Ho d<m
 
 "For Better? For Worse?" 
 
 Notes on Social Changes
 
 Some New Novels* 
 
 Crown 8vo, Cloth, 6s. 
 
 High Policy* 
 
 By C. F. KEARY. 
 
 Love and the Soul Hunters. 
 
 By JOHN OLIVER HOBBES. 
 
 Blue Lilies. 
 
 By LUCAS CLEEVK. 
 
 The Lady-Killer. 
 
 By H. DE VERB STACPOOLE. 
 
 London: T. FISHER UNWIN.
 
 " 
 
 ffov Better? ffov 
 
 ' 
 
 Notes on Social 
 
 By 
 
 George W. E. Russell 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 1 Collections and Recollections " and "An Onlooker's Notebook 
 
 London 
 
 TV Fisher Unwin 
 
 Paternoster Square 
 1902
 
 MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH. 
 
 All Rights Reserved.
 
 TO MY FRIEND 
 F. R. S. 
 
 1872 1902. 
 
 2209272
 
 " For Better ? 
 
 For Worse ? " 
 
 I HAVE been invited to make 
 some comments on recent changes 
 in society, and I obey the call, 
 though not without misgiving. 
 " Society" in its modern ex- 
 tension is so wide a subject 
 that probably no one can 
 survey more than a limited 
 
 portion of its area, and if one 
 
 7
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? 5: 
 
 generalizes too freely from one's 
 own experience, one is likely 
 to provoke the contradictions of 
 critics who, surveying other por- 
 tions, have been impressed by 
 different, and perhaps contrary, 
 phenomena. All such contradic- 
 tions I discount in advance. After 
 all, one can only describe what one 
 has seen, and my equipment for 
 the task entrusted to me consists 
 of nothing more than a habit 
 of observation and a retentive 
 memory. 
 
 I was born in 1853, and brought 
 up in that "sacred circle of the 
 Great-Grandmotherhood " of which 
 Mr. Beresford-Hope made such 
 excellent fun in Strictly Tied Up.
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 As Mr. Squeers considered himself 
 the "right shop for morals," so 
 the Whigs considered themselves 
 the right shop for manners. What 
 they said and did everyone ought 
 to say and do, and from their 
 judgment there was no appeal. 
 A social education of this kind 
 leaves traces which time is power- 
 less to efface " Vieille ecole, bonne 
 ecole, begad!" as Major Pendennis 
 said. In twenty-five years' contact 
 with a more enlarged society, one 
 has found a perpetual interest in 
 watching the departure, gradual 
 but nearly universal, from the 
 social traditions of one's youth. 
 The contrast between Now and 
 Then is constantly reasserting
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 itself, and if I note some instances 
 of it just as they occur to my mind, 
 I shall be doing, at anyrate in 
 part, what has been required of 
 me. 
 
 I will take the most insignifi- 
 cant instances first instances of 
 phrase and diction and pronuncia- 
 tion. I am just old enough to 
 remember a great-grandmother 
 who said that she "lay" at a 
 place when she meant that she 
 had slept there, and spoke of 
 "using the potticary" when we 
 should speak of sending for the 
 doctor. Some relations of a 
 later generation said "'ooman" 
 for woman, and, when they were 
 much obliged, said they were 
 
 10
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? * 
 
 much " obleeged." " Brarcelet " for 
 bracelet and " diamonds" for dia- 
 monds were common pronuncia- 
 tions. Tuesday was "Toosday," 
 and a duke was a "dook," and 
 first was "fust." Chariot was 
 "charr'ot," and Harriet " Harr'yet," 
 and I have even heard " Jeames" 
 for James. " Goold" for gold and 
 "yaller" for yellow were common 
 enough. Stirrups were always 
 called "sturrups," and squirrels 
 "squrrels," and wrapped was 
 pronounced " wropped," and tassels 
 " tossels," and Gertrude " Jer- 
 trude." A lilac was always called 
 a "laylock," and a cucumber a 
 " cowcumber." The stress was laid 
 
 on the second syllable of balcony, 
 ii
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 even as it is written in the " Di- 
 verting History of John Gilpin " : 
 
 At Edmonton his loving wife 
 
 From the balcony spied 
 Her tender husband, wondering much 
 
 To see how he did ride. 
 
 N.B. Cowper was a Whig. 
 
 Of course, these archaisms were 
 already passing away when I 
 began to notice them, but some 
 of them survive until this hour, 
 and only last winter, after an 
 evening service in St. Paul's 
 Cathedral, I was delighted to hear 
 a lady, admiring the illuminated 
 dome, exclaim, "How well the 
 doom looks ! " 
 
 Then, again, as regards the 
 names of places. I cannot profess 
 to have heard "Lunnon," but I 
 
 12
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' : 
 
 have heard the headquarters of my 
 family called " 'Ooburn," and Rome 
 "Roome," and Sevres "Saver," 
 and Falmouth " Farmouth," and 
 Penrith " Peerith," and Cirencester 
 " Ciciter." 
 
 Nowadays it is as much as 
 one can do to get a cabman to 
 take one to Berwick Street or 
 Berkeley Square, unless one calls 
 them Ber-wick or Burkley. Gower 
 Street and Pall Mall are pro- 
 nounced as they are spelt ; and, if 
 one wants a ticket for Derby, the 
 booking-clerk obligingly corrects 
 one's request to " Durby." 
 
 And, as with pronunciation, so 
 also with phrase and diction 
 
 Change and decay in all around I see. 
 13
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 When I was young the word 
 "lunch," whether substantive or 
 verb, was regarded with a peculiar 
 horror, and ranked with "'bus" 
 in the lowest depths of vulgarity. 
 A certain group said " nuncheon," 
 as Browning does in " The Pied 
 Piper of Hamelin," though with- 
 out his excuse of wanting a rhyme ; 
 but this was only a sectional 
 peculiarity, and barely affected 
 the universal reign of "luncheon/' 
 To "take" in the sense of eat or 
 drink was another abomination 
 which lay too deep for words. 
 " You take exercise or take physic ; 
 nothing else/' said Brummel to the 
 lady who asked him to take tea. 
 " I beg your pardon, you also
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 take a liberty/' was the just 
 rejoinder. 
 
 I well remember that, when 
 the journals of an Illustrious 
 Person were published and it 
 appeared that a royal party had 
 "taken luncheon" on a hill, it 
 was stoutly contended in Whig 
 circles that the servants had 
 taken the luncheon to the hill 
 where their masters ate it ; and, 
 when a close examination of the 
 text proved this gloss to be im- 
 possible, it was decided that the 
 original must have been written 
 in German, and that it had been 
 translated by someone who did 
 not know the English idiom. To 
 
 "ride," meaning to travel in a 
 15
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? v 
 
 carriage, was, and I hope still is, 
 regarded as the peculiar property 
 of my friend Pennialinus, and I 
 remember the mild sensation 
 caused in a Whig house when a 
 neighbour who had driven over 
 to luncheon declined to wash her 
 hands on the ground that she had 
 "ridden in gloves." The vehicle 
 which was invented by a Lord 
 Chancellor and called after his 
 name was scrupulously pro- 
 nounced so as to rhyme with 
 groom, and anyone indiscreet 
 enough to say that he had 
 ridden in "the Row" would pro- 
 bably have been asked if he had 
 gone round by "the Zoo." 
 
 " Cherry pie and apple pie ; all 
 16
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 the rest are tarts/' was an axiom 
 carefully instilled into the young 
 gastronomer ; while " to pass " the 
 mustard was bound in the same 
 bundle of abominations as " 111 
 trouble you," "may I assist you?" 
 "not any, thank you/' and "a 
 very small piece." 
 
 Then, again, as to what may be 
 called the Manners of Eating. A 
 man who put his elbows on the 
 table would have been considered 
 a Yahoo, and he who should eat 
 his asparagus with a knife and 
 fork would have been classed 
 with the traditional collier who 
 boiled his pineapple. Fish-knives 
 (like oxidized silver biscuit-boxes) 
 
 were unknown and undreamt-of 
 B 17
 
 "For Better? For Worse?' 
 
 horrors. To eat one's fish with 
 two forks was the cachet of a 
 certain circle, and the manner of 
 manipulating the stones of a 
 cherry pie was the articulus 
 stantis val cadentis. The little 
 daughter of a great Whig house, 
 whose eating habits had been 
 contracted in the nursery, once 
 asked her mother with wistful 
 longing, " Mamrna, when shall I 
 be old enough to eat bread and 
 cheese with a knife, and put the 
 knife in my mouth ?" and she 
 was promptly informed that not 
 if she lived to attain the age of 
 Methuselah would she be able 
 to acquire that "unchartered 
 freedom." On the other hand, 
 
 18
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 old gentlemen of the very highest 
 breeding used after dinner to 
 rinse their mouths in their finger- 
 glasses and thereby caused 
 unspeakable qualms in un- 
 accustomed guests. In that 
 respect at anyrate, if in no 
 other, the most inveterate praiser 
 of times past must admit that 
 alteration has not been deterio- 
 ration. 
 
 Another marked change in 
 society is the diminution of 
 stateliness. A really well-turned- 
 out carriage, with a coachman in 
 a wig and two powdered footmen 
 behind, is nearly as rare an object 
 in Mayfair as a hansom in Ber- 
 
 mondsey or a tandem in Bethnal 
 19
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 Green. Men go to the levee in 
 cabs or on motor-cars, and send 
 their wives to the Palace Ball in 
 the products of the Coupe Com- 
 pany. The Dowager Duchess of 
 Cleveland (1792-1883) once told 
 me that Lord Salisbury had no 
 carriage. On my expressing in- 
 nocent surprise, she said, " I have 
 been told that Lord Salisbury 
 goes about London in a 
 brougham"; and her tone could 
 not have expressed a more lively 
 horror if the vehicle had been a 
 coster's barrow. People of a less 
 remote date than the duchess's 
 had become inured to barouches 
 for ladies and broughams for men, 
 but a landau was contemned 
 
 20
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 under the derogatory nickname 
 of a " demi-fortune," and the 
 spectacle of a great man scaling 
 the dizzy heights of the 'bus or 
 plunging into the depths of the 
 Twopenny Tube would have given 
 rise to lively comment. 
 
 A pillar of the Tory party, who 
 died not twenty years ago, finding 
 his newly married wife poking the 
 fire, took the poker from her 
 hands and said with majestic 
 pain, " My dear, will you kindly 
 remember that you are now a 
 countess?" A Liberal statesman, 
 still living, when he went to 
 Harrow for the first time, sailed 
 up the Hill in the family coach, 
 and tradition does not report that 
 
 21
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 his schoolfellows kicked him with 
 any special virulence. 
 
 I have known people who in 
 travelling would take the whole 
 of a first-class carriage sooner 
 than risk the intrusion of an un- 
 known fellow-passenger, whereas 
 their descendants would as likely 
 as not reach their destination on 
 bicycles, having pulled up at some 
 wayside inn for a mutton chop 
 and a whisky-and-soda. 
 
 22
 
 II 
 
 THOUGH stateliness has palpably 
 diminished, the beauty of life has 
 as palpably increased. In old 
 days people loved, or professed to 
 love, fine pictures, and those who 
 had them made much of them. 
 But with that one exception no 
 one made any attempt to sur- 
 round himself with beautiful 
 objects. People who happened 
 to have fine furniture used it 
 because they had it, unless, 
 indeed, the desire to keep pace 
 with the fashion induced them 
 
 to part with Louis Seize or Chip- 
 23
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 pendale and replace it by the 
 austere productions of Tottenham 
 Court Road. The idea of buying 
 a chimneypiece or a cabinet or a 
 bureau because it was beautiful 
 never crossed the ordinary mind. 
 The finest old English china was 
 habitually used, and not seldom 
 smashed, in the housekeeper's 
 room. It was the age of horse- 
 hair and mahogany, and crimson 
 flock papers and green rep cur- 
 tains. Whatever ornaments the 
 house happened to possess were 
 clustered together on a round 
 table in the middle of the draw- 
 ing-room. The style has been 
 immortalized by the hand of a 
 
 master : " There were no skilfully 
 
 24
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 contrasted shades of grey or green, 
 no dado, no distemper. The wood- 
 work was grained and varnished 
 after the manner of the Philis- 
 tines, the walls papered in dark 
 crimson, with heavy curtains of 
 the same colour, and the side- 
 board, dinner-waggon, and row of 
 stiff chairs were all carved in the 
 same massive and expensive style 
 of ugliness. The pictures were 
 those familiar presentments of 
 dirty rabbits, fat white horses, 
 bloated goddesses, and misshapen 
 boors by masters who, if younger 
 than they assumed to be, must 
 have been quite old enough to 
 know better/' A man who hung 
 
 a blue and white plate on a wall 
 
 25
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? v 
 
 or put peacocks' feathers in a vase 
 would have been regarded as 
 insane ; and I well remember the 
 outcry of indignation and scorn 
 when a well-known collector of 
 bric-a-brac had himself painted 
 with a pet teapot in his hands. 
 
 In this respect the change is 
 complete. The owners of fine 
 picture-galleries no longer mono- 
 polize " art in the home." People 
 who cannot afford old masters 
 invoke the genius of Mr. Mortimer 
 Menpes. If they have not in- 
 herited French furniture they 
 buy it, or at least imitations 
 of the real, which are quite as 
 beautiful. 
 
 A sage-green wash on the wall 
 
 26
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' : 
 
 and a white dado to the height 
 of a man's shoulder cover a multi- 
 tude of paperhanger's sins. The 
 commonest china is pretty in 
 form and colour. A couple of 
 rugs from Liberty's replace the 
 hideous and costly carpets which 
 lasted their unfortunate possessors 
 a lifetime ; and, whereas in those 
 distant days one never saw a 
 flower on a dinner-table, now "it 
 is roses, roses all the way," or, 
 when it cannot be roses, it is 
 daffodils and wallflowers and pop- 
 pies and chrysanthemums. 
 
 All this is the work of the 
 despised aesthetes ; but this gene- 
 ration can find no meaning in the 
 
 great drama of Patience, and has 
 
 27
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 no conception of the tyrannous 
 ugliness from which Bunthorne 
 and his friends delivered us. Their 
 double achievement was to make 
 ugliness culpable and to prove 
 that beauty need not be ex- 
 pensive. 
 
 The same change may be ob- 
 served in everything connected 
 with dinner. No longer is the 
 mind oppressed by those mon- 
 strous hecatombs under which, 
 as Bret Harte said, " the table 
 groaned and even the sideboard 
 sighed/' Frascatelli's monstrous 
 bills of fare with six " side dishes " 
 and four sweets survive only as 
 monuments of what our fathers 
 
 could do. Racing plate and 
 
 28
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 epergnes and silver goddesses and 
 sphinxes and rams' horns, if not 
 discreetly exchanged for prettier 
 substitutes, hide their diminished 
 heads in pantries and safes. 
 
 Instead of these horrors we have 
 bright flowers and shaded lights, 
 and a very few, perhaps too few, 
 dishes, which both look pretty 
 and taste good. Here, again, ex- 
 pensive ugliness has been routed 
 and inexpensive beauty enthroned 
 in its place. 
 
