d to govern, and had not yet
attained that moral influence which, even in the absence of strong
faith, establishes rectitude of conduct, philanthropy, and purity of
thought in the minds of men. The ideals and aspirations of preceding
centuries had no meaning for what Addison called an "understanding
age," and the standard of order, refinement and taste of the present
had yet to come. The low state of society was realized and revolted
against by the best minds of the time. Gay lampooned it in the
"Beggars' Opera," Swift satirized it in "Gulliver's Travels," Defoe
became by force of circumstances a moral teacher; Addison, Steele, all
the essayists preached lay sermons; the novelists set out with the
object, less to amuse than to instruct, to improve their readers. This
tendency, so marked in the literature of the time, is the evidence of
the reforming influences at work. But many years passed before their
effect was perceptible.

There is nothing attractive about George the First and his two ugly old
mistresses, the "Elephant" and the "Maypole"; nor about his court of
Germans, utilizing their time in England by accumulating money to carry
back to Hanover when the harvest time had passed. George the Second,
brave, but narrow and ill-tempered, embodied in himself the coarseness
of the time. He loved his wife, who was faithful to him through every
outrage and every neglect. He caused one side to be taken out of her
coffin, so that when he should be laid beside her his dust might mingle
with hers. He esteemed her so highly, that in his grief at losing her,
he went so far as to say that if she had not been his wife, he would
have wished her for a mistress. To this wife, whom, in his own way, he
sincerely loved and sincerely mourned, he confided all the details of
his amours with other women. From Hanover, where he was acquiring
Madame Walmoden as his mistress, "he acquainted the queen by letter of
every step he took--of the growth of his passion, the progress of his
applications, and their success, of every word as well as every action
that passed--so minute a description of her person that, had the queen
been a painter, she might have drawn her rival's picture at six hundred
miles' distance. He added, too, the account of his buying her, and what
he gave her, which, considering the rank of the purchaser, and the
merits of the purchase as he set them forth, I think he had no great
reason to brag of, when the first price, accord