Suppose we own at once, that there is a great deal of falsehood and mock-modesty in the talk which ever anon meets us, the Puritanical squeamishness of each extremely moral (undetected) Tartuffe, acting as Aristarchus; who cannot, one might think, be quite ignorant of what is current in the newspaper-literature of our own time.[5] The fact is this, people now-a-days keep their dishes of spiced meat and their Barmecide show-fasts separate. They sip the limpid spring before company, and keep hidden behind a curtain the forbidden wine of Xeres, quietly iced, for private drinking. Our ancestors took a taste of both together, and without blushing. Their cup of nectar had some “allaying Tyber” to abate “the thirst complaint.” They did not label their books “Moral and Theological, for the public Ken,” or “Vice, _sub rosa_, for our locked-cabinet!” _Parlons d’autres choses, Messieurs, s’il vous plâit._ § 4.—ON THE PASTORALS. There were good reasons for Court and country being associated ideas, if only in contrast. Thus Touchstone states, when drolling with Colin, as to a Pastoral employment:—“Truly, shepherd in respect of itself it is a good life; but in respect it is not in the Court, it is tedious.” The large proportion of pastoral songs and poems in _Choyce Drollery_ is one other noticeable characteristic. Even as Utopian schemes, with dreams of an unrealized Republic where laws may be equally administered, and cultivation given to all highest arts or sciences, are found to be most popular in times of discontent and tyranny, when no encouragement for hope appears in what the acting government is doing; even so, amid luxurious times, with artificial tastes predominant, there is always a tendency to dream of pastoral simplicity, and to sing or paint the joys of rural life. In the voluptuous languor of Miladi’s own _boudoir_, amid scented fumes of pastiles and flowers, hung round with curtains brought from Eastern palaces, Watteau, Greuze, Boucher, and Bachelier were employed to paint delicious panels of bare-feeted shepherdesses, herding their flocks with ribbon-knotted crooks and bursting bodices; while goatherd-swains, in satin breeches and rosetted pumps, languish at their side, and tell of tender passion through a rustic pipe. The contrast of a wimpling brook, birds twittering on the spray, and daintiest hint of hay-forks or of reaping-hooks, enhanced with piquancy, no doubt, the every-day delights of fashionable wantonness. And as it was in such later times with courtiers of _La belle France_ surrounding Louis XV., so in the reign of either Charles of England—the Revolution Furies crept nearer unperceived.