 The same law, I believe, holds 
 good about dress. With the mys- 
 teries of woman's clothes I do not 
 presume to meddle. I do not 
 attempt to estimate the relative 
 
 cost of the satins and ermine and 
 
 29
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 scarves which Lawrence painted, 
 and the "duck's-egg bolero" and 
 " mauve hopsack" which I have 
 lately seen advertised in the list 
 of a winter sale. But about men's 
 dress I feel more confident. The 
 " rich cut Genoa velvet waistcoat/' 
 the solemn frock coat, the satin 
 stock, and the trousers strapped 
 under the Wellingtons, were cer- 
 tainly hideous, and I shrewdly 
 suspect that they were vastly 
 more expensive than the blue 
 serge suits, the straw hats, brown 
 boots, and sailor - knot ties in 
 which the men of the present day 
 look smart without being stiff. 
 When Mr. Gladstone in old age 
 
 revisited Oxford and lectured on 
 
 30
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 Homer to a great gathering of 
 undergraduates, he was asked if he 
 saw any difference between his 
 hearers and the men of his own 
 time. He responded briskly, "Yes, 
 in their dress, an enormous change. 
 I am told that I had among my 
 audience some of the most highly 
 connected and richest men in the 
 university, and there wasn't one 
 whom I couldn't have dressed 
 from top to toe for 5." 
 
 I have spoken so far of material 
 beauty, and here the change in 
 society has been an inexpressible 
 improvement, but when I turn to 
 beauty of another kind I cannot 
 speak with equal certainty. Have 
 
 our manners improved? Beyond 
 
 31
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 all question they have changed, 
 but have they changed for the 
 better? 
 
 It may seem incongruous to cite 
 Dr. Pusey as an authority on any- 
 thing more mundane than a hair 
 shirt, yet he was really a close 
 observer of social phenomena, as 
 his famous sermon on Dives and 
 Lazarus, with its strictures on 
 Lord Dives's dinner and Lady 
 Dives's ball - gown, sufficiently 
 testifies. He was born a Bouverie 
 in 1800, when the Bouveries still 
 were Whigs, and he testified in 
 old age to "the beauty of the 
 refined worldly manners of the 
 old school," which, as he insisted, 
 
 were really Christian in their 
 
 32
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 regard for the feelings of others. 
 " If in any case they became soul- 
 less as apart from Christianity, the 
 beautiful form was there into 
 which real life might re-enter." 
 
 We do not, I think, see much 
 of the " beautiful form " nowadays. 
 Men when talking to women 
 lounge and sprawl, and cross 
 their legs, and keep one hand in 
 a pocket while they shake hands 
 with the other, and shove their 
 partners about in the " Washing- 
 ton Post," and wallow in the 
 Kitchen-Lancers. All this is as 
 little beautiful as can be con- 
 ceived. Grace and dignity have 
 perished side by side. And yet, 
 
 oddly enough, the people who are 
 
 c 33
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 most thoroughly bereft of manners 
 seem bent on displaying their 
 deficiencies in the most conspicu- 
 ous places. In the old days it 
 would have been thought the 
 very height of vulgarity to run 
 after royalty. The Duke of Wel- 
 lington said to Charles Greville, 
 " When we meet the Royal Family 
 in society they are our superiors, 
 and we owe them all respect/' 
 That was just all. If a Royal 
 Personage knew you sufficiently 
 well to pay you a visit it was an 
 honour, and all suitable prepara- 
 tions were made. " My father 
 walked backwards with a silver 
 candlestick, and red baize awaited 
 the royal feet." If you encountered 
 
 34
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 a prince or princess in society, you 
 made your bow and thought no 
 more about it. An old-fashioned 
 father who had taken a schoolboy 
 son to call on a great lady said, 
 "Your bow was too low. That 
 is the sort of bow we keep for 
 the Royal Family/' There was 
 neither drop-down-deadativeness, 
 nor pushfulness, nor familiarity. 
 Well-bred people knew how to 
 behave themselves, and there was 
 an end of the matter. But to 
 force one's self on the notice of 
 royalty, to intrigue for visits from 
 Illustrious Personages, to go out 
 of one's way to meet princes or 
 princesses, to parade before the 
 
 gaping world the amount of 
 
 35
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? * 
 
 intimacy with which one had 
 been honoured, would have been 
 regarded as the very madness of 
 vulgarity. 
 
 Another respect in which 
 modern manners compare un- 
 favourably with ancient is the 
 growing love of titles. In old 
 days people thought a great deal, 
 perhaps too much, of family. 
 They had a strong sense of terri- 
 torial position, and I have heard 
 people say of others, "Oh, they 
 are cousins of ours," as if that 
 fact put them within a sacred 
 and inviolable enclosure. But 
 titles were contemned. If you 
 were a peer you sat in the House 
 
 of Lords instead of the House of 
 
 36
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 Commons, and that was all. No 
 one dreamed of babbling about 
 "peers" as a separate order of 
 creation, still less of enumerating 
 the peers to whom they were 
 related. 
 
 A member of the present Govern- 
 ment was once at pains to explain 
 to an entirely unsympathetic 
 audience that the only reason 
 
 tt 
 
 why he and Lord Curzon had 
 not taken as good a degree as 
 Mr. Asquith was that, being the 
 eldest sons of peers, they were 
 more freely invited into the 
 county society of Oxfordshire. I 
 can safely say that in the sacred 
 circle of the Great-Grandmother- 
 
 hood that theory of academical 
 
 37
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' : 
 
 shortcoming would not have been 
 advanced. 
 
 The idea of buying a baronetcy 
 would have been thought simply 
 droll, and knighthood was regarded 
 as the guerdon of the successful 
 grocer. I believe that in their 
 inmost hearts the Whigs enjoyed 
 the Garters which were so freely 
 bestowed on them, but they com- 
 pounded for that human weakness 
 by unmeasured contempt for the 
 Bath, and I doubt if they had 
 ever heard of the Star of India. 
 To state this case is sufficiently 
 to illustrate a conspicuous change 
 in the sentiment of society.
 
 Ill 
 
 ANOTHER change which I note is 
 the love of publicity. The great 
 people of old time followed (quite 
 unconsciously) the philosopher who 
 bade man "hide his life/' Of 
 course, the stage of Politics was 
 always a pillory, and he who 
 ventured to stand on it made 
 up his mind to encounter a 
 vast variety of popular missiles. 
 "In my situation as Chancellor 
 of the University of Oxford," said 
 the Duke of Wellington, " I have 
 been much exposed to authors," 
 
 and men whom choice or circum- 
 39
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 stances forced into politics were 
 exposed to worse annoyances than 
 "authors." But the line was 
 rigidly drawn between public and 
 private life. What went on in 
 the home was sacredly secreted 
 from the public gaze. People 
 lived among their relations and 
 friends and political associates, and 
 kept the gaping world at a dis- 
 tance. Now we worship publicity 
 as the chief enjoyment of human 
 life. We send lists of our shoot- 
 ing parties to " Society Journals/' 
 We welcome the interviewer. We 
 contribute personal paragraphs to 
 Classy Cuttings. We admit the 
 photographer to our bedrooms 
 
 and give our portraits to illus- 
 
 40
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ): 
 
 trated papers. We take our 
 exercise when we have the best 
 chance of being seen and noticed, 
 and we never eat our dinner 
 with such keen appetites as amid 
 the half-world of a Piccadilly 
 restaurant. In brief, " Expose 
 thy life" is the motto of the 
 new philosophy, and I maintain 
 that in this respect, at any rate, 
 the old was better. 
 
 With an increasing love of 
 publicity^ has come an increasing 
 contempt for reticence. In old 
 days there were certain subjects 
 which no one mentioned ; among 
 them were Health and Money. 
 I presume that people had pretty 
 
 much the same complaints as 
 
 41
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 now, but no one talked about 
 them. We used to be told of 
 a lady who died in agony because 
 she insisted on telling the doctor 
 that the pain was in her chest 
 whereas it really was in the un- 
 mentionable organ of digestion. 
 That martyr to propriety has no 
 imitators in the present day. 
 Everyone has a disease and a 
 doctor ; and young people of both 
 sexes are ready on the slightest 
 acquaintance to describe symptoms 
 and compare experiences. " Ice ! " 
 exclaimed a pretty girl at dessert, 
 " good gracious, no ! so bad for 
 indy" and her companion, who 
 had not travelled with the times, 
 
 learned with amazement that 
 
 42
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 "indy" was the pet name for 
 indigestion. " How bitterly cold ! " 
 said a plump matron at an open- 
 air luncheon ; "just the thing to 
 give one appendicitis." " Oh ! " 
 said her neighbour, surveying the 
 company, " we are quite safe there, 
 I shouldn't think we had an ap- 
 pendix between us." 
 
 Then, again, as to money. In 
 the "Sacred Circle of the Great- 
 Grandmotherhood " I never heard 
 the slightest reference to income. 
 Not that the Whigs despised 
 money. They were at least as 
 fond of it as other people, and 
 even when it took the shape of 
 slum-rents its odour was not dis- 
 pleasing but it was not a subject 
 
 43
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? v 
 
 for conversation. People did not 
 chatter about their neighbours' 
 incomes ; and, if they made their 
 own money in trade or profes- 
 sions, they did not regale us 
 with statistics of profit and loss. 
 To-day everyone seems to be, if 
 I may use the favourite collo- 
 quialism, "on the make"; and 
 the sincerity of the devotion with 
 which people worship money per- 
 vades their whole conversation 
 and colours their whole view of 
 life. "Scions of aristocracy/' to 
 use the good old phrase of Pen- 
 nialinus, will produce samples of 
 tea or floor-cloth from their 
 pockets and sue quite winningly 
 for custom. A speculative bottle 
 
 44
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 of extraordinarily cheap peach- 
 brandy will arrive with the com- 
 pliments of Lord Tom Noddy, 
 who has just gone into the wine 
 trade, and Lord Magnus Charters 
 will tell you that, if you are 
 going to put in the electric light 
 his firm has got some really good 
 fittings which he can let you have 
 on specially easy terms. 
 
 But, if in old days Health and 
 Money were subjects eschewed in 
 polite conversation, even more 
 rigid was the avoidance of " risky " 
 topics. To-day no scandal is too 
 gross, no gossip too prurient. 
 Respectable mothers chatter quite 
 freely about that " nest of spicery " 
 
 over which Sir Francis Jeune pre- 
 45
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? J; 
 
 sides, and canvass abominations 
 with a self-possession worthy of 
 Gibbon or Zola. In fact, as re- 
 gards our topics of conversation, 
 we seem to have reached the 
 condition in which the Paris 
 correspondent of the Daily Tele- 
 graph found himself when Mr. 
 Matthew Arnold (in Friendship's 
 Garland] spoke to him of Delicacy. 
 " He seemed inexplicably struck 
 by this word delicacy, which he 
 kept repeating to himself. ' Deli- 
 cacy/ said he ; ' delicacy, surely 
 I have heard that word before ! 
 Yes, in other days/ he went on 
 dreamily, 'in my fresh enthusi- 
 astic youth, before I knew Sala, 
 
 before I wrote for that infernal 
 46
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 paper .' * Collect yourself, my 
 
 friend/ said I, laying my hand on 
 his shoulder, * you are unmanned/" 
 A similar emotion would probably 
 be caused by anyone so old- 
 fashioned as to protest that any 
 conceivable topic was ill-adapted 
 for discussion in general society. 
 An extreme decorum of phrase 
 accompanied this salutary restric- 
 tion of topics. To a boisterous 
 youth who, just setting out for 
 a choral festival in a country 
 church, said that he always thought 
 a musical service very jolly, an old 
 Whig lady said in a tone of digni- 
 fied amendment, "I trust, dear 
 Mr. F , that we shall derive 
 
 not only pleasure but profit 
 
 47
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 from the solemnity of this after- 
 
 noon." 
 
 Closely related to the love of 
 publicity and the decay of 
 reticence is the change in the 
 position of women. This is really 
 a revolution, and it has so im- 
 partially pervaded all departments 
 of life that one may plunge any- 
 where into the subject and find 
 the same phenomenon. 
 
 Fifty years ago the view that 
 " comparisons don't become a 
 young woman" still held the 
 field, and, indeed, might have 
 been much more widely extended. 
 Nothing " became a young woman" 
 which involved clear thinking or 
 
 plain speaking or independent 
 
 " 48
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 acting. Mrs. General and Mrs. 
 Grundy were still powers in the 
 land. " Prunes and prism " were 
 fair burlesques of actual shib- 
 boleths. "Fanny," said Mrs. 
 General, "at present forms too 
 many opinions. Perfect breeding 
 forms none, and is never demon- 
 strative/' This was hardly a 
 parody of the prevailing and 
 accepted doctrine. To-day it 
 would be difficult to find a 
 subject on which contemporary 
 Fannies do not form opinions, 
 and express them with intense 
 vigour, and translate them into 
 corresponding action. 
 
 Fifty years ago a hunting 
 
 woman was a rarity, even though 
 D 49
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 Englishwomen had been horse- 
 women from time immemorial. 
 Lady Arabella Vane's perform- 
 ances were still remembered in 
 the neighbourhood of Darlington, 
 and Lady William Powlett's 
 "scyarlet" habit was a tradition 
 at Cottesmore. Mrs. Jack Villiers 
 is the only horsewoman in the 
 famous picture of the Quorn, and 
 she suitably gave her name to 
 the best covert in the Vale of 
 Aylesbury. But now the hunting 
 woman and the hunting girl 
 pervade the land, cross their male 
 friends at their fences, and ride 
 over them when they lie sub- 
 merged in ditches, with an airy 
 
 cheerfulness which wins all hearts. 
 50
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 In brief, it may be said that in 
 respect of outdoor exercises what- 
 ever men and boys do women 
 and girls do. They drive four-in- 
 hand and tandem, they skate and 
 cycle, and fence and swim. A 
 young lady lately showed me a 
 snapshot of herself learning to 
 take a header. A male instructor, 
 classically draped, stood on the 
 bank, and she kindly explained 
 that "the head in the water was 
 the man we were staying with." 
 Lawn - tennis and croquet are 
 regarded as the amusements of 
 the mild and the middle-aged ; 
 the ardour of girlhood requires 
 hockey and golf. I am not sure 
 
 whether girls have taken to Rugby 
 
 51
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 football, but only last summer I 
 saw a girl's cricket eleven dispose 
 most satisfactorily of a boys' team. 
 I can well remember the time 
 when a man, if perchance he met 
 a lady while he was smoking in 
 some rather unfrequented street, 
 always flung his cigar away and 
 rather tried to look as if he had 
 not been doing it. Yet so far 
 have we travelled that not long 
 ago, at a hospitable house not 
 a hundred miles from Berkeley 
 Square, the hostess and her 
 daughter were the only smokers 
 in a large luncheon-party, and 
 prefaced their cigarettes by the 
 courteous condition, "If you 
 
 gentlemen don't mind." 
 
 52
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ?" 
 
 Then, again, the political woman 
 is a product of these latter days. 
 In old times a woman served her 
 husband's political party by 
 keeping a salon, giving dinners to 
 the bigwigs, and "routs" to the 
 rank and file. I do not forget the 
 heroic electioneering of Georgiana, 
 Duchess of Devonshire, but her 
 example was not widely followed. 
 On great occasions ladies sat in 
 secluded galleries at public meet- 
 ings, and encouraged the halting 
 rhetoric of sons or husbands by 
 waving pocket handkerchiefs. If 
 a triumphant return was to be 
 celebrated, the ladies of the hero's 
 family might gaze from above on 
 
 the congratulatory banquet, like 
 53
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 the house-party at Lothair's 
 coming of age, to whom the 
 "three times three and one cheer 
 more" seemed like a " great 
 naval battle, or the end of the 
 world, or anything else of un- 
 imaginable excitement, tumult, 
 and confusion." 
 
 When it was reported that a 
 celebrated lady of the present 
 day complained of the stuffiness 
 and gloom of the Ladies' Gallery 
 in the House of Commons, Mr. 
 Gladstone that stifFest of social 
 conservatives exclaimed, " Mrs. 
 
