SOCIETY: THEN AND NOW 11 



tilings ; but human nature is the same in all centuries. 

 The fact is so obvious that one is ashamed to state it. 

 The Regency was a terrible time for gambling ; but 

 Tranby Croft had a similar repute when Edward the 

 Seventh was Prince of Wales. Bridge is a fine game, 

 and what, tl)ink you, supports the evening newspapers ? 

 The news ? Certainly : the Betting News. Cock- 

 fighting was a brutal sport, and is now illegal, but is 

 it dead ? Oh dear, no. Virtue was not general in 

 the picturesque times of George the Fourth. Is it 

 now ? Study the Cause Lists of the Divorce Courts. 

 Worse offences are still punished by law, but are later 

 condoned or explained by Society as an eccentricity. 

 Society a hundred years ago did not plumb such 

 depths. 



In short, behind the surface of things, the Regency 

 riot not only exists, but is outdone, and Tom and Jerry, 

 could they return, would find themselves very dull 

 dogs indeed. It is all the doing of the middle classes, 

 that the veil is thrown over these things. In times 

 when the middle class and the Nonconformist 

 Conscience traditionally lived at Clapham, it mattered 

 comparatively little what excesses were committed ; 

 but that class has so increased that it has to be sub- 

 divided into Upper and Lower, and has Claphams of 

 its own everywhere. It is — or they are — more wealthy 

 than before, and they read things, you know, and are 

 a power in Parliament, and are something in the 

 dominie sort to those other classes above and below. 



Ill 



The coaching and waggoning history of the road to 

 Brighthelmstone (as it then was called) emerges dimly 

 out of the formless ooze of tradition in 1681. In De 

 Laune's " Present State of Great Britain," published 

 in that year, in the course of a list of carriers, coaches, 

 and stage-waggons in and out of London, we find 



