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 to licentious attacks which fell little short of violence. It is hardly necessary to comment on the hard drinking and the hard swearing which were almost universal characteristics of gentlemen of fashion. Duelling was still a custom, and gambling was the favorite amusement at court, at the clubs, and in ladies' drawing-rooms. The title of gentleman depended on birth, and had nothing to do with personal conduct. Caste feeling was very strong. Gentlemen looked upon professional men or men of letters as beneath them, however superior they might be in manners, morals, or education. A curious instance of this caste feeling occurred in the case of Captain Vratz, who said of himself and companions on their way to the gallows for murder, that "God would show them some respect as they were gentlemen." When Gay's "Beggar's Opera" was put on the stage, the fashionable world crowded to see their own coarseness and immorality exhibited in the persons of thieves and highwaymen, and to laugh at the truth of the Beggar's words: "Through the whole piece you may observe such a similitude of manners in high and low life, that it is difficult to determine whether (in the fashionable vices) the fine gentlemen imitate the gentlemen of the road, or the gentlemen of the road the fine gentlemen."