Let us go behind the scenes and see what the idyllic prospect looks like from the rear.  We must proceed with great deliberation, and we must take our rustic society stratum by stratum.  First, then, there are the idle men who have inherited or earned fortunes, and who like to settle in luxurious houses away from great centres of population.  Such men are always in great force on the skirts of quiet old towns, and they are much revered by the tradesmen.  I cannot help thinking that the fate of the average “retired” man must be not a little dolorous, for I find that the typical member of that class conducts himself in much the same way no matter where he pitches his habitation in broad England.  He is saved if he has a hobby; but, without a hobby, he is a very poor creature, and his ways of living on from day to day are the reverse of admirable.  If such a revolutionary institution as a club has been established in the town, he may begin his morning’s round there; or, in default of a club, there is the “select” room in the principal hotel.  If he is catholic in his tastes and hungry for conversation, he may wander from one house of call to another, and he meets a large and well-chosen assortment of hucksters who come to bind bargains with the inevitable “drink”; he meets the gossip who knows all the secrets of the township, he meets flashy persons who have a manly thirst which requires perpetual assuagement.  Then he converses to his heart’s content; and, alas, what conversation it is—­what intellectual exertion is expended by these forlorn gossips in the morning round that takes up the time of many men in a quiet town!  There is a little slander, a good deal of peeping out of windows, a little discussion of the financial prospects ascribed to various men in the neighbourhood, and an impartial examination of everybody’s private affairs.  The regular crew of gossips hold it as a duty to know and talk about the most minute details of each other’s lives, and, when a man leaves any given room where the piquant chatter is going on, he is quite aware that he leaves his character behind him.  The state of his banking account is guessed at, the disposition of his will is courageously foretold, the amounts which he paid to various shopkeepers are added up with reverence or scorn according to the amount—­and the company revel in their mean babble until it is time to go to another place and pull the character and the financial accounts of somebody else to pieces.  By luncheon time most of these useful beings are a little affected in complexion and speech by the trifling potations which wash down the scandal; but no one is intoxicated.  To be seen mastered by “drink” in the morning would cause a man to lose caste; and, besides, if he said too much while his tongue was loose, he would not be believed when next he set down a savoury mess for the benefit of the company.  Through all the talk of these wretched entities, be it observed that money, money runs as a species of key-note; the