 W , forsooth ! I have known 
 
 much greater ladies than Mrs. 
 W quite content to look 
 
 down through the ventilator." 
 
 54
 
 IV 
 
 I SAID at the outset that I am 
 a Whig pur sang ; and the historic 
 Whigs were very worthy people. 
 A first-rate specimen of the race 
 was that Duke of Bedford whom 
 Junius lampooned, and whom my 
 uncle, Lord Russell, championed in 
 an interesting contrast. "The 
 want of practical religion and 
 morals which Lord Chesterfield 
 held up to imitation, conducted 
 the French nobility to the guillo- 
 tine and emigration : the honesty, 
 the attachment to religion, the 
 
 country habits, the love of home, 
 
 55
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 the activity in rural business and 
 rural sports, in which the Duke 
 of Bedford and others of his class 
 delighted, preserved the English 
 aristocracy from a flood which 
 swept over half of Europe, laying 
 prostrate the highest of her pal- 
 aces, and scattering the ashes 
 of the most sacred of her monu- 
 ments." 
 
 This quotation forms a suitable 
 introduction to the social change 
 which is the subject of the present 
 paper. In old days, people who 
 had country houses lived in them. 
 It was the magnificent misfortune 
 of the Duke in Lothair to have so 
 many castles that he had no home. 
 
 In those days the tradition of 
 
 56
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 Duty required people who had 
 several country houses to spend 
 some time in each of them ; and 
 those who had only one passed 
 nine months out of twelve under 
 its sacred roof sacred because it 
 was inseparably connected with 
 memories of ancestry and parent- 
 age and early association, with 
 marriage and children, and pure 
 enjoyments and active benevolence 
 and neighbourly goodwill. In a 
 word, the country house was 
 Home. 
 
 People who had no country 
 house were honestly pitied ; per- 
 haps they were also a little 
 despised. The most gorgeous 
 
 mansion in Cromwell Road or 
 
 57
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 Tyburnia could never for a moment 
 be quoted as supplying the place 
 of the Hall or the Manor. 
 
 For people who had a country 
 house the interests of life were 
 very much bound up in the park 
 and the covers, the croquet ground 
 and the cricket ground, the kennel, 
 the stable, and the garden. I 
 remember, when I was an under- 
 graduate, lionizing some Yorkshire 
 damsels who were paying their 
 first visit to Oxford, then in the 
 "high midsummer pomp" of its 
 beauty. But all they said was, 
 in the pensive tone of an unwilling 
 exile, "How beautifully the sun 
 must be shining on the South 
 
 Walk at home!" 
 
 58
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' : 
 
 The village church was a great 
 centre of domestic affection. All 
 the family had been christened 
 in it the eldest sister had been 
 married in it. Generations of 
 ancestry mouldered under the 
 chancel floor. Christmas decora- 
 tions were an occasion of much 
 innocent merriment, and a little 
 ditty high in favour in Tractarian 
 homes warned the decorators to 
 be- 
 
 Unselfish looking not to see 
 Proofs of their own dexterity ; 
 But quite contented that " I " should 
 Forgotten be in brotherhood. 
 
 Of course, whether Tractarian 
 or Evangelical, religious people 
 
 regarded church-going as a spirit- 
 59
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ?" 
 
 ual privilege, but everyone re- 
 cognized it as a civil duty. 
 "When a gentleman is sur ses 
 terres" said Major Pendennis, " he 
 must give an example to the 
 country people ; and if I could 
 turn a tune I even think I should 
 sing. The Duke of St. David's, 
 whom I have the honour of know- 
 ing, always sings in the country, 
 and let me tell you it has a doosed 
 fine effect from the family pew." 
 Before the passion for "restora- 
 tion had set in, and ere yet Sir 
 Gilbert Scott had transmogrified 
 the parish churches of England, 
 the family pew was indeed the 
 ark and sanctuary of the terri- 
 torial system and a very com- 
 ' 60
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 fortable ark too. It had a private 
 entrance, a round table, a good 
 assortment of arm-chairs, a fire- 
 place, and a wood-basket. And 
 I well remember a washleather 
 glove of unusual size which was 
 kept in the wood-basket for the 
 greater convenience of making up 
 the fire during divine service. 
 " You may restore the church as 
 much as you like," said an old 
 friend of my youth, who was 
 lay-rector, to an innovating in- 
 cumbent, "but I must insist 
 on my family pew not being 
 touched. If I had to sit in an 
 open seat I should never get a 
 wink of sleep again." 
 
 A country home left its mark 
 
 61
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 for all time on those who were 
 brought up in it. The sons played 
 cricket and went bat-fowling with 
 the village boys, and not seldom 
 joined with them in a poaching 
 enterprise in the paternal pre- 
 serves. However popular or suc- 
 cessful or happy a Public-School 
 boy might be at Eton or Harrow, 
 he counted the days till he could 
 return to his pony and his gun, 
 his ferrets and rat-trap, and 
 fishing-rod. Amid all the toil 
 and worry of active life he looked 
 back lovingly to the corner of the 
 cover where he shot his first 
 pheasant, or the precise spot in 
 the middle of the Yale where 
 
 he first saw a fox killed, and 
 
 62
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 underwent the disgusting baptism 
 of blood. 
 
 Girls, living more continuously 
 at home, entered even more in- 
 timately into the daily life of 
 the place. Their morning rides 
 led them across the village green ; 
 their afternoon drives were often 
 steered by the claims of this or 
 that cottage to a visit. They 
 were taught as soon as they could 
 toddle never to enter a door 
 without knocking, never to sit 
 down without being asked, and 
 never to call at meal-time. 
 
 They knew everyone in the 
 village old and young ; played 
 with the babies, taught the boys 
 
 in Sunday School, earned savoury 
 
 63
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 messes to the old and impotent, 
 read by the sickbeds, and brought 
 flowers for the coffin. Mamma 
 knitted comforters and dispensed 
 warm clothing, organized relief in 
 hard winters and times of epidemic, 
 and found places for the hobblede- 
 hoys of both sexes. The pony-boy 
 and the scullery-maid were pretty 
 sure to be products of the village. 
 Very likely the young lady's-maid 
 was a village girl whom the doctor 
 had pronounced too delicate for 
 factory or farm. I have seen an 
 excited young groom staring his 
 eyes out of his head at the Eton 
 and Harrow match, and exclaiming 
 with rapture at a good catch, " It 
 
 was my young governor as 'scouted' 
 
 64
 
 " For Better ? For Worse? ' 
 
 that. 'E's nimble, ain't 'e?" And 
 I well remember an ancient stable- 
 helper at a country house in 
 Buckinghamshire who was called 
 " Old Bucks/' because he had never 
 slept out of his native county, and 
 very rarely out of his native village, 
 and had spent his whole life in one 
 service. 
 
 Of course, when so much of the 
 impressionable part of life was 
 lived amid the "sweet, sincere 
 surroundings of country life," there 
 grew up, between the family 
 at the Hall and the families 
 in the village, a feeling which, 
 in spite of our national unsenti- 
 mentality, had a chivalrous and 
 almost feudal tone. The interest 
 
 E 65
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 of the poor in the life and doings 
 of "the family" was keen and 
 genuine. The English peasant is 
 too much a gentleman to be a 
 flatterer, and compliments were 
 often bestowed in very unexpected 
 forms. "They do tell me as 'is 
 understanding's no worse than it 
 always were/' was a ploughman's 
 way of saying that the old squire 
 was in full possession of his 
 faculties. "We call 'im "Is 
 Lordship/ because e's so old 
 and so cunning," was another's 
 description of a famous pony. 
 "Ah, I know you're but a 
 poor creature at the best!" was the 
 recognized way of complimenting 
 a lady on what she considered 
 
 66
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? 3: 
 
 her bewitching and romantic 
 delicacy. 
 
 But these eccentricities were 
 merely verbal, and under them 
 lay a deep vein of genuine and 
 lasting regard. "I've lived under 
 four dukes and four 'ousekeepers, 
 and I'm not going to be put upon 
 in my old age !" was the exclama- 
 tion of an ancient poultry- woman, 
 whose dignity had been offended 
 by some irregularity touching her 
 Christmas dinner. 
 
 When the daughter of the house 
 married and went into a far 
 country, she was sure to find 
 some emigrant from her old 
 home who welcomed her with 
 
 effusion, and was full of enquiries 
 
 67
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 about his lordship and her lady- 
 ship, and Miss Pinkerton the 
 governess, and whether Mr. 
 Wheeler was still coachman, and 
 who lived now at the entrance 
 lodge. 
 
 Whether the sons got commis- 
 sions, or took ranches, or become 
 curates in slums, or contested re- 
 mote constituencies, some grinning 
 face was sure to emerge from the 
 crowd with, "You know me, sir? 
 Bill JufTs, as used to go bird's- 
 nesting with you"; or, "You re- 
 member my old dad, my lord? 
 He used to shoe your black pony." 
 
 When the eldest son came of 
 age, his condescension in taking 
 
 this step was hailed with genuine 
 68
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 enthusiasm. When he came into 
 his kingdom, there might be a 
 grumbling if he went in for small 
 economies, or altered old practices, 
 or was a "hard man" on the Bench 
 or at the Board of Guardians ; but, 
 if he went on in the good-natured 
 old ways, the traditional loyalty 
 was unabated. 
 
 Lord Shaftesbury wrote thus 
 about the birth of his eldest son's 
 eldest son : " My little village is 
 all agog with the birth of a son 
 and heir in the very midst of 
 them, the first, it is believed, 
 since 1600, when the first Lord 
 Shaftesbury was born. The 
 christening yesterday was an 
 
 ovation. Every cottage had flags 
 69
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 and flowers. We had three 
 triumphal arches ; and all the 
 people were exulting. ' He is one 
 of us/ 'He is a fellow- villager.' 
 ' We have now got a lord of our 
 own/ This is really gratifying. I 
 did not think that there remained 
 so much of the old respect and 
 affection between peasant and pro- 
 prietor, landlord and tenant." 
 
 Whether the kind of relation 
 thus described has utterly perished 
 I do not know ; but certainly it 
 has very greatly diminished, and 
 the cause of the diminution is that 
 people live less and less in their 
 country houses, and more and 
 more in London. For those who 
 
 are compelled by odious necessity 
 70
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 to sell or let their hereditary homes 
 one has nothing but compassion ; 
 in itself a severe trial, it is made 
 still sharper to well -conditioned 
 people by the sense that the 
 change is at least as painful to 
 the poor as to themselves. But 
 for those who, having both a 
 country and a London house, 
 deliberately concentrate them- 
 selves on the town, forsake the 
 country, and abjure the duties 
 which are inseparable from their 
 birthright, one can only have 
 Charles Lamb's "imperfect sym- 
 pathy/' The causes which induce 
 this dereliction and its results on 
 society and on the country may 
 
 be discussed another day. 
 71
 
 V 
 
 I WAS speaking last week of the 
 growing tendency to desert the 
 country in favour of London. I 
 said that it was difficult to feel 
 sympathy with people who volun- 
 tarily abandon Home, and all the 
 duties and pleasures which Home 
 implies, in favour of Lennox Gar- 
 dens or Portman Square ; but that 
 one felt a lively compassion for 
 those who make the exchange 
 under the pressure of 
 
 Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear. 
 
 Here, again, is another social 
 
 change. In old days, when people 
 72
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 wished to economize, it was 
 London that they deserted. They 
 sold the "family mansion" in 
 Portland Place or Eaton Square, 
 and, if they revisited the glimpses 
 of the social moon, they took a 
 furnished house for six weeks in 
 the summer ; the rest of the year 
 they spent in the country. This 
 plan was a manifold saving. 
 There was no rent to pay, 
 and only very small rates, for 
 everyone knows that country 
 houses were shamefully under- 
 assessed. Carriages did not require 
 repainting every season, and no 
 new clothes were wanted. "What 
 can it matter what we wear here, 
 
 where everyone knows who 
 
 73
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 we are ? " The products of the 
 park, the home farm, the hothouses, 
 and the kitchen -garden kept the 
 family supplied with food. A 
 brother magnate staying at 
 Beaudesert with the famous Lord 
 Anglesey waxed enthusiastic over 
 the mutton, and said, " Excuse my 
 asking you a plain question, but how 
 much does this excellent mutton 
 cost you ?" " Cost me ?" screamed 
 the hero, "Good Gad, it costs me 
 nothing ! It's my own," and was 
 beyond measure astonished when 
 his statistical guest proved that 
 " his own " cost him about a 
 guinea per pound. In another 
 great house, conducted on strictly 
 
 economical lines, it was said that 
 
 74
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 the very numerous family were 
 reared exclusively on rabbits and 
 garden-stuff, and that their en- 
 feebled constitutions and dismal 
 appearance in later life were due 
 to this ascetic regimen. 
 
 People were always hospitable 
 in the country, but rural enter- 
 taining was not a very costly 
 business. The "three square 
 meals and a snack/' which repre- 
 sent the minimum requirement 
 of the present day, are a huge 
 development of the system which 
 prevailed in my youth. Breakfast 
 had already grown from the tea 
 and coffee, and rolls and eggs, 
 which Macaulay tells us were 
 
 deemed sufficient at Holland 
 
 75
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ): 
 
 House, to an affair of covered 
 dishes. Luncheon-parties were 
 sometimes given terrible cere- 
 monies which lasted from two to 
 four ; but the ordinary luncheon 
 of the family was really a snack 
 from the servants' joint or the 
 children's rice-pudding; and five 
 o'clock tea was actually not 
 invented. To remember, as I do, 
 the foundress of that divine 
 refreshment seems like having 
 known Stephenson or Jenner. 
 
 Dinner was subtantial enough 
 in all conscience, and the wine 
 nearly as heavy as the food. 
 Imagine quenching one's thirst 
 with sherry in the dog days ! Yet 
 
 so we did, till about half-way 
 
 76
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 through dinner, and then, on 
 great occasions, a dark-coloured 
 rill of champagne began to trickle 
 into the saucer-shaped glasses 
 
 How mad, and bad, and sad it was ! 
 And oh, how it was sweet ! 
 
 At the epoch of cheese, port 
 made its appearance in company 
 with home-brewed beer; and as 
 soon as the ladies and the school- 
 boys departed the men applied 
 themselves, with much seriousness 
 of purpose, to the consumption of 
 claret which was really vinous. 
 
 In this kind of hospitality there 
 was no great expense. People 
 made very little difference between 
 their way of living when they 
 
 were alone and their way of living 
 
 77
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 when they had company. A 
 visitor who wished to make him- 
 self agreeable sometimes brought 
 down a basket of fish or a barrel 
 of oysters from London, and, if 
 one had no deer of one's own, the 
 arrival of a haunch from a neigh- 
 bour's or kinsman's park was the 
 signal for a gathering of local 
 gastronomers. 
 
 And in matters other than 
 meals life went on very much 
 the same whether you had friends 
 staying with you or whether you 
 were alone. Your guests drove 
 and rode, and walked and shot, 
 according to their tastes and the 
 season of the year. They were 
 
 carried off, more or less willingly, 
 
 78
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 to see the sights of the neighbour- 
 hood ruined castles, restored 
 cathedrals, famous views. In 
 summer there might be a picnic 
 or a croquet-party ; in winter a 
 lawn-meet or a ball. But all 
 these entertainments were of the 
 most homely and inexpensive 
 character. There was very little 
 outlay, no fuss, and no display. 
 People w T ho were compelled by 
 stress of financial weather to put 
 into their country houses and 
 remain there till the storm was 
 over, contrived to economize and 
 yet be comfortable. They simply 
 lived their ordinary lives until 
 things righted themselves, and 
 
 very likely did not attempt 
 
 79
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? v 
 
 London again until they were 
 bringing out another daughter, 
 or had to make a home for a 
 son in the Guards. 
 
