ton and
Sir Humphry Davy could have talked together without a sense of
severance. There would have been nothing to hinder a perfectly clear
discussion on government or law between John Locke and Jeremy Bentham.

[Sidenote: The Social Revolt.]

The change from the old England to the new is so startling that we are
apt to look on it as a more sudden change than it really was; and the
outer aspect of the Restoration does much to strengthen this impression
of suddenness. The whole face of England was changed in an instant. All
that was noblest and best in Puritanism was whirled away with its
pettiness and its tyranny in the current of the nation's hate. Religion
had been turned into a system of political and social oppression, and it
fell with that system's fall. Godliness became a byword of scorn;
sobriety in dress, in speech, in manners was flouted as a mark of the
detested Puritanism. Butler in his "Hudibras" poured insult on the past
with a pedantic buffoonery for which the general hatred, far more than
its humour, secured a hearing. Archbishop Sheldon listened to the mock
sermon of a Cavalier who held up the Puritan phrase and the Puritan
twang to ridicule in his hall at Lambeth. Duelling and raking became the
marks of a fine gentleman; and grave divines winked at the follies of
"honest fellows" who fought, gambled, swore, drank, and ended a day of
debauchery by a night in the gutter. Life among men of fashion vibrated
between frivolity and excess. One of the comedies of the time tells the
courtier that "he must dress well, dance well, fence well, have a talent
for love-letters, an agreeable voice, be amorous and discreet--but not
too constant." To graces such as these the rakes of the Restoration
added a shamelessness and a brutality which passes belief. Lord
Rochester was a fashionable poet, and the titles of some of his poems
are such as no pen of our day could copy. Sir Charles Sedley was a
fashionable wit, and the foulness of his words made even the porters of
Covent Garden pelt him from the balcony when he ventured to address
them. The Duke of Buckingham is a fair type of the time, and the most
characteristic event in the Duke's life was a duel in which he
consummated his seduction of Lady Shrewsbury by killing her husband,
while the Countess in disguise as a page held his horse for him and
looked on at the murder.

[Sidenote: The Comedy of the Restoration.]

Vicious as the stage was when it opened its doors