And yet, bad though Frederick indubitably was, and deficient in almost every quality that constitutes the gentleman, we must not be too hard on him. The manners of the age made him what he was; and he would have been a wonderfully strong-minded man had he resisted their influence. It may be a trite remark, but I fancy that nothing strikes the historical student more than the change of manners that has taken place in so short a period. When I was a boy, I remember being told by an old female relative that she could perfectly well remember the coronation of George III. In her presence, the reigns of George II. and William IV. seemed to shake hands, and yet what a chasm existed between them. The greater portion of the eighteenth century was a Tophet; we need only read Casanova's Memoirs to see what it was on the Continent; but in England it strikes us even more offensively, because here vice stalked forth with its brazen brow uncovered. In France, on the other hand, there was something Watteau-esque about it, and a slightly redeeming grace. It is true that England had the great blessing of an industrious middle class, among which moral views and the honest customs of Puritanism were maintained; but the aristocratic classes were utterly corrupt. The Hanoverian dynasty introduced, among other blessings, the _sauer-kraut_ tone of German pauper nobility; and its coarseness easily found access among a people in whom every feeling of decency had been destroyed by the fabulously shameless comedians of the Restoration. The family life of the two first Georges was one long offence against propriety. Between the first George and his son the feeling of hatred was so extreme, that, after the death of the former, a document was found in his cabinet containing the proposition and plan to seize the Prince of Wales and ship him off to the colonies, where he could be easily got rid of. When we remember, too, the mistresses whom George I. brought in his train from Hanover--the "Elephant," that enormous lump of flesh, Sophie Freifrau von Kielmansegge, and the "Maypole," her tall, thin rival, the Gräfin Melusine von Eberstein--we can easily understand the coarseness which appears deep-rooted in English society far into the eighteenth century. One thing we may say in favour of this society, that no hypocrisy was displayed. When Lady Dorchester, ex-mistress of James II., once met in her old days, in George I.'s ante-chamber, the Duchess of Portsmouth, ex-mistress of Charles II., and Lady Orkney, ex-mistress of William III., she exclaimed, loudly enough to be heard by all persons, "Good God! who ever could have supposed that we three (well, suppose I say Traviati, as better suited to the age than the plump word employed by her ladyship) should meet at this place?" George II.'s sensible and virtuous wife strove in vain to introduce a more decent tone into polite society; and vice was still rampant far into the reign of her well-meaning grandson.