 But now an entirely different 
 spirit prevails. People seem to 
 have lost the power of living 
 quietly and happily in their 
 country homes. They all have 
 imbibed the urban philosophy of 
 George Warrington, who, when 
 Pen gushed about the country 
 with its "long calm days and 
 long calm evenings," brutally 
 replied, " Devilish long, and a 
 great deal too calm. I've tried 
 'em." People of that type desert 
 the country simply because they 
 
 are bored by it. They feel with 
 80
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 Mr. Luke in The New Republic, 
 who, after talking about "liberal 
 air/' "sedged brooks," and 
 " meadow grass," admitted that 
 it would be a horrid bore to have 
 no other society than the clergy- 
 man of the parish, and no other 
 topics of conversation than Justi- 
 fication by Faith and the Measles. 
 They do not care for the country 
 in itself; they have no eye for its 
 beauty, no sense of its atmosphere, 
 no memory for its traditions. It 
 is only made endurable to them 
 by sport and gambling and 
 boisterous house - parties ; and, 
 when from one cause or another 
 these resources fail, they are 
 frankly bored and long for London. 
 
 F 8l
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 They are no longer content, as our 
 fathers were, to entertain their 
 friends with hospitable simplicity. 
 So profoundly has all society been 
 vulgarized by the worship of the 
 Golden Calf that, unless people can 
 vie with alien millionaires in the 
 sumptuousness with which they 
 "do you" delightful phrase 
 they prefer not to entertain at all. 
 An emulous ostentation has killed 
 hospitality. 
 
 So now, when a season of 
 financial pressure sets in, people 
 shut up their country houses, let 
 their shooting, cut themselves off 
 with a sigh of relief from all the 
 unexciting duties and simple 
 
 pleasures of the home, and take 
 
 82
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' : 
 
 refuge from boredom in the 
 delights of London. In London 
 life has no duties. Little is 
 expected of one and nothing 
 required. One can live on a 
 larger or a smaller scale according 
 to one's taste or one's purse ; 
 cramp oneself in a doll's house 
 in Mayfair, or expand one's wings 
 in a Kensingtonian mansion ; or 
 even contract oneself into a flat, 
 or hide one's diminished head 
 in the upper storey of a shop. 
 One can entertain or not enter- 
 tain, spend much or spend little, 
 live on one's friends or be lived 
 on by them, exactly as one 
 finds most convenient ; and un- 
 questionably social freedom is 
 83
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 a great element in human hap- 
 piness. 
 
 For many natures London has 
 an attractiveness which is all its 
 own, and yet to indulge one's 
 taste for it may be a grave 
 dereliction of duty. The State 
 is built upon the Home, and as a 
 training-place for social virtue 
 there can surely be no comparison 
 between a home in the country 
 and a home in London. 
 
 " Home ! Sweet Home ! " Yes. 
 (I am quoting now from my friend, 
 Henry Scott Holland.) That is 
 the song that goes straight to the 
 heart of every English man and 
 woman. For forty years we have 
 
 never asked Madame Adelina 
 
 84
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 Patti to sing anything else. The 
 unhappy, decadent, Latin races 
 have not even a word in their 
 languages by which to express it, 
 poor things ! Home is the secret 
 of our honest British Protestant 
 virtues. It is the only nursery 
 of our Anglo-Saxon citizenship. 
 Back to it our far-flung children 
 turn with all their memories aflame. 
 They may lapse into rough ways, 
 but they keep something sound 
 at the core so long as they are 
 faithful to the old Home. There 
 is still a tenderness in the voice, \ 
 and tears are in their eyes, as they '[ 
 speak together of the days that/ 
 
 can never die out of their lives,) 
 
 i 
 
 when they were at home in the 
 
 85
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 old familiar places, with father and 
 mother in the healthy gladness of 
 their childhood. Ah ! 
 
 Home ! Sweet Home ! 
 There's no place like Home. 
 
 That is what we all repeat, and 
 all believe, and cheer to the echo. 
 And, behind all our British com- 
 placency about it, nobody would 
 deny the vital truth that there 
 is in this belief of ours. What- 
 ever tends to make the Home 
 beautiful, attractive, romantic 
 to associate it with the ideas of 
 pure pleasure and high duty to 
 connect it not only with all that 
 was happiest but also with all that 
 was best in early years whatever 
 
 fulfils these purposes purifies the 
 
 86
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? r 
 
 fountains of national life. A 
 home, to be perfectly a home, 
 should incorporate tradition, and 
 prolong the reign of the dead. It 
 should animate those who dwell 
 in it to virtue and beneficence by 
 reminding them of what others 
 did who went before them in the 
 same place, and lived amid the 
 same surroundings.
 
 VI 
 
 IN my last paper I was de- 
 ploring the modern tendency of 
 society to desert the country 
 and cultivate London. And the 
 reason why I deplore it is that 
 all the educating influences of 
 the Home are so infinitely 
 weaker in the town than in 
 the country. In a London home 
 there is nothing to fascinate the 
 eye. The contemplation of the 
 mews and the chimney-pots 
 through the back windows of the 
 nursery will not elevate even the 
 most impressible child. There is
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? >: 
 
 no mystery, no dreamland, no 
 Enchanted Palace, no Bluebeard's 
 Chamber, in a stucco mansion 
 built by Cubitt or a palace of 
 terra-cotta on the Cadogan estate. 
 There can be no traditions of the 
 past, no inspiring memories of 
 virtuous ancestry, in a house 
 which your father bought five 
 years ago and of which the 
 previous owners are not known 
 to you even by name. "The 
 Square'' or "the Gardens" are 
 sorry substitutes for the Park 
 and the Pleasure-grounds, the 
 Common and the Downs. Cross- 
 ing-sweepers are a deserving folk, 
 but you cannot cultivate those 
 
 intimate relations with them 
 
 89
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 which bind you to the lodge- 
 keeper at home, or to the old 
 women in the almshouses, or the 
 octogenarian waggoner who has 
 driven your father's team ever 
 since he was ten years old. St. 
 Peter's, Eaton Square, or All 
 Saints, Margaret Street, may be 
 beautifully ornate, and the con- 
 gregation what Lord Beaconsfield 
 called "brisk and modish"; but 
 they can never have the romantic 
 charm of the country church 
 where you were confirmed side 
 by side with the keeper's son, or 
 proposed to the vicar's daughter 
 when you were wreathing holly 
 round the lectern. 
 
 Then, again, as regards social 
 90
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 relations with friends and neigh- 
 bours. "An emulous ostentation 
 has destroyed hospitality." This, 
 I believe, is absolutely true, and 
 it is one of the worst changes 
 which I have seen. I was speak- 
 ing last week of hospitality as 
 practised in the country. To-day 
 we will say a word about hospi- 
 tality in London. 
 
 Of course rich people always 
 gave banquets from time to time, 
 and these were occasions when, in 
 Lord Beaconsfield's drolly vulgar 
 phrase, "the dinner was stately, 
 as befits the high nobility." They 
 were ceremonious observances, 
 conducted on the constitutional 
 
 principle of "cutlet for cutlet," 
 91
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 and must always have been 
 regarded by all concerned in 
 them, whether as hosts or guests, 
 in the light of duty rather than 
 of pleasure. Twenty people woke 
 that morning with the impression 
 that something was to be gone 
 through before bedtime w T hich 
 they would be glad enough to 
 escape. Each of the twenty went 
 to bed that night more or less 
 weary and ruffled, but sustained 
 by the sense that a social duty 
 had been performed. Banquets, 
 however, at the worst were only 
 periodical events. Real hospi- 
 tality was constant and informal. 
 " Come and dine to-night. Eight 
 
 o'clock. Pot luck. Don't dress." 
 
 92
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 " My dear, I am going to bring 
 back two or three men from the 
 House. Don't put off dinner in 
 case we are kept by a division." 
 
 " I am afraid I must be going 
 back. I am only paired till 
 eleven. Good-night, and so many 
 thanks/' " Good-night, you will 
 always find some dinner here on 
 Government nights. Do look in 
 again I" 
 
 These are the cheerful echoes 
 of parliamentary homes in the 
 older and better days of unosten- 
 tatious entertaining, and those 
 "pot luck" dinners often played 
 an important part in political 
 manoeuvre. Sir George Trevelyan, 
 whose early manhood was passed 
 
 93
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 in the thick of parliamentary 
 society, tells us, in a footnote to 
 The Ladies in Parliament, that in 
 the season of 1866 there was 
 much gossip over the fact of 
 Lord Russell having entertained 
 Mr. Bright at dinner, and that 
 people were constantly 
 
 Discussing whether Bright can scan and 
 
 understand the lines 
 About the Wooden Horse of Troy; and when 
 
 and where he dines. 
 Though gentlemen should blush to talk as if 
 
 they cared a button 
 Because one night in Chesham Place he ate 
 
 his slice of mutton. 
 
 Quite apart from parliamentary 
 strategy, impromptu entertaining 
 in what was called "a friendly 
 way" had its special uses in the 
 
 94
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? J: 
 
 social system. There is a delicious 
 passage in Lothair describing that 
 hero's initiation into an easier 
 and more graceful society than 
 that in which he had been reared : 
 " He had been a guest at the 
 occasional banquets of his uncle, 
 but these were festivals of the 
 Picts and Scots ; rude plenty and 
 coarse splendour, with noise in- 
 stead of conversation, and a 
 tumult of obstructive dependants, 
 who impeded by their want of 
 skill the very convenience which 
 they were purposed to facilitate." 
 An amazing sentence indeed, 
 but like all Lord Beaconsfield's 
 writings, picturesquely descrip- 
 tive, and happily contrasted with 
 95
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? r 
 
 the succeeding scene : " A table 
 covered with flowers, bright with 
 fanciful crystal, and porcelain that 
 had belonged to Sovereigns who 
 had given a name to its colour 
 or its form. As for those present, 
 all seemed grace and gentleness, 
 from the radiant daughters of the 
 house to the noiseless attendants 
 who anticipated all his wants, and 
 sometimes seemed to suggest his 
 wishes." 
 
 The mention of Lothair reminds 
 people of my date that thirty 
 years ago we knew a house justly 
 famed for the excellent marriages 
 which the daughters made. There 
 banquets were unknown, and even 
 
 dinners by invitation very rare. 
 
 96
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 The father used to collect young 
 men from Lord's or from the 
 Lobby, or from the Club, or 
 wherever he had been spending 
 the afternoon. Servants were 
 soon dismissed "It is such a 
 bore to have them staring at 
 one" and the daughters of the 
 house waited on the guests. Here 
 obviously were matrimonial open- 
 ings not to be despised ; and, even 
 in families where there were no 
 ulterior objects to be served, these 
 free-and-easy entertainings went 
 on from February to July. Short 
 invitations, pleasant company, 
 and genuine friendliness were the 
 characteristics of these entertain- 
 ments. Very often the dinner 
 G 97
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 was carved on the table. One 
 could ask for a second slice or 
 another wing without feeling 
 greedy, and the claret and amon- 
 tillado were within the reach of 
 every guest. This, I consider, 
 was genuine hospitality, for it 
 was natural, easy, and unosten- 
 tatious. 
 
 But now, according to all 
 accounts, the spirit of entertain- 
 ing is utterly changed. A dinner 
 is not so much an opportunity 
 of pleasing your friends as of air- 
 ing your own magnificence ; and 
 ostentation, despicable in itself, 
 is doubly odious because it is 
 emulous. If A has a good cook, 
 
 B must have a better. If C gave 
 
 98
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 you ortolans stuffed with truffles, 
 D must have truffles stuffed with 
 ortolans. If the E's table is piled 
 with strawberries in April, the 
 F's must retaliate with orchids at 
 a guinea a blossom. G is a little 
 inclined to swagger about his 
 wife's pearl necklace, and H is 
 bound in honour to decorate Mrs. 
 H with a riviere which belonged 
 to the crown jewels of France. 
 
 And, as with the food and the 
 decorations, so also with the 
 company. Here, again, Emulous 
 Ostentation carries all before it. 
 Mr. Goldbug is a Yahoo, but he 
 made his millions in South Africa 
 and spends them in Park Lane. 
 Lord Heath is the most aban- 
 
 99
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' : 
 
 doned bore in Christendom, but 
 he is an authority at Newmarket. 
 Lady Bellair has had a notori- 
 ously chequered career, but she 
 plays bridge in exalted circles. 
 As Lord Crewe sings of a similar 
 enchantress 
 
 From reflections we shrink; 
 
 And of comment are chary; 
 But her face is so pink, 
 
 And it don't seem to vary. 
 
 However, she is unquestionably 
 smart ; and Goldbug is a useful 
 man to know; and we are not 
 going to be outdone by the 
 Cashingtons, who got Heath to 
 dine with them twice last year. 
 So we invite our guests, not 
 
 because we like them or admire 
 
 100
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 them, for that in these cases is 
 impossible ; not heaven knows 
 because they are beautiful or 
 famous or witty, but because 
 they are the right people to have 
 in one's house, and we will have 
 the right people or perish in the 
 attempt. 
 
 IOI
 
 VII 
 
 IT is many a long year since I 
 saw the inside of a ballroom, but 
 by all accounts very much the 
 same change has come over the 
 spirit of ball-giving as of dinner- 
 giving. Here again the " Emulous 
 Ostentation" which I have de- 
 scribed is the enemy. When I 
 first grew up there were infinitely 
 more balls than now. From 
 Easter till August there were at 
 least two every night, and a 
 hostess counted herself lucky if 
 she had only one rival to contend 
 with. Between eleven p.m. and 
 
 1 02
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 two a.m. Grosvenor Place was 
 blocked by the opposing streams 
 of carriages going from Mayfair 
 to Belgravia, and from Belgravia 
 to Mayfair. There were three 
 or four really great Houses 
 " Houses " with a capital H 
 such as Grosvenor House, Staf- 
 ford House, Dudley House, and 
 Montagu House where a ball 
 could scarcely help being an event 
 or, as Pennialinus would say, 
 "a function/' But, putting these 
 on one side, the great mass of 
 hostesses contrived to give ex- 
 cellent balls, where everyone went 
 and everyone enjoyed themselves, 
 with very little fuss and no osten- 
 tation. The drawing-room of an 
 103
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? v 
 
 ordinary house in Belgravia or 
 Grosvenor Square made a perfectly 
 sufficient ballroom. A good floor, 
 a good band, and plenty of light 
 were the only essentials of success. 
 Decoration was represented by 
 such quaint devices as pink muslin 
 on the banisters, or green festoons 
 dependent from the chandelier. 
 A good supper was an additional 
 merit, and if the host produced 
 his best champagne he was held 
 in just esteem by dancing men. 
 But yet I well remember a cold 
 supper at a ball which the present 
 King and Queen attended, in 
 1881, and no one grumbled, 
 though perhaps the young bloods 
 
 thought it a little old-fashioned. 
 104
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 The essence of a good ball was 
 not expense or display, or over- 
 whelming preparation, but the 
 certainty that you would meet 
 your friends. Boys and girls 
 danced, and married women 
 looked on, or only stole a waltz 
 when their juniors were at supper. 
 In those days a ball was really a 
 merry-making. 
 
 Nowadays I gather from the 
 Morning Post that balls are com- 
 paratively rare events, but what 
 they lack in frequency they make 
 up in ostentation. As to the 
 sums which the Heits and the 
 Heims, the Le Beers and the De 
 Porters, lavish on one night's 
 
 entertainment I hear statistical 
 105
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 accounts which not only outrage 
 economy but stagger credibility. 
 Here again the rushing flood of 
 ill-gotten gold has overflowed its 
 banks, and polluted the " crystal 
 river of unreproved enjoyment." 
 
