The thing which strikes us most in connection with the halcyon period of the dandies, with its follies and lavish expenditure, is that it coincided with some of the most anxious days through which England ever passed, and with the age when distress and poverty were most keenly felt. Fashionable life was indeed fast and furious and characterised by its reckless extravagance. Everybody gambled: every possible event was made the subject of a bet. The turf was, as it is to-day, crowded with blacklegs; and the issue of a great fight in the prize ring was watched with more trembling anxiety than that of a battle in Spain or Flanders. The prevalence of drunkenness was universal; every memoir of the time records drinking-bouts innumerable. The fine gentleman garnished every sentence with an oath and even used bad language in his letters to his friends. Duelling was universal. Pitt, the Duke of Wellington, Castlereagh, nearly all the leading statesmen, had to fight. Even the Duke of York, though very near the throne, ‘met’ the Duke of Richmond. But with all its failings the men of fashion had one merit: though they were almost incredibly coarse, brutal, and selfish, no one could reproach them with softness. They may have been bad, but they were men. If they went to see prize-fighters beat each other into a jelly, they were ready enough to use their fists themselves. If they gambled the cards and the dice, they did so at the risk of ending their days in a debtor’s prison. Many of them died ruined in purse and bankrupt even of honour. If they pursued their amours unscrupulously, there was always the risk of facing an outraged relative’s pistol. The spice of danger was never absent from their lives. One alone could share in all their pursuits, and be exempt from peril. He could drink himself drunk without danger of his words being called in question; he could ruin wives and daughters and no one would raise a hand against him; he could engage in shady transactions on the turf, and men made it a point of honour to shield his fair fame. If others were extravagant, they dissipated their own patrimony; and when that was gone, there was nothing for it but to starve. But he had only to fall back on national resources, and the taxpayer extricated him from his difficulties. It is because of its immunity, that the profligacy of George, as Prince, as Regent, and as King is so detestable.