The same rude and physical coarseness controlled the standard of taste, and introduced boisterousness and violence even into amusements.  “The present grandeur of the British nation might make us expect,” wrote Steele, “that we should rise in our public diversions and manner of enjoying life, in proportion to our advancement in glory and power.  Instead of that, survey this town, and you will find rakes and debauchees are your men of pleasure; thoughtless atheists and illiterate drunkards call themselves free-thinkers; and gamesters, banterers, biters, swearers, and twenty new-born insects more, are, in their several species, the modern men of wit."[131] Walpole[132] wrote in 1744:  “The town has been trying all this winter to drive pantomimes off the stage, very boisterously; for it is the way here to make even an affair of taste and sense a matter of riot and arms.  Fleetwood, the master of Drury Lane, has omitted nothing to support them, as they supported his house.  About ten days ago he let into the pit great numbers of bear-garden bruisers (that is the term), to knock down everybody that hissed.  The pit rallied their forces and drove them out.  I was sitting very quietly in the boxes contemplating all this.  On a sudden the curtain flew up, and discovered the whole stage filled with blackguards armed with bludgeons and clubs, to menace the audience.  This raised the greatest uproar.”

Mrs. Delany, whose character has excited so much admiration in her own and in succeeding generations, left, in her autobiography and letters, a picture of the society about her as seen by one of the most refined and cultivated women of the time.  Like many others, she was struck with disgust at the coarseness and immorality which surrounded her.  “It is enough to make one a cynic, to shun the world, and shut oneself up in a tub as Diogenes did; but I must acknowledge, though the age is very degenerate, that it is not quite void of perfection.  I know some persons that still reconcile me to the world, and that convince me that virtue is not fled, though it is confined to a few."[133] “The men have so despicable an opinion of women, and treat them by their words and actions so ungenerously and inhumanly."[134] “The women were never so audacious as now; this may well be called the brazen age."[135] The material tone of society and its lack of sentiment were largely responsible for the low estimation in which women were held.  Marriages were almost universally arranged on the simple basis of money, a circumstance which explains much of the conjugal infidelity and unhappiness which prevailed.  “My Lady A.’s behaviour,” wrote Mrs. Delany,[136] “and some more wives’ behaviour of the same stamp, has so disgraced matrimony that I am not surprised the men are afraid of it; and if we consider the loose morals of the men, it is strange the women are so easily won to their own undoing.”  Mrs. Delany, while a young married woman, although she was known to be of a virtuous character, was subjected