prentice is an unprepossessing type of prig, and we feel sure that that virtuous master of his will hardly let slip an opportunity of striking a hard bargain. But with what wonderful fidelity could Hogarth draw the red-nosed, gin-sodden porter, the ruffians gambling among the skulls, the jeering boy with the cat-o'-nine-tails, the lank gallows-preacher, the disgusting civic guzzlers! Even in the pictures that show the reward of virtue, the interest lies, not in the principal characters, but in the fools and rascals who surround them. Doctors, lawyers and clergymen are as ignorant and repulsive as they are in Swift; indeed, nowhere do we see that callousness and dullness of imagination, which were the mark of the early-eighteenth century, more vividly portrayed. Perhaps the most hideous scene of all, is that detailed study of the various forms of torturing animals, that forms the first episode in the career of Tom Nero; though it must be allowed that even Hogarth's dogs are generally as rapacious and loveless as his human beings. In spite of himself, Hogarth has drawn up one of the most bitter indictments that have ever been brought against any age. The hard faces of his characters, with their protruding lips, say more than whole volumes of invective.

The last and perhaps the most striking of our series of jeremiads is Brown's "Estimate of the Times." This work, like Bolingbroke's "Patriot King," has received scant justice from posterity. Macaulay deals with him much as Mr. Heady deals with Faithful in the Jury Box of Vanity Fair. Sir Leslie Stephen gives a longer account of him, but it is patronizing and incomplete. Cowper helped to kill his reputation with his neat couplet :

"The inestimable estimate of Brown

Rose like a meteor kite, and charmed the town." Brown has suffered most from the fact that he wrote on the eve of a glorious and successful struggle. This proves nothing, and that it should ever be held to do so

is an instance of the fatalism that is one of the worst traits of modern character. The growth and ruin of nations may be inevitable, and all that men can do may be to note the symptoms; but does the patriot, who cries to warn his countrymen, really believe this? Was anything great or good ever done upon such a monstrous and unnatural assumption? If we can predict the future, why try to mould it? Of what use the statesman, the warrior, the prophet? All that the most inspired, the most scathing of God's messengers, can say is, “There are forces working among you which, if you do not repent and reform, will inevitably destroy you." Jonah cried, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown"; but Nineveh repented and survived, though it was only natural for poor Jonah to interpret his success as his failure. Doubtless a German professor will one day exhume the tablets of some Assyrian critic, in which Jonah will figure as a butt or a curiosity, but by no means as the saviour of the Empire.

Brown is most emphatic in his condemnation of indiscriminate abuse. "To rail at the times at large," he says, "can serve no good purpose, and generally ariseth from a want of knowledge or a want of honesty." Indeed we shall find him a singularly temperate and balanced author, and, if anything, inclined to be over-generous in his concessions. Compared with the sweeping denunciations of Swift, of Pope and of Berkeley, his “Estimate" is mild indeed. What it says only focuses many of the theories that we have already met with in the works of Brown's greatest predecessors. He starts by enumerating, not our besetting sins, but our redeeming virtues. These are the spirit of liberty, the pure administration of justice, and (strangest of all !) our humanity, as evinced by the lenity of our criminal code, the spread of philanthropy, and the comparative mildness of English highwaymen. We think of Admiral Byng and Tom Nero!

We have another, and still more surprising proof of Brown's moderation. The lower class is specially exempted from his strictures, but their blind weight is of no effect, "unless some leading mind rouse it into action, and point it to its proper effect." This is just what Pitt succeeded in doing during the Seven Years' War, and Brown was rather justified than condemned by his achievements. Then, again, he waves aside the suggestion that the condition of the nation is one " of abandoned wickedness and profligacy." This condition is, Brown admits, often imputed to us, "but then to what times hath it not been imputed?" The state of England is favourably compared with that of declining Rome and Carthage. We see how very far was Brown from being a vulgar alarmist.

He is now in a position to open his attack upon the upper class, and he starts by accusing them of luxurious effeminacy. This gives rise to a disquisition on educational method, in the nursery, the school, and the university; for if we cannot convict Brown of slandering the nation, we are at least unable to acquit him of having blasphemed its pedagogues. Shallowness and dilettantism are the next counts in the indictment; even Bolingbroke, who might have appealed to fashionable youths on account of his infidelity, is rejected on account of his erudition. Something equivalent to modern musical comedy must have existed in those days, for we are told that “the manly, the pathetic, the astonishing strains of Handel are neglected or despised, while instead of these our concerts and operas are disgraced by the lowest insipidity of composition, and unmeaning sing-song." The neglect of art, and the orgy of bad taste, are exposed with a directness worthy of Ruskin or Morris. As for women," the one sex have advanced into boldness, as the other have sunk into effeminacy.”

The three cardinal principles of religion, of honour, and

"Let us

of public spirit, are almost extinct among us. with due abasement of heart, acknowledge that the love of our country is no longer felt." All the jobbing and political corruption that Bolingbroke had denounced, is attacked in detail by Brown. Still worse, the general corruption of the upper class has infected the higher branches of the services, and officers are moneyed fops appointed by favour, a complaint of which we have heard something in quite recent times. The clergy are tainted with the same blight. We can hardly believe that we are listening to an author, separated from us by more than a century and a half, when we read how luxury and our climate have combined to produce "an increase of low spirits and nervous disorders, whose natural and unalterable character is that of fear." Even the modern outcry against conscription must have had its counterpart, for Brown's "honest gentleman" is represented as saying, "Here is my purse at the service of my country: if the French come I'll pay, but take me if I fight." The "Estimate" concludes with a brilliant analysis of the effects of too much commercial prosperity and absorption in trade, upon religion, honour and public spirit. This scepticism as to the omnipotence of Mammon, though familiar enough to the age of Aristotle, must have been strange reading to that of the Pelhams.

CHAPTER V

CHATHAM

ESPITE the manifold ill-effects of eighteenthcentury materialism, we must admit that England suffered from them to a less extent than other countries. We cannot forget

that at the end of George II's reign she stood at a height of glory seldom equalled, and never surpassed in her history. How, it may fairly be asked, can we reconcile this fact with our theory of decadence, developed in the last two chapters?

First, let us note that the worst of the evil was confined to the upper strata of society. It is against them that the jeremiads are directed; it was they who had allowed manly virtue to decay, who had honeycombed the services with corruption, and frozen religion into formula; it was they who were responsible for the dearth of art and imagination. The masses were as yet untouched, and though often brutal and mercenary to the last degree, were still, at heart, sound and coarsely healthy. They were, besides, fairly contented with their lot, and if they could only get leaders, they were the finest fighting material in Europe.

Then we must remember that, bad as our own condition might be, it was rosy as compared with that of our enemy. By the middle of the century, the French monarchical system had begun to go utterly to pieces. We think of the superb armies of Louis XIV, invincible till Blenheim,