230 A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



twenty (in 1753) from Colonel Mostyn that Lord Rockingham's horse Scampsonade 

 beats Lord Northumberland's. Three years later Mr. Fanquier bets Sir John Moore 

 ten guineas that Mr. Shafto has not so many horses in training in April, 1 767, as he had 

 at the time of the Duke of Cumberland's death. These are flakes of froth upon the 

 surface of the torrent of gambling on every conceivable subject. The ivory 

 counters, valued from IDS. 6d. to 500 guineas apiece, are still preserved, which tell a 

 sufficiently plain tale, even if the records of the time were not there to make it clear 

 enough. 



It was not merely the idle, or the youthful, or the foolish, who provided the pro- 

 digious frivolity of the eighteenth century. Men of strong intellect, of refined culti- 

 vation, of age and high standing, lived openly in England all their lives as a man 

 nowadays would be ashamed to live a week at Monte Carlo. The Duke of Grafton 

 took a mistress to Ascot Races whom he was accused of having picked up 

 in the street. Junius himself could not do justice to the vices of Lord 

 Sandwich. And when these, with such fit compeers as Sir Francis Dashwood 

 or Lord George Sackville, were in office, it became abundantly clear that 

 personal morality was nothing but a party question, and virtue bowed to the 

 convenience of a salary. Yet apart from such ethical considerations, no more 

 desirable lot could well have been imagined than that a man should have been born 

 into that aristocracy at a moment in its culminating vigour, which can only be 

 compared to the clays of Alcibiades at Athens or of Mark Antony at Rome. 

 It is at such epochs as any of these three that life has been enjoyed most keenly, 

 and that literature most brilliantly reflects it. Strongly based within its borders 

 that society could safely permit absolute liberty of thought and speech ; for its mem- 

 bers were numerous enough to argue that their own interests were those of the 

 State, and privileged enough to get the best of everything. The world, in fact, was 

 made for them, and while they cared nothing whatsoever for all beyond the pale, 

 they bestowed an amount of attention on themselves which is inconceivable in days 

 when money counts for more than blood. They enjoyed, too, in their little sallies 

 against each other's failings, a success which only Aristophanes or Juvenal had had 

 before them. Every shot told, for everyone knew everything about everybody else. 

 Unable to surprise, writers were content to amuse. Not having the necessity to 

 work for its living, society was delighted to gamble for it, and England became one 

 vast Casino, the headquarters of which were moved from Bath to St. James's about 

 the end of George II. 's reign. " I could not tell you a teaspoonful of news," writes 



