332 " EQUAL TO BOTH AND ARMED FOR EITHER." 



undertaken but from motives of necessity : this pre- 

 vented such men acquiring that knowledge of the 

 world, and that ease and polish of manner, that are 

 only to be acquired by travel and a frequent inter- 

 course with refined society. And further than this : 

 the date is not far distant when study was held to be 

 beneath the notice of the man of independent fortune, 

 and necessary and desirable only to those whom 

 necessity impelled to mental labour as a means of 

 support. Study in those days was considered infra 

 dignitatem of a gentleman : what we now estimate as 

 the most ordinary education would then have been 

 held, and indeed despised, as being clerkly, and was 

 considered no more as the attribute of the gentleman 

 than we should now consider the being able to keep a 

 set of books by double entry — an accomplishment, I 

 opine, few gentleman would be vain of possessing. 

 Nor was the fair helpmate of the squire in those days 

 one iota better informed than himself, and, but that 

 the natural softness and delicacy of the sex " emollit 

 mores^'' would she have been other than the prototype 

 of her boisterous lord. These were the fox-hunters 

 and their fair dames of the beginning of the last 

 century ; but in 1846 tell me the place where more 

 refinement of mind and manner is to be found than at 

 a meet near Melton. The unthinking or uninitiated 

 might say — "at Almacks:" he who would say so 

 must indeed be both unthinking and must know little 

 of the world. Many, nay most of those who were 

 seen, at the former, to " top the barred gate, and brusli 

 the thorny twining hedge," or, in more modern phrase, 

 to "switch at a rasper, charge an ox-fence, and go 

 like bricks," may on the same evening be seen in the 

 latter hemisphere of fashion, breathing the soft tale 