 There is yet another form 
 of entertainment which Emulous 
 Ostentation has destroyed. A few 
 years ago there still were women 
 in London who could hold a 
 " salon." Of these gatherings the 
 principal attraction was the 
 hostess, and, in a secondary degree, 
 the agreeableness of the people 
 whom she could gather round her. 
 Of fuss and finery, decoration 
 and display, there was absolutely 
 
 nothing. A typical instance of 
 
 1 06
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 what I mean will perhaps recur 
 to the memory of some who read 
 this paper. Picture to yourself 
 two not very large and rather 
 dingy rooms. The furniture is dark 
 and old-fashioned mahogany and 
 rosewood, with here and there a 
 good cabinet or a French arm- 
 chair. No prettiness of lace and 
 china ; no flowers ; and not very 
 much light. Books everywhere, 
 some good engravings, a comfort- 
 able sofa, and a tray of tea and 
 coffee. That was all. It is diffi- 
 cult to conceive a less ostentatious 
 or a more economical mode of 
 entertaining ; yet the lady who 
 presided over that " salon " had 
 
 been for fifty years one of the 
 107
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 most celebrated women in Europe ; 
 had been embraced by Napoleon, 
 had flirted with the Allied 
 Sovereigns, had been glorified by 
 Byron, had discussed scholarship 
 with Grote, and statecraft with 
 Metternich, had sat to Lawrence, 
 and caballed with Antonelli. 
 Even in old age and decrepitude 
 she opened her rooms to her 
 friends every evening in the 
 year, and never, even in the 
 depths of September, found her 
 court deserted. Certainly it was 
 a social triumph, and one has 
 only to compare it with the 
 scene in the stockbroker's saloon 
 the blaze of electric light, the 
 
 jungle of flowers, the furniture 
 
 1 08
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 from Sinclair's, the pictures from 
 Christie's and to contrast the 
 assembled guests. Instead of 
 celebrities, notorieties women at 
 once under-dressed and over- 
 dressed ; men with cent, per cent, 
 written deep in every line of their 
 expressive countenances ; and at 
 the centre of the throng a hostess 
 in a diamond crown, who conducts 
 her correspondence by telegraph 
 because her spelling is a little 
 shaky, and mistakes in telegrams 
 are charitably attributed to the 
 clerks. 
 
 One of the worst properties of 
 Emulous Ostentation is that it 
 naturally affects its victims with 
 
 an insatiable thirst for money. 
 
 109
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 - 
 
 If Mrs. Tymmyns in Onslow 
 Gardens is to have as good a 
 dinner, and as smart a victoria, 
 and as large a tiara as her friend 
 Mrs. Goldbug in Park Lane, it is 
 obvious that Mr. Tymmyns must 
 find the money somehow. Who 
 wills the end wills the means ; 
 and, if social exigencies demand 
 a larger outlay, the Tymmynses 
 cannot afford to be too scrupulous 
 about their method of providing 
 for it. I suppose it is this con- 
 sideration which makes us just 
 now a nation of gamblers, whereas 
 our more respectable but less 
 adventurous fathers were well 
 content to be a nation of shop- 
 keepers. 
 
 IIO
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 Of course, in all ages there has 
 been a gambling clique in society, 
 but in old days it kept itself, 
 as the saying is, to itself. Of 
 necessity it always was on the 
 look-out for neophytes to initiate 
 and to pillage, but the non- 
 gambling majority of society re- 
 garded the gambling minority 
 with horror ; and a man who 
 palpably meant to make money 
 out of a visit to a country house 
 would probably have been re- 
 quested to withdraw. " Order a 
 fly for Mr. L. at eleven o'clock," 
 said old Lord C. to the butler 
 when a guest had committed a 
 social atrocity under his roof. 
 " Thank you, Lord C.," said Mr. 
 
 i ii
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 L., "but not for me. I am not 
 going to-day/' " Oh yes, you are," 
 responded the host, and secreted 
 himself in his private apartments 
 till the offender had been duly 
 extruded. Similar justice would, 
 I think, have been dealt out to a 
 gambler who rooked the young 
 and the inexperienced. Not so 
 to-day ; the pigeon, however un- 
 fledged and tender, is the appointed 
 prey of the rook, and the venerable 
 bird who does the plucking is 
 entirely undeterred by any con- 
 siderations of pity, shame, or fear. 
 "Is he any good?" is a question 
 which circulates round the board 
 of green cloth whenever a new 
 face, fresh from Oxford or Sand- 
 
 112
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 hurst, is noted in the social 
 throng. " Oh yes, he's all right ; 
 I know his people," may be the 
 cheerful response ; or else, in a 
 very different note, " No, he hasn't 
 got a feather to fly with." For- 
 tunate is the youth on whom this 
 disparaging verdict is pronounced, 
 for in that case he may escape the 
 benevolent attentions of the 
 
 Many-winter'd crow 
 That leads the gambling rookery home. 
 
 But even impecuniosity does not 
 always protect the inexperienced. 
 A lady who had lived for some 
 years in the country returned to 
 London not long ago, and, enumer- 
 ating the social changes which she 
 
 had observed, she said, " People 
 H 113
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? * 
 
 seem to marry on 500 a year 
 and yet have diamond tiaras." 
 It was, perhaps, a too hasty 
 generalization, but an instance in 
 point immediately recurred to my 
 recollection. A young couple had 
 married with no other means of 
 subsistence than smartness, good 
 looks, and pleasant manners. 
 After a prolonged tour round the 
 country houses of their innumer- 
 able friends they settled down at 
 Woolwich. " Why Woolwich ? " 
 was the natural enquiry ; and the 
 reason, when at length it came to 
 light, was highly characteristic of 
 the age. It appeared that these 
 kind young people used to give 
 
 nice little evening parties, invite 
 114
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 the "gentlemen cadets" from 
 Woolwich Academy, and make 
 them play cards for money. The 
 device of setting up housekeeping 
 on the pocket-money of babes and 
 sucklings is thoroughly sympto- 
 matic of our decadence. Emulous 
 Ostentation makes everyone want 
 more money than he has, and at 
 the same time drugs all scruples 
 of conscience as to the method of 
 obtaining it.
 
 VIII. 
 
 MR. J. A. FROUDE once told me 
 that he did not in the least mind 
 the accusation which was brought 
 against him (certainly not without 
 reason) of being prejudiced. "A 
 good stiff prejudice/' he said, "is 
 a very useful thing. It is like a 
 rusty weathercock. It will yield 
 to a strong and long-continued 
 blast of conviction, but it does not 
 veer round and round in compli- 
 ance with every shifting current 
 of opinion." 
 
 What Mr. Froude expressed 
 
 other people felt, though perhaps 
 116
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 they would not have cared to 
 avow it so honestly. 
 
 One of the most notable changes 
 which I have seen is the decay of 
 prejudice. In old days people felt 
 strongly and spoke strongly, and 
 acted as they spoke. In every 
 controversy they were absolutely 
 certain that they were right and 
 that the other side was wrong, 
 and they did not mince their 
 words when they expressed their 
 opinions. 
 
 The first Lord Leicester of the 
 present creation (1775-1844) told 
 my father (1807-94) that, when he 
 was a boy, his grandfather had 
 taken him on his knee and said, 
 
 "Now, my dear Tom, whatever 
 
 117
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' : 
 
 else you do in life, mind you never 
 trust a Tory " ; and Lord Leicester 
 added, "I never have, and, by 
 George, I never will/' On the 
 other hand, when Dr. Longley, 
 afterwards Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, did homage on his appoint- 
 ment to the see of Ripon, King 
 William iv. said, "Bishop of 
 Ripon, I charge you, as you shall 
 answer before Almighty God, that 
 you never by word or deed give 
 
 encouragement to those d d 
 
 Whigs, who would upset the 
 Church of England." 
 
 John Keble, the gentle saint of 
 the Tractarian movement, when 
 he saw the Whigs preparing to 
 attack the property of the Church, 
 
 118
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? v 
 
 proclaimed that the time had 
 come when " scoundrels should 
 be called scoundrels." And the 
 Tractarians had no monopoly of 
 vigorous invective, for, when their 
 famous Tract XC incurred the 
 censure of an Evangelical dean, 
 he urbanely remarked that " he 
 would be sorry to trust the author 
 of that tract with his purse." 
 
 Macaulay, on the morning after 
 a vital division, in which the 
 Whigs had saved their places 
 by seventy -nine votes, wrote 
 triumphantly to his sister 
 
 So hang the dirty Tories, and let them starve 
 
 and pine, 
 And hurrah ! for the majority of glorious 
 
 seventy-nine. 
 
 The same cordial partisan wrote 
 119
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 of a political opponent that he was 
 " a bad, a very bad, man ; a dis- 
 grace to politics and to literature " ; 
 and of an acquaintance who had 
 offended him socially, " his powers 
 gone ; his spite immortal a dead 
 nettle." 
 
 The great and good Lord 
 Shaftesbury, repudiating the the- 
 ology of Ecce Homo, pronounced 
 it "the most pestilential book 
 ever vomited from the jaws of 
 Hell/' and, dividing his political 
 favours with admirable imparti- 
 ality, he denounced " the brazen 
 faces, low insults, and accursed 
 effrontery " of the Radicals ; de- 
 clared that Mr. Gladstone's 
 "public life had long been an 
 
 1 20
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 effort to retain his principles and 
 yet not lose his position," and 
 dismissed Lord Beaconsfield as 
 " a leper, without principle, with- 
 out feeling, without regard to 
 anything, human or divine, be- 
 yond his personal ambition/' In 
 the same spirit of hearty prejudice 
 Bishop Wilberforce deplored the 
 political exigencies which had 
 driven his friend Gladstone into 
 "the foul arms of the Whigs." 
 In the opposite camp was ranged 
 a lady, well remembered in the 
 inner circles of Whiggery, who 
 never would enter a four-wheeled 
 cab until she had elicited from the 
 driver that he was not a Puseyite 
 and was a Whig. 
 
 121
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 " Mamma/' asked a little girl 
 of Whig parentage, who from her 
 cradle had heard nothing but 
 denunciation of her father's polit- 
 ical opponents, "are Tories born 
 wicked, or do they grow wicked 
 afterwards?" And her mother 
 judiciously replied, " My dear, 
 they are born wicked and grow 
 worse/' 
 
 But alas ! they are " gone down 
 to Hades, even many stalwart sons 
 of heroes/' with King William at 
 their head, and Lord Shaftesbury 
 and Lord Leicester, and Keble 
 and Macaulay and Froude in his 
 wake men who knew what they 
 believed and, knowing it, were 
 not ashamed to avow it, and saw 
 
 122
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 little to praise or like in the ad- 
 herents of a contrary opinion. 
 
 They are gone, and we are left 
 an unprejudiced but an inverte- 
 brate and a flaccid generation. 
 No one seems to believe anything 
 very firmly. No one has the 
 slightest notion of putting him- 
 self to any inconvenience for his 
 
 belief. No one dreams of dis- 
 
 ' " " " " ~~ 
 
 liking or distrusting a political or 
 
 religious opponent, or of treating 
 difference of opinion as a line of 
 social cleavage. 
 
 In old days, King Leopold of 
 Belgium told Bishop Wilberforce 
 that "the only position for a 
 Church was to say, ' Believe this 
 
 or you are damned/' To-day 
 123
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 nothing in religion is regarded as 
 unquestionably true. When the 
 
 Archbishop of Canterbury 
 first became acquainted with 
 society in London he asked, in 
 shocked amazement, "What do 
 these people believe?" and no 
 very satisfactory, answer was 
 forthcoming. If , society has any 
 religious beliefs (and this is more 
 than questionable) it holds them 
 with the loosest grasp, and is on 
 the easiest terms of intercourse 
 with every other belief and un- 
 belief. The most fashionable 
 teachers of religion have one eye 
 nervously fixed on the ever-shift- 
 ing currents of negation, talk 
 
 plausibly about putting the Faith 
 124
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 in its proper relation with modern 
 thought, and toil panting in the 
 wake of science, only to find each 
 fresh theory exploded just at the 
 moment when they have managed 
 to apprehend it. 
 
 We used to be taught in our 
 nurseries that, when "Old Daddy 
 Longlegs wouldn't say his prayers/' 
 it was our duty to " Take him by 
 the left leg and throw him down- 
 stairs," and the student of folklore 
 will be pleased to observe in this 
 ditty the immemorial inclination 
 of mankind to punish people who 
 will not square their religion with 
 ours. The spirit of religious per- 
 secution dies hard, but the decay 
 
 of prejudice has sapped its strength. 
 125
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? J! 
 
 It does not thrive in the atmo- 
 sphere of modern indifferentism, 
 and admirable ladies who believe 
 that Ritualists ride donkeys on 
 Palm Sunday and sacrifice lambs 
 on Good Friday find it difficult to 
 revive the cry of "No Popery" 
 with any practical effect. 
 
 The decay of prejudice in the 
 sphere of politics is even more re- 
 markable than in that of religion. 
 In old days, political agreement 
 was a strong and a constraining 
 bond. When people saw a clear 
 right and wrong in politics, they 
 governed their private as well 
 as their public life accordingly. 
 People who held the same politi- 
 cal beliefs lived and died together. 
 126
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 In society and hospitality, in work 
 and recreation, in journalism and 
 literature even in such seem- 
 ingly indifferent matters as art and 
 the drama they were closely and 
 permanently associated. 
 
 Eton was supposed to cherish 
 a romantic affection for the Stuarts, 
 and therefore to be a fit training 
 place for sucking Tories : Harrow 
 had always been Hanoverian, and 
 therefore attracted little Whigs to 
 its Hill. Oxford, with its Caro- 
 line theology and Jacobite tradi- 
 tion, was the Tory university : 
 Cambridge was the nursing- 
 mother of Whigs, until Edin- 
 burgh, under the influence of 
 
 Jeffrey and Brougham, tore her 
 127
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 babes from her breast. In society 
 you must choose between the 
 Duchess of Devonshire and the 
 Duchess of Gordon, or, in a later 
 generation, between Lady Holland 
 and Lady Jersey. In clubland 
 the width of St. James's Street 
 marked a dividing line of abysmal 
 depth, and to this day " Grillon's " 
 remains the memorial of an at- 
 tempt, then unique, to bring 
 politicians of opposite sides to- 
 gether in social intercourse. On 
 the one side stood Scott where 
 Burke had stood before him the 
 Guardian Angel of Monarchy and 
 Aristocracy : on the other were 
 Shelley and Byron, and (till they 
 
 turned their coats) the emanci- 
 128
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 pated singers of Freedom and 
 Humanity. The two political 
 parties had even their favourite 
 actors, and the Tories swore by 
 Kemble while the Whigs roared 
 for Kean. 
 
