle classes at this period. He says that "the landlords of public houses hired performers, and hither came very unrefined audiences, to drink and to smoke."

Writing of English life and manners, at about the end of the last century, or just after the American Revolution, Miss Martineau thus exhibits the same connection of sensual vulgarity on the surface, with deep and pervading contempt of the sacredness of humanity at the core:-*

* History of England, from 1816 to 1854, with an Introduction, 1800 to 1815. Vol. i., p. 28, 29.