BEFORE railways came and rendered London the chief resort of fashion, county towns, and many lesser towns still, were social centres. Only the wealthier among the country squires and those interested in politics to the extent of having a seat in the House visited London; the rest resorted to their county town, in which they had their town-houses and social circles. Those times are to be found reflected in the pages of Jane Austen and other early novelists, who picture for us the snug coteries that then flourished and the romances that ran their course within the unromantic-looking Georgian mansions now either occupied by local professional men or wealthy trades-folk, or else divided into tenements. It was the era before great suburbs began to spring up around every considerable town, to smother the historic in the commonplace; the time before manufacturing industries arose to smirch the countryside and to rot the stonework of ancient buildings with smoke and acid-laden air; the days when life was less hurried than now. York, two days’ journey removed from London, had its own society and a very varied one, consisting of such elements as the Church, the Army, and the Landed Interest, which last must also be expressed in capital letters, because in those days to be a Landowner was a patent of gentility. Outside these elements, excepting the dubious ones of the Legal and Medical professions, there was no society. Trade rendered the keepers of second-hand clothes-shops and wealthy manufacturers equally pariahs and put them outside the pale of polite intercourse. Society played whist in drawing-rooms; tradesmen played quoits, bowls, or skittles in grounds attached to inns, or passed their evenings in convivial bar-parlours. Yet York must have been a noted place for conviviality, if we are to believe the old poet:— York, York for my monie, Of all the cities that ever I see, For merry pastime and companie, Except the citie of London.