 Then, as now, the Tories were 
 a wealthy, powerful, and highly 
 organized confederacy. The Whigs 
 were notoriously a family party. 
 From John, Lord Gower, who 
 died in 1754, and was the great- 
 great - great - grandfather of the 
 present Duke of Sutherland, de- 
 scend all the Gowers, Levesons, 
 Howards, Cavendishes, Gros- 
 venors, and Russells who walk 
 on the face of the earth, and Sir 
 
 William Harcourt must by no 
 i 129
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? v 
 
 means be forgotten. Well might 
 Thackeray exclaim, " I'm not a 
 Whig ; but oh, how I should like 
 to be one ! " 
 
 Lord Beaconsfield described in 
 Coningsby how the Radical manu- 
 facturer, sending his boy to Eton, 
 charged him to form no intimacies 
 with his father's hereditary foes. 
 This may have been a flight of 
 fancy, but certainly when a lad 
 was going to Oxford or Cambridge 
 his parents and family friends 
 would warn him against entering 
 into friendships with the other 
 side. The University Clubs which 
 he joined and the votes which he 
 gave at the Union were watched 
 
 with anxious care. He was early 
 130
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 initiated into the political society 
 to which his father belonged. 
 Extraneous intimacies were re- 
 garded with the most suspicious 
 anxiety. Mothers did all they 
 knew to make their darlings 
 acquainted with daughters of 
 families whose political faith was 
 pure, and I have myself learned, 
 by not remote tradition, the in- 
 dignant horror which pervaded a 
 great Whig family when the heir- 
 presumptive to its honours married 
 the daughter of a Tory Lord Cham- 
 berlain. "That girl will ruin the 
 politics of the family and undo 
 the work of two hundred years" 
 was the prophecy, and I have 
 seen it fulfilled.
 
 IX 
 
 ONE of the social changes which 
 most impresses me is the decay 
 of intellectual cultivation. This 
 may sound paradoxical in an age 
 which habitually talks so much 
 about Education and Culture ; 
 but I am persuaded that it is 
 true. Dilettanteism is universal, 
 and a smattering of erudition, 
 infinitely more offensive than 
 honest and manly ignorance, has 
 usurped the place which was 
 formerly occupied by genuine and 
 liberal learning. My own view of 
 
 the subject is probably tinged by 
 
 132
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 the fact that I was born a Whig 
 and brought up in a Whiggish 
 society ; for the Whigs were 
 rather specially the allies of 
 learning, and made it a point 
 of honour to know, though never 
 to parade, the best that has been 
 thought and written. Very likely 
 they had no monopoly of culture, 
 and the Tories were just as well- 
 inforined. But a man " belongs 
 to his belongings/' and one can 
 only describe what one has seen ; 
 and here the contrast between 
 Past and Present is palpable 
 enough. I am not now thinking 
 of professed scholars and students, 
 such as Lord Macaulay and Sir 
 
 Charles Bunbury, or of professed 
 133
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 bluestockings, such as Barbarina 
 Lady Dacre and Georgiana Lady 
 Cliatterton ; but of ordinary men 
 and women of good family and 
 good position who had received 
 the usual education of their class, 
 and had profited by it. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone used to say 
 that in his schooldays at Eton 
 it was possible to learn much 
 or to learn nothing, but it was 
 not possible to learn superficially. 
 And one saw the same in after 
 life. What people professed to 
 know they knew. The affectation 
 of culture was despised, and 
 ignorance, where it existed, was 
 honestly confessed. For example, 
 
 everyone knew Italian, but no one 
 
 134
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 pretended to know German. I 
 remember men who had never 
 been to a University but had 
 passed straight from a Public 
 School to a Cavalry Regiment or 
 the House of Commons, and who 
 yet could quote Horace as easily 
 as the present generation quotes 
 Kipling. These people inherited 
 the traditions of Mrs. Montagu, 
 who "vindicated the genius of 
 Shakespeare against the calumnies 
 of Voltaire/' and they knew the 
 greatest poet of all time with an 
 absolute ease and familiarity. 
 They did not trouble themselves 
 about various readings and corrupt 
 texts and difficult passages. They 
 
 had nothing in common with that 
 
 135
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 true father of all Shakespearean 
 criticism, Mr. Curdle in Nicholas 
 Nickleby, who had written a 
 treatise on the question whether 
 Juliet's nurse's husband was really 
 " a merry man " or whether it was 
 merely his widow's affectionate 
 partiality that induced her so to 
 report him. But they knew the 
 whole mass of the plays with a 
 broad and generous intimacy ; 
 their speech was saturated with 
 the immortal diction, and Hamlet's 
 speculations were their nearest 
 approach to metaphysics. 
 
 Broadly speaking, all educated 
 people knew the English poets 
 down to the end of the eighteenth 
 
 century. Byron and Moore were 
 
 136
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 enjoyed with a sort of furtive and 
 fearful pleasure ; and Wordsworth 
 was tolerated. Everyone knew 
 Scott's novels by heart, and had 
 his or her favourite heroine and 
 hero. 
 
 Then, again, all educated people 
 knew history in a broad and 
 comprehensive way. They did 
 not concern themselves about 
 ethnological theories, influences of 
 race and climate and geography, 
 streams of tendency, and the 
 operation of unseen laws ; but 
 they knew all about the great 
 people and the great events of 
 time. They were conversant with 
 all that was concrete and ascer- 
 
 tainable ; and they took sides as 
 
 . 137
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 eagerly and as definitely in the 
 strifes of Yorkist and Lancastrian, 
 Protestant and Papist, Round- 
 head and Cavalier, as in the con- 
 troversies over the Reform Bill 
 or the Repeal of the Corn Laws. 
 
 Then, again, all educated people 
 knew the laws of architecture 
 and of painting ; and, though it 
 must be confessed that in these 
 respects their views were not very 
 original, still they were founded 
 on first-hand knowledge of famous 
 models, and though conventional 
 were never ignorant. 
 
 But it will be said that all this 
 represents no very overwhelming 
 mass of culture, and that, if these 
 
 were all the accomplishments 
 138
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 which the last generation had to 
 boast of, their successors have no 
 reason to dread comparison. 
 
 Well, I expressly said that I 
 was not describing learned or even 
 exceptionally well - read people, 
 but merely the general level of 
 educated society ; and that level 
 is, I am persuaded, infinitely 
 lower than it was in former 
 generations. Of course there are 
 instances to the contrary which 
 perplex and disturb the public 
 judgment, arid give rise to the 
 delusion that this is a learned 
 age. Thus we have in society 
 and politics such scholars as Lord 
 Acton and Lord Milner and Mr. 
 
 Asquith ; but then there have 
 139
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? * 
 
 always been some scholars in 
 public life, so there is nothing 
 remarkable in the persistence of 
 the type ; whereas, on the other 
 hand, the system of smattering 
 and top-dressing which pervades 
 Universities and Public Schools 
 produces an ever-increasing crop 
 of gentlemen who, like Mr. Riley 
 in The Mill on the Floss, have 
 brought away with them from 
 Oxford or Cambridge a general 
 sense of knowing Latin, though 
 their comprehension of any parti- 
 cular Latin is not ready. 
 
 It is, I believe, generally 
 admitted that we speak French 
 less fluently and less idiomatically 
 
 than our fathers. The " barbarous 
 
 140
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 neglect " of Italian, which used to 
 rouse Mr. Gladstone's indignation, 
 is now complete ; and an even 
 superstitious respect for the Ger- 
 man language is accompanied by 
 a curious ignorance of German 
 literature. I remember an ex- 
 cellent picture in Punch which 
 depicted that ideal representative 
 of skin-deep culture the Rev. 
 Robert Elsmere on his knees 
 before the sceptical squire, saying, 
 " Pray, pray, don't mention the 
 name of another German writer 
 or I shall have to resign my 
 living." 
 
 Then, again, as regards women, 
 of whom, quite as much as of men, 
 
 I was thinking when I described 
 141
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? v 
 
 the culture of bygone society. 
 Here and there we see startling 
 instances of erudition which throw 
 a reflected and undeserved glory 
 upon the undistinguished average. 
 Thus we have seen a lady Senior 
 Wrangler and a lady Senior 
 Classic, and I myself have the 
 honour of knowing a sweet girl- 
 graduate with golden hair, who 
 got two Firsts at Oxford. 
 
 The face of the earth is covered 
 with Girls' High Schools, and 
 Women's Colleges standing where 
 they ought not. I am told, but 
 do not know, that girl -under- 
 graduates are permitted to wit- 
 ness physiological experiments in 
 
 the torture-dens of science ; and 
 
 142
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 a complete emancipation in the 
 matter of reading has introduced 
 women to regions of thought and 
 feeling which in old days were 
 the peculiar domain of men. The 
 results are not far to seek. 
 
 One lady boldly takes the field 
 with an assault on Christianity, 
 and her apparatus of belated 
 criticism and second-hand learning 
 sets all society agape. Another 
 fills a novel with morbid patho- 
 logy, slays the villain by heart- 
 disease, or makes the heroine 
 interesting with phthisis ; and 
 people, forgetting Mr. Casaubon 
 and Clifford Gray, exclaim, " How 
 marvellous ! This is, indeed, 
 
 original research/' A third, a 
 
 '43
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 fourth, and a fifth devote them- 
 selves to the task of readjusting 
 the relation of the sexes, and fill 
 their passionate volumes with 
 seduction and lubricity. And 
 here, again, just because our 
 mothers did not traffic in these 
 wares, the undiscerning public 
 thinks that it has discovered a new 
 vein of real though unsavoury 
 learning, and ladies say, "It is 
 not exactly a pleasant book, but 
 one cannot help admiring the 
 power." 
 
 Now I submit that these abnor- 
 malities are no substitute for 
 decent and reasonable culture. 
 Pedantry is not learning, and a 
 
 vast deal of specialism, " mugged- 
 
 144
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 up," as boys say, at the British 
 Museum and the London Library, 
 may co-exist with a profound 
 ignorance of all that is really 
 worth knowing. It sounds very 
 intellectual to theorize about the 
 authorship of the Fourth Gospel, 
 and to scoff at St. John's " senile 
 iterations and contorted meta- 
 physics"; but, when a clergyman 
 read St. Paul's eulogy on Charity 
 instead of the address at the end 
 of a wedding, one of his hearers 
 said, " How very appropriate that 
 was ! Where did you get it from ? " 
 We can all patter about the 
 traces of Bacon's influence in The 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, and ran- 
 sack our family histories for the 
 
 K 145
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ?" 
 
 original of "Mr. W. H." But, 
 when Cymbeline was put on the 
 stage, society was startled to find 
 that the title-role was not a 
 woman's. A year or two ago 
 some excellent scenes from Jane 
 Austen's novels were given in a 
 Belgravian drawing-room, and a 
 lady of the highest notoriety, 
 enthusiastically praising the per- 
 formance, enquired who was the 
 author of the dialogue between 
 Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood, 
 and whether he had written any- 
 thing else. 
 
 I have known in these later 
 years a judge who had never 
 seen the view from Richmond 
 
 Hill ; a publicist who had never 
 
 146
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 heard of Lord Althorp ; and an 
 authoress who did not know the 
 name of Izaak Walton. But 
 probably the most typical illustra- 
 tion of modern culture was the 
 reply of a lady who had been 
 enthusing over the Wagnerian 
 Cycle, and, when I asked her to 
 tell me quite honestly, as between 
 old friends, if she really enjoyed 
 it, replied, " Oh yes ! I think one 
 likes Wagner doesn't one?"
 
 X 
 
 THERE once was an Evangelical 
 lady who had a Latitudinarian 
 daughter and a Ritualistic son. 
 On Sunday morning, when they 
 were forsaking the family pew and 
 setting out for their respective 
 places of objectionable worship, 
 these graceless young people used 
 to join hands and exclaim, " Look 
 at us, dear mamma ! Do we not 
 exemplify what you are so fond of 
 saying, ' Infidelity and supersti- 
 tion, those kindred evils, go hand 
 in hand '?" 
 
 The combination thus flippantly 
 
 148
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 stated is a conspicuous sign of the 
 present times. The decay of reli- 
 gion and the increase of supersti- 
 tion are among the most note- 
 worthy of the social changes I 
 have seen. 
 
 When I speak of the decay of 
 religion, of course I must be under- 
 stood to refer only to external 
 observances. As to interior con- 
 victions, I have neither the will 
 nor the power to investigate them. 
 I deal only with the habits of 
 religious practice, and in this 
 respect the contrast between Then 
 and Now is marked indeed. 
 
 In the first place, grace was 
 then said before and after dinner. 
 
 I do not know that the ceremony 
 
 149
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 was very edifying, but it was tra- 
 ditional and respectable. Bishop 
 Wilberforce, in his diary, tells of a 
 greedy clergyman who when asked 
 to say grace at a dinner-party 
 used to vary the form according 
 to the character of the wine- 
 glasses which he saw before him 
 on the table. If they were cham- 
 pagne glasses he used to begin 
 the benediction with " Bountiful 
 Jehovah," but if they were only 
 claret-glasses he said, "We are 
 not worthy of the least of Thy 
 
 mercies/' 
 
 Charles Kingsley, who generally 
 drew his social portraits from 
 actual life, described the impres- 
 sive eloquence of a Mr. O'Blare- 
 150
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? * 
 
 away, who inaugurated an excep- 
 tionally good dinner by praying 
 " that the daily bread of our less- 
 favoured brethren might be merci- 
 fully vouchsafed to them." 
 
 There was a well -remembered 
 squire in Hertfordshire whose love 
 of his dinner was constantly at 
 war with his pietistic traditions. 
 He always had his glass of sherry 
 poured out before he sat down to 
 dinner, so that he might get it 
 without a moment's delay. One 
 night, in his generous eagerness, he 
 upset the glass just as he dropped 
 into his seat at the end of grace, 
 and the formula ran on to an un- 
 expected conclusion, thus : " For 
 what we are going to receive the
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 Lord make us truly thankful 
 
 D n!" 
 
 But, if the incongruities which 
 attended grace before dinner were 
 disturbing, still more so were the 
 solemnities of the close. Grace 
 after dinner always happened at 
 the moment of loudest and most 
 general conversation. For an hour 
 and a half people had been stuffing 
 as if their lives depended on it 
 " one feeding like forty." After a 
 good deal of sherry the champagne 
 had made its tardy appearance, 
 had performed its welcome rounds, 
 and had in turn been succeeded by 
 port and home-brewed beer. Out 
 of the abundance of the mouth 
 
 the heart speaketh, and everyone 
 
 152
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 was talking at once, and very loud. 
 Perhaps the venue was laid in a 
 fox-hunting country, and then 
 the air was full of such voices as 
 these : " Were you out with the 
 squire to-day ? " " Any sport ? " 
 " Yes, we'd rather a nice gallop." 
 "Plenty of the animal about, I 
 hope?" "Well, I don't know. I 
 believe that new keeper at Bore- 
 ham Wood is a vulpicide. I don't 
 half like his looks." " What an 
 infernal villain ! A man who 
 would shoot a fox would poison 
 his own grandmother." "Sh! Sh !" 
 " What's the matter ?" "For what 
 we have received" etc. 
 
 Or perhaps we are dining in 
 
 London in the height of the season. 
 153
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 Fox-hunting is not the theme, but 
 the conversation is loud, animated, 
 and discursive. A lyrical echo 
 from the summer of 1866 is borne 
 back upon my memory 
 
 AGREEABLE BATTLE. 
 
 This news from abroad is alarming ; 
 
 You've seen the Pall Mall of to-day 1 
 Oh ! lima di Murska was charming 
 
 To-night in the Flauto, they say. 
 Not the ghost of a chance for the Tories, 
 
 In spite of Adullam and Lowe ; 
 By the bye, have you heard the queer stories 
 
 Of Overend, Gurney and Co. 1 
 
 LIVELY YOUNG LADY : Do you 
 know you've been talking at the 
 top of your voice all the time grace 
 was going on ? 
 
 AGREEABLE RATTLE : Not really ? 
 
 I'm awfully sorry. But our host 
 
 154
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 mumbles so, I never can make out 
 what he's saying. 
 
 LIVELY YOUNG LADY : I can't 
 imagine why people don't have 
 grace after dessert. I know I'm 
 much more thankful for straw- 
 berry ice than for saddle of mutton. 
 
