nd me." _The New Paul and Virginia_ was followed some
two years later by _Is Life Worth Living?_ a formal philosophical
treatise, in which the values of life and their connection with
religious belief, the methods of fiction being abandoned, were submitted
to scientific analysis. These three books represent the compound results
produced by the liberalism of Oxford on a mind such as my own, which had
been cradled in the conservatisms of the past. But meanwhile I had left
Oxford behind me, and the death of my father and other family events
which occurred about that time left me free to determine my own
movements, the consequence being that thenceforward the months of what
is called "the season" found me year by year in London from Easter till
the approach of August. Of my early experiences of London, and of the
kind of life I lived there, I will now give some brief account, not
disdaining the humble aid of gossip.

CHAPTER VI

THE BASIS OF LONDON SOCIETY

Early Experiences of London Society--Society Thirty Years Ago
Relatively Small--Arts and Accomplishments Which Can Flourish
in Small Societies Only

Comparing London society as it was when I first knew it with what it has
since become, I should say that its two most distinguishing features
were its then comparative smallness and its practically unquestioned
position. Its position was mainly founded on the hereditary possession
of land, its nucleus being the heads of more or less ancient families
whose rent rolls enabled them to occupy London houses and play an
agreeable and ornamental part in the business of entertaining and being
entertained for the few months called "the season." Certain
qualifications in the way of family being given, mere personal charm and
accomplishment would often secure for their possessors a high place in
its ranks. Indeed, such qualifications were by no means always
necessary, as was shown in still earlier days by the cases of Moore and
Brummell; but, on the whole, the social conditions then prevalent in
London coincided with what, in the country, I had known and accepted,
when a child, as part of the order of Nature. Of society as represented
by a definite upper class, the basis was still inheritance in the form
of inherited land.

This was no mere accident. It was a fact definitely explicable in terms
of statistical history. At the time of the battle of Waterloo, outside
the landed class there did not exist in Eng