The reign of Charles the Second was an era of shameless profligacy. Ladies of the court paid little regard to decorum, either in dress or manners; and men covered their selfish sensuality with just gloss enough not to defeat their own purposes. There never was a time when women were so much caressed and so little respected. It was then customary, when a gentleman drank a lady’s health, to throw some article of dress into the flames in her honor; and all his companions were obliged to sacrifice a similar article, whatever it might be. One of Sir Charles Sedley’s friends, perceiving that he wore a very rich lace cravat, drank to the health of a certain lady, and threw his own cravat in the fire. Sir Charles followed the example very good-naturedly, but observed that he too would have a joke sometime. Afterward, when he dined with the same party, he filled a bumper to some reigning beauty, and called a dentist to extract a decaying tooth, which had long pained him. Etiquette demanded that every one of the party should throw a tooth in the fire; and they yielded to necessity, after unavailing remonstrances against this cruel test of their gallantry. The practice of drinking in honor of ladies is said to have originated at the concerts of St. Cecilia. When the concert ended, the gentlemen retired to a tavern; and he, who could drink the most wine, acquired the right of naming the reigning toast for the ensuing year. During the reign of the second Charles, women, instead of being approached with the respect paid to superior beings, became the objects of contemptuous satire. The despicable earl of Rochester set the example of this species of writing; and in succeeding reigns, it was followed by Pope, Swift, Young, and a multitude of ordinary writers. Pope says: “Men some to pleasure, some to business take, But every woman is at heart a rake.” The objects of this wholesale bitterness have been disposed to palliate it, in consideration of the personal deformity of the poet, which made him magnanimously hate those whom he could not please. Swift speaks of his unacknowledged and heart-broken wife as follows: “Her hearers are amazed from whence Proceeds that fund of wit and sense, Which, though her modesty would shroud, Breaks like the sun behind a cloud. Ten thousand oaths upon record Are not so sacred as her word! She tends me like an humble slave, And when indecently I rave, She with soft speech my anguish cheers, Or melts my passion down with tears: Although ’tis easy to descry She needs assistance more than I, She seems to feel my pains alone, And is a stoic to her own. Where among scholars can you find So soft, and yet so firm a mind?”