THREE-BOTTLE MEN. 231 



days. As county justices their notions of law and 

 their ideas of justice and morahty were beneath con- 

 tempt, their manners as well as their dialect and dress 

 were provincial in the extreme ; but as the waste lands 

 were reclaimed, fenced in, and brought under cultiva- 

 tion, so a like improvement was manifested in the 

 minds and manners of country people of all classes, 

 from the lords of the soil to those who tilled it. The 

 gentlefolk of England at the present day no longer 

 indulge at breakfast-time in strong ales and other 

 intoxicating- drinks, neither do thev dine at four or 

 five o'clock and prolong the dinner-hour late into the 

 niofht, risino- from the table in a state of intoxication. 



It was the fashion in those days to drink port wine 

 to excess ; gentlemen were frequently described as two 

 or three-bottle men, as the case might be. Even 

 William Pitt, with all the numerous virtues of which 

 he was possessed, was strongly addicted to excessive 

 indulgence in the wines of Oporto ; and this is said to 

 have very materially hastened his death. 



The country parson was little better in point of 

 intelligence or behaviour than the squire. If we are 

 to believe Fielding and other writers, drinking at some 

 low village alehouse, or hanging about the servants' 

 quarters of the big house, drinking and gormandising, 

 was no unfrequent occupation amongst the lower orders 

 of the clergy. As for schools, it is difficult to imagine 

 nowadays how rough they were, or the terrible amount 

 of ill-treatment to which boys in those days were sub- 

 jected. Literature, too, was in a terrible state, and the 

 difficulties attending publication were quite sufficient to 

 deter any author, however sanguine ; besides which, 

 no one could venture upon a literary career unless 

 supported by some patron of rank and influence, as 



