They were not expensive gatherings, the tickets being only 7_s._ 6_d._ each, which did not include supper. Dancing began at eleven to the strains of Weippert’s and Collinet’s band. The balls were held in the great room at Willis’s, and the space reserved for the dancers was roped round. The two favourite dances were the Valse and the Galop--the ‘sprightly galoppade,’ as it was called. Quadrilles were also danced. It may be interesting to those who have kept the old music to learn that in the year 1836 the favourite quadrilles were _L’Eclair_ and _La Tête de Bronze_, and the favourite valse was _Le Remède contre le Sommeil_. They had also Strauss’s waltzes. [Illustration: LINKMAN] The decline and fall of Almack’s was partly caused by the ‘favouritism’ which not only kept the place exclusive, but excluded more than was politic. The only chance for the continued existence of such an institution is that it should be constantly enlarging its boundaries, just as the only chance for the continued existence of such an aristocracy as ours is that it should be always admitting new members. Somehow the kind of small circle which shall include only the _crème de la crème_ is always falling to pieces. We hear of a club which is to contain only the very noblest, but in a year or two it has ceased to exist, or it is like all other clubs. Moreover, a great social change has now passed over the country. The stockbroker, to speak in allegory, has got into Society. Respect for Rank, fifty years ago universal and profound, is rapidly decaying. There are still many left who believe in some kind of superiority by Divine Right and the Sovereign’s gift of Rank, even though that Rank be but ten years old, and the grandfather’s shop is still remembered. We do not pretend to believe any longer that Rank by itself makes people cleverer, more moral, stronger, more religious, or more capable; but some of us still believe that, in some unknown way, it makes them superior. These thinkers are getting fewer. And the decay of agriculture, which promises to continue and increase, assists the decay of Respect for Rank, because such an aristocracy as that of these islands, when it becomes poor, becomes contemptible. The position of women, social and intellectual, has wholly changed. Nothing was heard then of women’s equality, nothing of woman suffrage; there were no women on Boards, there were none who lectured and spoke in public, there were few who wrote seriously. Women regarded themselves, and spoke of themselves, as inferior to men in understanding, as they were in bodily strength. Their case is not likely to be understated by one of themselves. Hear, therefore, what Mrs. John Sandford--nowadays she would have been Mrs. Ethel Sandford, or Mrs. Christian-and maiden-name Sandford--says upon her sisters. It is in a book called ‘Woman in her Social and Domestic Character.’