 And so on and so forth. On 
 the whole, I am not sure that the 
 abolition of grace is a sign of 
 moral degeneracy, but I note it 
 as a social change which I have 
 seen. 
 
 Another such change is the dis- 
 use of Family Prayers. In the 
 days of my youth morning prayers 
 at least formed part of the ritual 
 of every well-ordered household. 
 The scene recurs vividly to the
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 mental eye the dining - room 
 arranged for breakfast, and the 
 master of the house in top-boots 
 and breeches with the family Bible 
 in close proximity to the urn on 
 the table. Mamma very often 
 breakfasted upstairs, but the sons 
 and daughters of the house, per- 
 haps with their toilettes not quite 
 complete, came in with a rush just 
 as the proceedings began, and a 
 long row of maid-servants, headed 
 by the housekeeper and supported 
 by the footmen, were ranged with 
 military precision against the 
 opposite wall. In families of a 
 more pronouncedly religious tone 
 evening prayers were frequently 
 
 superadded ; and at ten o'clock 
 156
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 the assembled guests were aroused 
 from " Squalls" or " Consequences" 
 by the entrance of the butler with 
 Thornton's Family Prayers on a 
 silver salver. In one very Evan- 
 gelical house which I knew in my 
 youth, printed prayers were super- 
 seded by extempore devotions, and, 
 as the experiment seemed success- 
 ful, the servants were invited to 
 make their contributions in their 
 own words. As long as only the 
 butler and the housekeeper voiced 
 the aspirations of their fellows all 
 was well ; but in an evil moment 
 a recalcitrant kitchenmaid uttered 
 an unlooked-for petition for her 
 master and mistress "And we 
 
 pray for Sir Thomas and her Lady- 
 
 157
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 ship. Oh ! may they have new 
 hearts given them/' And the 
 bare suggestion that there was 
 room for such an improvement 
 caused a prompt return to the 
 lively oracles of Henry Thornton. 
 
 I note the disappearance of the 
 domestic liturgy ; and here again, 
 as in the matter of grace, I submit 
 that unless the rite can be decently, 
 reasonably, and reverently per- 
 formed, it is more honoured in the 
 breach than in the observance. 
 
 Much more significant is the 
 secularization of Sunday. This is 
 not merely a change, but a change 
 conspicuously for the worse. The 
 amount of church-going always 
 differed in different circles ; reli- 
 gious people went often and care- 
 158
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 less people went seldom, but almost 
 everyone went sometimes, if merely 
 from a sense of duty and decorum. 
 Mr. Gladstone, whose traditions 
 were Evangelical, thought very 
 poorly of what he called a 
 " once-er," i.e. a person who 
 attended divine service only once 
 on a Sunday. He himself was 
 always a "twicer," and often a 
 "thricer"; but to-day it would 
 puzzle the social critic to discover 
 a "twicer," and even a " once-er" 
 is sufficiently rare to be noticeable. 
 But far more serious than the 
 decay of mere attendance at church 
 is the complete abolition of the 
 Day of Rest. People who have 
 nothing to do but to amuse them- 
 selves, work at that entrancing 
 159
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 occupation with redoubled energy 
 on Sundays. If they are in 
 London, they whirl off to spend 
 the " week-end" amid the mere- 
 tricious splendours of the stock- 
 broker's suburban paradise ; and, 
 if they are entertaining friends 
 at their country houses, they play 
 bridge or ping-pong or croquet ; 
 they row, ride, cycle, and drive, 
 spend the afternoon in a punt, 
 and wind up the evening with 
 "The Washington Post/' 
 
 All this is an enormous change 
 since the days when the only 
 decorous amusement for Sunday 
 was a visit after church to the 
 stables, or a walk in the afternoon 
 to the home farm or the kitchen 
 
 garden ; and, of course, it entails 
 160
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 a corresponding amount of labour 
 for the servants. Maids and valets 
 spend the " week-end " in a whirl 
 of packing and unpacking, and 
 *the whole staff of the kitchen is 
 continuously employed. 
 
 In old days people used to re- 
 duce the meals on Sunday to the 
 narrowest dimensions, in order to 
 give the servants their weekly due 
 of rest and recreation, and in a 
 family with which I am connected 
 the traditional bill of fare for Sun- 
 day's dinner, drawn by a cook who 
 lived before the School Board, is 
 still affectionately remembered 
 
 Soup. 
 
 Cold Beef. 
 
 Salad. 
 
 Cold Sweats. 
 L 161
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' : 
 
 In brief, respectable people used 
 to eat and drink sparingly on 
 Sunday, caused no unnecessary 
 work, went a good deal to church, 
 and rilled up their leisure time by 
 visiting sick people in the cottages 
 or teaching in the Sunday School. 
 No doubt there was a trace of 
 Puritan strictness about the former 
 practice, and people too generally 
 forgot that the first day of the 
 week is by Christian tradition a 
 feast. Society has rediscovered 
 that great truth. It observes the 
 weekly feast by over-eating itself, 
 and honours the day of rest by 
 over- working its dependants. 
 
 162
 
 XI 
 
 " SUPERSTITION and infidelity 
 usually go together. Professed 
 atheists have trafficked in augury, 
 and men who do not believe in 
 God will believe in ghosts/' To- 
 day I take up my parable con- 
 cerning superstition, to which, 
 time out of mind, the human 
 spirit has betaken itself as soon 
 as it parted company with faith. 
 
 I once asked a lady who, in her 
 earlier life, had lived in the very 
 heart of society, and who returned 
 to it after a long absence, what 
 
 was the change which struck her 
 163
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' : 
 
 most forcibly. She promptly re- 
 plied, "The growth of superstition. 
 I hear people seriously discussing 
 ghosts. In my day people who 
 talked in that way would have 
 been put in Bedlam ; their rela- 
 tions would have required no 
 other proof that they were mad." 
 
 My own experience entirely 
 confirms this testimony as to the 
 development of superstition, and 
 I have had some peculiarly favour- 
 able opportunities of observing its 
 moral effect upon its votaries. 
 The only superstition tolerated in 
 my youth was table-turning, and 
 that was always treated as more 
 than half a joke. To sit in a 
 
 darkened room round a tea-table, 
 
 164
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 secretly join hands under the 
 mahogany, and " communicate a 
 revolving motion" to it (as Mr. 
 Pickwick to his fists) was not bad 
 fun when the company was mainly 
 young and larky, but contained 
 one or two serious people who 
 desired to probe the mystery to its 
 depths. Or, perhaps, our psychic 
 force would cause the respectable 
 piece of furniture to rear itself 
 upon one leg, and deal out with 
 a ponderous foot mysterious raps, 
 which the serious people inter- 
 preted with their own admirable 
 solemnity. I well remember a 
 massive gentleman with an ap- 
 palling stammer who proclaimed 
 
 that some lost document which 
 165
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 we had asked the table to discover 
 would be found in the Vatican 
 Library, "wrapped in a ragged 
 palimpsest of Tertullian," and the 
 quaintness of the utterance dis- 
 solved the tables, or at least the 
 table -turners, in laughter. This 
 particular form of superstition 
 became discredited among respect- 
 able people when sharpers got hold 
 of it and used it as an engine for 
 robbing the weak-minded. It died, 
 poor thing, of exposure, and its 
 epitaph was written by Browning 
 in Mr. Sludge, the Medium. 
 
 It was the same with ghost- 
 stories. People told them partly 
 to fill gaps when reasonable con- 
 versation failed, and partly for the 
 166
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 fun of making credulous hearers 
 stare and gasp. But no one, 
 except ladies as weak-minded as 
 Byng's Half -Aunt in Happy 
 Thoughts, ever thought of taking 
 them seriously. Bishop Wilber- 
 force invented a splendid story 
 about a priest and a sliding panel 
 and a concealed confession, and I 
 believe that he habitually used it 
 as a foolometer, to test the mental 
 capacity of new acquaintances. 
 But the Bishop belonged to that 
 older generation which despised 
 superstition, and during the last 
 few years, twaddle of this kind 
 has risen to the dignity of a 
 pseudo-science. 
 
 Necromancy is a favourite sub- 
 167
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 stitute for religion. It supplies 
 the element of mystery without 
 which the human spirit cannot 
 long subsist ; and, as it does not 
 require its adherents to practise 
 self-denial, or get up early on 
 Sunday, or subscribe to charities, 
 or spend their leisure in evil- 
 smelling slums, it is a cult par- 
 ticularly well adapted to a self- 
 indulgent age. A luxurious 
 luncheon has been prolonged by 
 the aid of coffee, kummel, and 
 cigarettes till four o'clock ; and the 
 necromancers surfeited, flushed, 
 and a little maudlin are lolling 
 round the drawing-room fire. A 
 whispered colloquy in a corner is 
 heard through the surrounding 
 
 168
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 chatter, and the hostess sees her 
 opportunity. " Dear Lady De 
 Spook, do let us hear. I know you 
 are such a wonderful medium/' 
 
 LADY DE SPOOK : Really, it was 
 nothing at all out of the common. 
 I had come home dead tired from 
 the opera, and just as I was going 
 to bed I heard that rap you 
 know what I mean ? 
 
 MR. SLUDGE (enthusiastically) : 
 Oh yes, indeed I do ! No one 
 who has ever heard it can ever 
 forget it. 
 
 LADY DE SPOOK (resuming) : 
 Well, and do you know it turned 
 out to be poor dear Lord De 
 Spook. It was wonderful how 
 
 energetically he rapped, for you 
 
 169
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 know he was quite paralysed years 
 before he died ; and the curious 
 thing was that I couldn't make 
 out what he said. It seemed to 
 be, " Don't buy. Sarah. Search." 
 I was too tired to go on talking 
 to him, so I went to bed ; but 
 next day, do you know, my maid 
 found the coronet which his first 
 wife, whose name was Sarah, had 
 worn at the last coronation. I 
 was just going to order a new 
 one. Wasn't it a wonderful inter- 
 position ! Such a saving ! 
 
 CHORUS (sentimentally) : Ah, won- 
 derful indeed ! Our dear ones are 
 never really lost to us. 
 
 Closely connected with necro- 
 mancy is clairvoyance. A man 
 170
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 whom I knew well was taken 
 suddenly and seriously ill, and his 
 relations, who were enthusiastic 
 spookists, telegraphed for the cele- 
 brated clairvoyante Mrs. Endor. 
 She duly arrived, threw herself 
 into a trance, declared that the 
 patient would die, came to, and 
 declared that there was nothing 
 much the matter, and that he 
 would be about again in two or 
 three days. Then, having pocketed 
 her cheque, she returned to London. 
 The patient grew rapidly worse, 
 and died ; and his relations, though 
 I am sure they sincerely mourned 
 him, were much sustained in the 
 hour of bereavement by the 
 
 thought that the opinion which 
 
 171
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 Mrs. Endor had given in her 
 trance had proved to be the right 
 one, and that spiritual science was 
 justified by the result. 
 
 But, after all, necromancy and 
 clairvoyance are a little old- 
 fashioned. Crystal-gazing is more 
 modish. 'Tis as easy as lying. 
 You gather open-mouthed round 
 a glass ball, and the gifted gazer 
 reports that which he or she can 
 see, but which is invisible to 
 grosser eyes. " I see a small man 
 with a grey moustache, and all 
 around him are young lords. And 
 he waves a cocked hat, and signals 
 on the heliograph that the war 
 was over last October year. And 
 
 I see Westminster Abbey turned 
 172
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' : 
 
 into a raree-show, and Dr. Parker 
 in a cope and mitre, and Mr. 
 Hugh Price Hughes carrying the 
 ' ampulla/ and a grocer in a brand- 
 new coronet, and Pilkerton in a 
 crimson petticoat stepping grace- 
 fully into a golden coach." There 
 are no bounds to the fascinating 
 range of a crystal-gazer's fancy, nor 
 to the awe-struck credulity with 
 which his revelations are received. 
 But crystal is not the only 
 medium through which a purged 
 eye can discern the mysterious 
 future. Coffee - grounds, though 
 less romantic, are very serviceable. 
 Our hostess is an expert in this 
 form of science, and, being a 
 thoroughly amiable woman, she
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 makes the coffee say pretty much 
 what we should like to hear. 
 "Dear Mr. Taper, this is delight- 
 ful. You will be Prime Minister 
 before you die. It is true that 
 your party will not be in office 
 again just yet ; but ' hope on, 
 hope ever/ and trust your star." 
 
 " Oh ! Mr. Garbage, I have such 
 good news for you. Your next 
 book will be an immense success, 
 and, after that, Messrs. Skin & 
 Flint will be more liberal, and 
 what with the American copy- 
 right and the acting rights, you 
 will make quite a fortune." 
 
 Closely akin to the science of 
 coffee-grounds is that of palmistry. 
 
 A wretched gipsy who "tells for- 
 
 174
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 tunes " at a race-meeting is sent to 
 prison ; but when St. Berengaria's 
 gets up a bazaar for its new vestry 
 a bejewelled lady sits in a secret 
 chamber (for admission to which 
 an extra half-crown is charged), 
 and, after scrutinizing your line 
 of life, tells you that you have had 
 the influenza ; and, projecting her 
 soul into futurity, predicts that 
 the next time you have it you 
 will get pneumonia unless you 
 are very careful. 
 
 Of course, these minor super- 
 stitions are mainly ridiculous, and 
 to get up moral indignation over 
 them would be a waste of force. 
 But one cannot speak so lightly 
 of the degrading cults which are
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 grouped together under the name 
 of Spiritualism. I have known a 
 "spiritual wife" who was highly 
 commended in spookish circles 
 because she left her husband, 
 family, and home in one continent 
 and crossed the world to find her 
 "affinity" in another. I have 
 known a most promising boy 
 whose health was destroyed and 
 his career ruined by a hypnotic 
 experiment performed on him 
 without his parents' knowledge. 
 I have known a mesmeric clergy- 
 man who cozened the women of 
 his congregation out of money, 
 character, and in some cases 
 reason. Where occultism is pur- 
 sued, all veracity and self-respect 
 176
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 disappear; pruriency finds a con- 
 genial lodgment, and the issue is 
 well what we lately saw ex- 
 hibited in all its uncomeliness at 
 the Central Criminal Court. 
 
 The wisest lawgiver who ever 
 lived said, " Thou shalt not suffer a 
 witch to live." And a great judge 
 acted on the rule. But that 
 was a long time ago. We have 
 improved upon the jurisprudence 
 of Moses and the philosophy of 
 Sir Matthew Hale. Stoning and 
 hanging are a little out of date, 
 but boycotting is a remedy still 
 within our reach. Whoso is wise 
 will ponder these things, and will 
 give occultists, male and female, 
 an uncommonly wide berth. 
 
 M 177
 
 XII. 
 
 SOME recent observations of mine 
 on the deterioration of society have 
 drawn this interesting response 
 from an eminent clergyman in the 
 north of London : 
 
 Is it possible that in " Society " itself there 
 is a point of resistance which may be touched 
 by an effective appeal coming from the whole- 
 somer elements in English life ? Belonging as 
 I do to that section of English life which is a 
 stranger to Society in the technical sense, I am 
 deeply impressed with the taint which comes 
 to all circles of society from the contamination 
 of the circle at the top. To elicit a strong 
 opinion and a resolute determination from what 
 I may call the Puritan side of English life, may 
 be perhaps the first step towards the correction 
 of the evil which Mr. Eussell describes. Are 
 there not in Society itself some men and women 
 178
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 who retain the high ideals and the strenuous 
 purposes of their ancestry ? Can they be in- 
 duced to raise their protest, to assert their 
 principles, and open the way to a better be- 
 cause a purer future? I venture to make 
 this appeal because it is my fixed conviction 
 that even in the worst and most degraded 
 society there are men who sigh for better 
 things, just as in the worst and most degraded 
 men there remains a desire, however overlaid, 
 for regeneration. 
 
