PERIOD III.
LIFE IN THE LAST CENTURY.
CHAPTER I.
MATRONS AND MAIDS.
Artificiality of eighteenth-century life—The rôle of the middle-class woman—Scotch domestic life—The old maid—Admiration of foreigners for English women—English dress—Public morals—Contrast between town and country life—A country lady in London—Racquets, routs, and drums—Education of girls—The boarding-school—Habits and manners of the middle class—Le Blanc’s opinion of the English.
“La dix-huitième siècle aime la nature.” The love of the eighteenth century for nature was, however, a capricious attachment, a spurious sentiment. No century so delighted in artificiality. Its dress, its habits, its amusements, its very speech,—all bear witness to its dislike of nature unadorned. It loved the town and the works of man. The eighteenth century stands out with a curiously distinct individuality. The influences that moulded society in the time of the Stuarts had passed away. The contest between the moralist and the sensualist had spent itself. Although the Puritan spirit lived on, it slumbered awhile, and the open profligacy against which it had striven, though not extinguished, was manifested in less pronounced shapes. The Church was both lethargic and corrupt. For the first time in English history we come upon a period when there was no dominant spiritual influence. Religion, like everything else, was a matter of formalism.
Slowly the great characteristics of social life in England had changed. Romanism and feudalism had governed it in earlier times. Then came the Renaissance, with its vivifying power, followed by the reign of sensuality and the opposing force of Puritanism. It seemed as if the nation were exhausted; passion had spent itself, moral feeling was deadened, enthusiasm was quenched. The new force was conventionality.
Women in every-day life felt the spell of this goddess less than did the great ladies. Over the fashionable world she reigned supreme; but the bourgeoisie, while they admired, and as far as possible imitated, the ways of their social superiors, showed themselves more children of nature.