Besides the ordinary amusements of society, fashionable people frequented public assemblies, of which those at Ranelagh were longest in vogue. The company at Vauxhall was more mixed. People of the shop-keeping and lower classes enjoyed themselves in the numerous pleasure resorts about London, such as Mary-le-bone gardens, Islington, and Sadler's Wells. Theatres were well attended and the increase of public decency is illustrated by the disappearance from the stage of the coarseness of earlier times. It was the golden age of the drama; for it saw the acting of Macklin and Garrick, of Mrs. Siddons, "the tragic muse," and her brother John Kemble, of Mrs. Abington, Miss Farren, "the comic muse," afterwards Countess of Derby, and Mrs. Jordan. As dramatists Home, Foote, Colman, and Cumberland deserve to be mentioned; and Goldsmith and Sheridan wrote comedies which, while belonging to acting drama, adorn English literature. Among less respectable amusements bull-baiting was confined to the lowest class. An attempt to render it illegal was defeated in parliament in 1800, chiefly through the opposition of Windham. Cock-fighting, though widely condemned, was practised even by gentlemen, chiefly as a means of betting. Exhibitions of combats with swords became extinct, and made way for the scarcely less dangerous prize-fights of bruisers which from about 1788 became extremely popular. Foreign travel, which earlier was almost confined to the "grand tour" made by rich young men as part of their education, increased greatly before the revolutionary war, and travelling in England became more general as the means of communication were improved. In 1760 English roads were little better than they were a century before, mere trackways, which in parts were sloughs in winter and scored with deep ruts in summer. Travelling over them was slow and often dangerous. The "flying-machine," or coach, between London and Sheffield was fully three days on its journey. During the first fourteen years of the reign 452 acts were passed for repairing roads, but for some time little progress was made. Many and bitter are the complaints made by Arthur Young, the eminent agriculturist, of the roads on which he travelled in 1769-70. One turnpike road was a bog with a few flints scattered on top, another full of holes and deep ruts, while "of all the cursed roads which ever disgraced this kingdom" that between Tilbury and Billericay was, he says, the worst, and so narrow that when he met a waggon, the waggoner had to crawl between the wheels to come to help him lift his chaise over a hedge. During the last quarter of the century a vast change was effected; good roads became general, and coaches with springs and otherwise well appointed ran between London and most considerable towns, and between one large town and another. From 1784 many of these coaches carried the mails, and letters posted in Bath were delivered in London seventeen hours later. [Sidenote: _POETRY._]