In this kind of hospitality there was no great expense. People made very little difference between their way of living when they were alone, and their way of living when they had company. A visitor who wished to make himself agreeable sometimes brought down a basket of fish or a barrel of oysters from London; and, if one had no deer of one's own, the arrival of a haunch from a neighbour's or kinsman's park was the signal for a gathering of local gastronomers. And in matters other than meals life went on very much the same whether you had friends staying with you or whether you were alone. The guests drove and rode, and walked and shot, according to their tastes and the season of the year. They were carried off, more or less willingly, to see the sights of the neighbourhood--ruined castles, restored cathedrals, famous views. In summer there might be a picnic or a croquet-party; in winter a lawn-meet or a ball. But all these entertainments were of the most homely and inexpensive character. There was very little outlay, no fuss, and no display. But now an entirely different spirit prevails. People seem to have lost the power of living quietly and happily in their country homes. They all have imbibed the urban philosophy of George Warrington, who, when Pen gushed about the country with its "long, calm days, and long calm evenings," brutally replied, "Devilish long, and a great deal too calm. I've tried 'em." People of that type desert the country simply because they are bored by it. They feel with the gentleman who stood for Matthew Arnold in _The New Republic_, and who, after talking about "liberal air," "sedged brooks," and "meadow grass," admitted that it would be a dreadful bore to have no other society than the Clergyman of the parish, and no other topics of conversation than Justification by Faith and the measles. They do not care for the country in itself; they have no eye for its beauty, no sense of its atmosphere, no memory for its traditions. It is only made endurable to them by sport and gambling and boisterous house-parties; and when, from one cause or another, these resources fail, they are frankly bored, and long for London. They are no longer content, as our fathers were, to entertain their friends with hospitable simplicity. So profoundly has all society been vulgarized by the worship of the Golden Calf that, unless people can vie with alien millionaires in the sumptuousness with which they "do you"--delightful phrase,--they prefer not to entertain at all. An emulous ostentation has killed hospitality. All this is treason to a high ideal.