The Troy squires sulked in their
country-houses, hunted foxes, and grumbled against the reigning dynasty;
yet hardly wished to see the nation convulsed by a counter-revolution
and another return of the Stuarts.
If politics had run to commonplace, so had morals; and so too had
religion. Despondent writers of the day even complained that British
courage had died out. There was little sign to the common eye that under
a dull and languid surface, forces were at work preparing a new life,
material, moral, and intellectual. As yet, Whitefield and Wesley had not
wakened the drowsy conscience of the nation, nor the voice of William
Pitt roused it like a trumpet-peal.
It was the unwashed and unsavory England of Hogarth, Fielding, Smollett,
and Sterne; of Tom Jones, Squire Western, Lady Bellaston, and Parson
Adams; of the "Rake's Progress" and "Marriage a la Mode;" of the lords
and ladies who yet live in the undying gossip of Horace Walpole,
be-powdered, be-patched, and be-rouged, flirting at masked balls,
playing cards till daylight, retailing scandal, and exchanging double
meanings. Beau Nash reigned king over the gaming-tables of Bath; the
ostrich-plumes of great ladies mingled with the peacock-feathers of
courtesans in the rotunda at Ranelagh Gardens; and young lords in velvet
suits and embroidered ruffles played away their patrimony at White's
Chocolate-House or Arthur's Club. Vice was bolder than to-day, and
manners more courtly, perhaps, but far more coarse.
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