Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/632

618 and belles, in which the violation of all decency is only equalled by the pompous inanity of the language, larded by scraps of French and Italian.

This general class of fashionable lounger was varied by the bully beau and the literary and sentimental ones. The bully beau resorted greatly to the Tilt-yard coffee-house, which was the military resort, and they were desirous to pass for military men. On this supposition they took upon them to hector and insult peaceably-inclined people, pulled the noses of those at the theatres who wore no swords, broke the heads of the drawers at taverns, and the box-keepers at theatres.



There is no character so odious and contemptible as that of the hectoring beaux of these times, as portrayed in the comedies and novels of the age. The literary or poetical beau, with his scented billet-doux, his love-verses, and affected phrases, figures equally in the same productions, and Addison says he might be at once known, on his entering a company, by "an elevated chest, a pinched hat, a measurable step, and a sly, surveying eye."

To enter into such vapid and heartless society as this, the young country heir was impatient to leave his paternal fields, and learn what was considered "life" in London. As he was most miserably educated—his acquirements, under from miserably-paid tutor, being only a little smattering of Latin and sometimes of Greek—he was instantly beset, on his arrival in town, by sharpers and by ruined spendthrifts, who quickly led him into all the expenses of dress and equipage, and the vices of the place. It is his career which Hogarth has so admirably depicted in "The Rake's Progress." If the poor dupe escaped without utter ruin to his paternal hall and acres, he again settled down to his rustic existence of fox-hunting and carousing, and his exploits in London became the theme of all his life after. It is from this source that some country people, even in these times of railroads and rapid intercourse, still retain ideas of the sharpers, and bullies, and wonderful doings of London.

Thus it is certain that, in whatever respects the country had advanced, it had made no progress in morals, decorum, or sound intelligence and solid mind from the so much denounced days of Charles II. Duller life had become, but not more decent or more intellectual. How should it? The Georges brought no such refinements, no such progress with them from Hanover. Heavy and ignorant, despising all learning, and still more all genius and activity of idea, they were as debauched as Charles himself, and infinitely more gross and stupid with it. They still maintained their concubines in the face of the country, as a matter of established custom in the case of royalty; and whilst the