 Well, frankly I think that an 
 amiable insanity deludes my rever- 
 end friend if he expects a moral 
 reformation in the sort of society 
 which I have been describing. It 
 would tax the combined energies of 
 St. John the Baptist, Savonarola, 
 t he two Wesley s, and George White- 
 field, all rolled into one, to convince 
 the people whom I have in my 
 mind of their ethical short-comings. 
 
 They have made their own beds, 
 179
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 in every sense of that expressive 
 phrase, and must lie on them till 
 the cataclysm comes which will 
 bring us all to our senses. 
 
 But I am reminded that the 
 editor bade me write not ex- 
 clusively about deteriorations in 
 society, but about changes of all 
 kinds. That there has been some 
 change for the better I readily 
 admit, as well as an enormous 
 number of changes for the worse. 
 " All things are double," says the 
 Son of Sirach, "one against the 
 other/' and in this closing paper I 
 will try to balance our gains and 
 our losses. 
 
 That there has always been a 
 mixture of good and bad in society 
 
 is only another way of saying that 
 
 1 80
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 society is part of mankind ; but, if 
 I am right in my survey, the bad 
 just now is flagrant and ostenta- 
 tious fco a degree which we have 
 not known in England since 1837. 
 There was once a moralist who 
 spoke of the narrow path which 
 lay between right and wrong, 
 and similarly there used to be 
 a Debatable Land which lay be- 
 tween the good and evil districts 
 of society. It was inhabited by 
 the people who, having no ethical 
 convictions of their own, go very 
 much as they are led. It was 
 written of them long ago that 
 
 They eat, they drink, they sleep, they plod, 
 
 They go to church on Sunday ; 
 And many are afraid of God, 
 
 And more of Mrs. Grundy. 
 181
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 As long as Mrs. Grundy was a 
 real, though comical, guardian of 
 social propriety as long as the 
 highest influences in the social 
 system tended towards virtue 
 and decorum, the inhabitants of 
 the Debatable Land were even 
 painfully respectable. But now 
 that the "trend" (as Pennialinus 
 calls it) is all the other way, and 
 Mrs. Grundy has been deposed as 
 a bore and an anachronism, they 
 willingly follow the " smart " 
 multitude to do evil ; and so the 
 area covered by social wickedness 
 is much larger than in former 
 times. In other words, the evil of 
 society is both worse in quality 
 
 and larger in quantity than it 
 
 182
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 was fifty or even twenty years 
 ago. 
 
 Now if this be true and I hold 
 it to be unquestionable what 
 have we to set against it ? I reply, 
 the greatly increased activity of 
 those who are really good. In old 
 days the good were good in a 
 quiescent and lethargic way. They 
 were punctual in religious observ- 
 ances, public and private ; exem- 
 plary in the home and the family, 
 and generous to the poor. But their 
 religion could scarcely be called 
 active, except in so far as pottering 
 about among the cottages or teach- 
 ing a class of well- washed children 
 in the Sunday School can be 
 
 reckoned as active employments ; 
 183
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' : 
 
 and even such activities as these 
 were as a rule confined to women. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott believed that 
 " there were few young men, and 
 those very sturdy moralists, who 
 would not rather be taxed with 
 some moral peccadillo than with 
 want of horsemanship/' And, in 
 days much more recent than the 
 beloved Sir Walter's, men, if they 
 were religious, studiously kept 
 their light under a bushel, and 
 took the utmost pains to avoid 
 being detected in acts of charity 
 or devotion. 
 
 Nowadays all this is changed, 
 and changed, in my opinion, much 
 for the better. Religious people 
 
 are ready to let the world know 
 
 184
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' : 
 
 what they believe, and are active 
 in the pursuit of the things which 
 are pure and lovely and of good 
 report. Well-dressed young men 
 combine dancing with slumming. 
 Untidiness and dulness are no 
 longer the necessary concomitants 
 of virtue. Officers of the Guards 
 sing in the choir and serve the 
 altar. Men whose names are 
 written in the book of the peerage 
 as well as the Book of Life conduct 
 Bible-classes and hand round the 
 hymn-books at mission-services. 
 The group of young M.P/s who 
 have been nicknamed "Hugh- 
 ligans " show the astonished House 
 of Commons that Religion is as 
 
 practical a thing as Politics, and 
 
 185
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ?" 
 
 (as one of them lately said) they 
 cheerfully encounter that hot water 
 which is the modern substitute for 
 boiling oil. The Universities send 
 their best athletes and social 
 favourites to curacies in the slums 
 or martyrdom in the mission-field. 
 The example set by Mr. James 
 Adderley when he left Christ 
 Church and founded the Oxford 
 House at Bethnal Green has been 
 followed in every direction. Both 
 the Universities and most of the 
 colleges run " Settlements," where 
 laymen in the intervals of profes- 
 sional work and social enjoyment 
 spread religion, culture, and physi- 
 cal education amid the "dim 
 common populations" of Camber- 
 
 186
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ?" 
 
 well and Stratford and Bethnal 
 Green. 
 
 The Public Schools, formerly de- 
 nounced as " the seats and nurseries 
 of vice/' make their full contribu- 
 tion to active religion. Eton and 
 Winchester and Harrow have their 
 Missions in crowded quarters of 
 great towns. At one school the 
 boys have a guild of devotion, at 
 another a voluntary Bible-class 
 with which no master intermeddles. 
 And so the young citizens of the 
 privileged order gain their first 
 lessons in religious and social 
 service, and carry the idea with 
 them to the Army or the Bar 
 or the Stock Exchange or the 
 
 House of Commons. All this 
 
 187
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' : 
 
 is, in my eyes, a social change 
 which is also a clear and enormous 
 gain. 
 
 But, if what I say is true of men, 
 it is even more conspicuously true 
 of women. They are no longer 
 content with the moderate church- 
 going at comfortable hours, and 
 the periodical visits to particularly 
 clean cottages, which at one time 
 were the sum total of their activi- 
 ties. Every well-organized parish 
 has its staff of women-workers 
 who combine method with en- 
 thusiasm and piety with common 
 sense. Belgravia and Mayfair 
 send armies of district visitors to 
 Hoxton and Poplar. Girls from 
 
 fashionable homes, pretty and 
 
 188
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? ' 
 
 well dressed, sacrifice their even- 
 ings to clubs and social gatherings 
 for factory hands and maids of all 
 work. Beneath the glittering sur- 
 face of social life there is a deep 
 current of wise and devoted effort 
 for those unhappy beings who are 
 least able to help themselves. And 
 all this philanthropic energy is dis- 
 tinctively and avowedly Christian. 
 It is done by men and women, 
 young and old, widely differentiated 
 from one another in outward cir- 
 cumstances of wealth and accom- 
 plishments and social influence, 
 but all agreed about "the one 
 thing needful/' and all keen to 
 confess their faith before a hostile 
 
 world. 
 
 189
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 What, then, is the conclusion of 
 the whole matter ? Society, during 
 the years in which I have known 
 it, has changed enormously, alike 
 in its exterior characteristics and, 
 as far as I can judge, in its inner 
 spirit. While some of the changes 
 have been simply innocuous, and 
 a few even beneficial, the great 
 majority have been gross and 
 palpable deteriorations. An on- 
 looker who knows society well has 
 thus described its present condi- 
 tion : " We are living in an age of 
 decadence, and we pretend not to 
 know it. There is not a feature 
 wanting, though we cannot men- 
 tion the worst of them. We are 
 
 Romans of the worst period, given 
 190
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 up to luxury and effeminacy, and 
 caring for nothing but money. 
 We care no more for beauty in art, 
 but only for a brutal realism. 
 Sport has lost its manliness, and 
 is a matter of pigeons from a trap 
 or a mountain of crushed pheasants 
 to sell to your own tradesmen. 
 Religion is coming down to jugglers 
 and table-turnings and philander- 
 ings with cults brought, like the 
 rites of Isis, from the East ; and as 
 for patriotism, it is turned on like 
 beer at election times, or worked 
 like a mechanical doll by wire- 
 pullers. We belong to one of the 
 most corrupt generations of the 
 human race. To find its equal 
 
 one must go back to the worst 
 
 191
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 times of the Roman Empire, and 
 look devilish close then. But it's 
 uncommonly amusing to live in an 
 age of decadence ; you see the 
 funniest sights and you get every 
 conceivable luxury, and you die 
 before the irruption of the bar- 
 barians." 
 
 This is, I believe, a true indict- 
 ment against the age in which our 
 lot is cast, although the utterance 
 has just that touch of exaggera- 
 tion which secures a hearing for un- 
 palatable truth. But the man who 
 wrote it left out of account that 
 redeeming element in our national 
 life which I have discussed in this 
 closing paper. After all, there is 
 
 a world-wide difference between 
 
 192
 
 " For Better ? For Worse ? " 
 
 the "Majority" and the "Rem- 
 nant/' and the ten righteous 
 men* may yet save the guilty 
 city. 
 
 [NOTE. 
 
 N 193
 
 NOTE 
 
 THESE papers were written at the 
 request of Mr. Clement Shorter, 
 and by his kind permission are 
 reprinted from The Tatler. If in 
 them I have repeated what I have 
 said elsewhere, I must entrench 
 myself behind the indisputable 
 authority of my friend Mr. Morley, 
 who justified some such "borrow- 
 ings from his former self/' on the 
 principle that a man may once 
 say a thing as he would have it 
 said, but cannot say it twice. 
 
 G. W. E. R. 
 
 Midsummer 1902.
 
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 "The whole book is extremely interesting, and at once instructive and amusing." 
 
 Speaker. 
 
 "Deserves a wide circulation, and we trust that a proper reward will follow close 
 upon its merits." Literary World. 
 
 "Major Hume has thrown the most curious and valuable light on the Armada period. 
 Full of delightful sketches of men and things." \V. L. COURTNEY in The Daily 
 
 Taltavtrhl' 
 
 Telegraph. 
 " A work which adds many a fresh page to English, and one may say to European 
 
 Post. 
 
 " Quite as good as a novel and a good deal better, too. The book is so bright and 
 vivid that readers with the common dislike of history may venture on its pages 
 unafraid." ANDREW LANG in C>smopolis. 
 
 IN PREPARATION. 
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 Being Vol. I. of the series entitled " Builders of Greater 
 Britain," each vol. with photogravure frontispiece and map. 
 
 Large crown 8vo., cloth, 5s. each. 
 
 "There is not a dull page in it, and, with his skilful telling of it, the story of Raleigh's 
 life and of his times reads like a romance." Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 11, Paternoster Buildings, London, E.G. ee
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN, Publisher, 
 
 BUILDERS OF GREATER 
 BRITAIN 
 
 H. F. WILSON 
 
 A Set of 10 Volumes, each with Photogravure Frontispiece, 
 and Map, large crown Svo., cloth, 5 8. each. 
 
 The completion of the Sixtieth year of the Queen's reign will be the occasion of much 
 retrospect and review, in the course of which the great men who, under the auspices of Her 
 Majesty and her predecessors, have helped to make the British Empire what it is to-day, 
 will naturally be brought to mind. Hence the idea of the present series. These biographies, 
 concise but full, popular but authoritative, have been designed with the view of giving in 
 each case an adequate picture of the builder in relation to his work. 
 
 The series will be under the general editorship of Mr. H. F. Wilson, formerly Fellow 
 of Trinity College, Cambridge, and now private secretary to the Right Hon. J. Chamberlain 
 at the Colonial Office. Each volume will be placed in competent hands, and will contain 
 the best portrait obtainable of its subject, and a map showing his special contribution to 
 the Imperial edifice. The first to appear will be a Life of Sir Walter Ralegh, by Major 
 Hume, the learned author of " The Year after the Armada." Others in contemplation will 
 deal with the Cabots, the quarter-centenary of whose sailing from Bristol is has recently been 
 celebrated in that city, as well as in Canada and Newfoundland ; Sir Thomas Maitland, the 
 " King Tom " of the Mediterranean ; Rajah Brooke, Sir Stamford Raffles, Lord Clive, 
 Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Zachary Macaulay, &c., &c. 
 
 The Series has taken for its motto the Miltonic prayer : 
 
 ** tou JBIJo of tfy free grace fct&Bf fiutf& up f(JiB (griffanmcft 
 (Empire fo a gforioufi anfc enBtafife 0et9$f0+ 5Btf$ aff 0er 
 <Bau30fer 3efanbs afiouf 0er, efag ue in f$i* feftcifte/* 
 
 1. SIR WALTER RALEGH. By MARTIN A. S. HUME, Author 
 
 of " The Courtships of Queen Elizabeth," &c. 
 
 2. SIR THOMAS MAITLAND; the Mastery of the Mediterranean. 
 
 By WALTER FREWEN LORD. 
 
 3. JOHN CABOT AND HIS SONS; the Discovery of North 
 
 America. By C. RAYMOND BEAZLEY, M.A. 
 
 4. EDWARD GIBBON WAKEFIELD; the Colonisation of South 
 
 Australia and New Zealand. By R. GARNETT, C.B., L.L.D. 
 
 5. LORD CLIVE ; the Foundation of British Rule in India. By Sir 
 
 A. J. ARBUTHNOT, K.C.S.I., C.I.E. 
 
 RAJAH BROOKE; the Englishman as Ruler of an Eastern 
 State. By Sir SPENSER ST. JOHN, G.C.M.G 
 
 ADMIRAL PHILIP; the Founding of New South Wales. By 
 Louis BECKE and WALTER JEFFERY. 
 
 5IR STAMFORD RAFFLES; England in the Far East. By 
 the Editor. 
 
 11, Paternoster Buildings, London, E.G.
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN, Publisher, 
 
 RECENT ISSUES IN THE 
 
 GREEN CLOTH LIBRARY 
 
 In uniform green doth, large crown 8v0, 6s. each. 
 
 The Wizard's Knot. By WILLIAM BARRY. 
 
 " A romance of rare intensity of pathos. Of tragic power in 
 the delineation of passion and its consequences, and of exquisite 
 tenderness in its treatment of love and sin and suffering. . . . 
 There has been nothing finer for a long time in imaginative 
 fiction. No truer hand with more exquisite touch has fingered 
 the stops of Irish human nature." Scotsman. 
 
 Among the Syringas. By MARY E. MANN. 
 
 " It is long since we have seen a story so full of human interest 
 woven out of materials so simple. . . . The authoress has written 
 clever stories before, but none, we think, which shows such a 
 matured power." Manchester Guardian. 
 
 The Lost Land. By JULIA M. CROTTIE. 
 
 "The most remarkable Irish novel we have had for many 
 years." Bookman. 
 
 The Rhymer. By ALLAN MCAULAY. 
 
 " One of those gems of fiction which are not easily surpassed." 
 
 Oban Times. 
 
 Black Mary. By ALLAN MCAULAY, Author of " The 
 
 Rhymer." 
 
 Eyelyn Innes. By GEORGE MOORE. 
 
 Sister Teresa. A Sequel to " Evelyn Innes." By 
 
 GEORGE MOORE. 
 
 j 
 
 The Two Standards. By WILLIAM BARRY. 
 Shameless Wayne. By HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE. 
 Edward Barry : South Sea Pearler. By Louis BECKE. 
 
 Author of " Ridan the Devil," &c. 
 
 The Maid of Maiden Lane. By AMELIA E. BARR. 
 
 li, Paternoster Buildings, London, E.G. e
 
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