drank a gallon and a half of Champagne and Burgundy at one sitting; in some coffee-houses it was the custom, when the night’s drinking ended, for the company to burn their wigs.  Some of Horace Walpole’s letters prove plainly enough that great gentlemen conducted themselves occasionally very much as wild seamen would do in Shadwell or the Highway.  What would be thought if Lord Salisbury reeled into the House in a totally drunken condition?  The imagination cannot conceive the situation, and the fact that the very thought is laughable shows how much we have improved in essentials.  In bygone days, a man who became a Minister proceeded to secure his own fortune; then he provided for all his relatives, his hangers-on, his very jockeys and footmen.  One lord held eight sinecure offices, and was besides colonel of two regiments.  A Chancellor of the Exchequer cleared four hundred thousand on a new loan, and the bulk of this large sum remained in his own pocket, for he had but few associates to bribe.  When patrols were set to guard the Treasury at night, an epigram ran—­

  “From the night till the morning ’tis true all is right;
  But who will secure it from morning till night?”

There was a perfect carnival of robbery and corruption, and the people paid for all.  Money gathered by public corruption was squandered in private debauchery, while a sullen and helpless nation looked on.  Think of the change!  A Minister now toils during seventeen hours per day, and receives less than a successful barrister.  He must give up all the ordinary pleasures of life; and, in recompense for the sacrifice, he can claim but little patronage.  By most of the men in office the work is undertaken on purely patriotic grounds; so that a duke with a quarter of a million per year is content to labour like an attorney’s clerk.

If we think about the ladies of the old days, we are more than ever driven to reflection.  It is impossible to imagine a more insensate collection of gamblers than the women of Horace Walpole’s society.  Well-bred harpies won and lost fortunes, and the vice became a raging pest.  A young politician could not further his own prospects better than by letting some high-born dame win his money; if the youth won the lady’s money, then a discreet forgetfulness of the debt was profitable to him.  The rattle of dice and the shuffle of cards sounded wherever two or three fashionable persons were gathered together; men and women quarrelled, and society became a mere jumble of people who suspected and hated and thought to rob each other.  It is horrible, even at this distance of time, to think of those rapacious beings who forgot literature, art, friendship, and family affection for the sake of high play.  One weary, witty debauchee said, “Play wastes time, health, money, and friendship;” yet he went on pitting his skill against that of unsexed women and polished rogues.