The generation that forms great satirists shines in the history of literature, but not in that of morals; for to supply with objects of satire such masters of the satiric arts as Hogarth, Swift, Pope, Gay, Steele, Arbuthnot, and Foote, there must be deep corruption in the State and radical folly in conspicuous persons. The process which has since been named "secularization" had then fairly set in. The brilliant men of the time had learned to deride the faith which had been a restraining force upon the propensities of man for fifteen centuries, but were very far from having learned to be continent, temperate, and just without its aid. "Four treatises against the miracles" Voltaire boasted of having seen during his residence in England in 1727 and 1728; but these treatises did not moderate the warmth of human passions, nor change any other element in the difficult problem of existence. Walpole bribed, Swift maligned, Bolingbroke intrigued, Charteris seduced, and Marlborough peculated just as if the New Light had not dawned and the miracles had remained intact. Do we not, even in our own time, see inquiring youth, bred in strait-laced homes, assuming that since there are now two opinions as to the origin of things, it is no longer necessary to comply with the moral laws? The splendid personages of that period seem to have been in a moral condition similar to that of such a youth. It was the fashion to be dissolute; it was "provincial" to obey those laws of our being from compliance with which all human welfare and all honest joy have come. [Illustration: Sir Robert Walpole paring the Nails of the British Lion.]