venture to give himself such high and mighty airs. If he
felt any aspiration towards a political career, he would
think twice when he saw on the front bench of his audience
those very contemporaries on whose backs, a few years be-
fore, he had been hoisted three times a week to be flogged
for his mistakes in grammar and arithmetic. And so it was'
that society then had a less constrained and artificial aspect
than it has ever worn in times past. Men talked for
amusement and instruction, rather than for display. They
lived with those whom they liked, not with those whom
they feared. Their festivities and social gatherings were
not special and extraordinary occasions, but formed an
integral part of their everyday existence. They did not
dine am hour and a-half later than was pleasant, and sit
up five hours later than was wholesome. They did not
suffer themselves to be hustled upstairs by the ladies of
their family a little before midnight to dress for a ball
where they would have no space to dance. They did not
get together to settle the affairs of the nation in a badly-
ventilated senate-house at an hour when all honest men
should be in bed, — at at an hour when, if we are to believe
certain cynics, all honest men are in bed.
