jgg ENGLISH SAGA

vacuum of laissez-faire. When, in 1856, an evangelical peer
brought in a bill to close the pubs on the Lord's Day, the church
parade of high society in Hyde Park was interrupted for three
successive Sundays by an angry multitude who booed every
rider and carriage on the first Sunday, pelted them with showers
of turf and stones on the second, and on the third made the few
daring survivors ride for their lives till the police, in long lines,
raining blows on rioters and spectators alike, cleared the park,
After that the bill was withdrawn and the pious aristocrat left
the country.

At midnight on Sunday the Sabbath gloom lightened. The
respectable classes, replete from their devotional exercises and
anticipating an early start to the new week of labour and lawful
gain, slept the sleep of the just. But the dancing saloons and the
all-night haunts of vice in the metropolis turned on their lights
and began to revel again openly*1

• * • • •*• • •

This was of a piece with the national taste. England kept
its more austere moments with great solemnity and decorum, but
it liked to do itself well and knew how. The Forsytes carried
. their love of good living from the country to the town, and with*
their new wealth, were the better able to gratify it. They loved
to take the summer steamer to Blackwall or Greenwich and
dine in Lovegrove's great room or at the Ship or Trafalgar off
piled plates of whitebait, salmon and India pickle, spitchcocked
eels and stewed carp, followed by roast duck and haunch of
mutton, tarts and custard, iced punch, hock, champagne and port,
while the river shimmered in the rays of the setting sun and the
white sails passed against the twilight. Toasts, pipes and good
stories rounded off the feast, and singing in the train all the
way home, and a draught of soda and a purge of pills before
negotiating the stairs to join one's sleeping partner.2

They did themselves as well at home. The merchantry and
the semi-commercial professional classes were making money
Hand over fist and they disposed of it, partly in ever growing
investments but partly in comfortable living. They spent little
on splendour, art and travel: they left these to the aristocracy
and gentry. They concentrated on dinner parties. In this there
'was much competitive expenditure* A man and his wife

Wty. A Ireachman sees England in the Fifties, 350$.
* Punch, XFU, lost,