THE    FIGHTING    FIFTIES	139
measured their status by the weight of their table silver—vast
6pergnes, massive salvers, tureens and candlesticks—the fineness
of their table damask, cut glass and china, above all on the
quantity of dishes served. Vast saddles of mutton and sirloins
of beef, whole salmons and turbots, interminable courses of
potages, fishes, removes, entremets and removes of the roast,
were helped out by vegetables boiled in water, pastries and
enormous Stilton and Cheshire cheeses. The wines followed
each other in equal profusion until the table was cleared for
further orgies of dessert, preserved fruits, nuts, port, madeira
and sherry. All this suggested to a foreigner that the race would
soon eat itself to a standstill. Taine reckoned that to the one
and a half sheep consumed in a year by a Frenchman, an English-
man ate four. In England, an American noticed, even the
sparrows seemed fat.
The circumference took its standards from the centre. The
larger industrial towns were beginning to evolve a social life
for the well-to-do modelled on that of the metropolis, with
their own clubs, fashionable places for promenade and recreation
and assembly and ball-rooms. In Liverpool, the most aristocratic
city of the industrial north, the merchant princes wore white
cravats and evening dress coats on Change, and in Manchester's
Athenaeum and at its world-famous Hall6 concerts, first estab-
lished in 1848, well-to-do quakers could be seen soberly con-
versing in broad-brimmed hats, neat grey or mulberry-coloured
coats, frilled shirts and knee breeches. The urban sporting world,
familiar to the twentieth century, was beginning to take shape:
the I. Zingari was instituted in 1845 and a regular All England
cricket eleven began to play a few years later, travelling the
country in billycock and checked shirt and arousing widespread
enthusiasm for the game, soon to bear fruit in the first county
matches. Rugby football was also evolving from a local into
a national sport, with its own customs and rules: the famous
Blackheath Club was founded by a little group of old Rugbeians
and Blackheath boys in 1858.
For though England was turning urban and the old field
sports could no longer suffice, the strong national love of pleasure
reasserted itself as soon as the first rush for wealth was over.
A new form of recreation, first tentatively essayed at Weymouth,
Scarborough and Brighton in the days of George III., found
especial favour with the well*to-do merchant and professional