But leaving the male, look for a moment at the female sex. A fashionable lady in the days of Queen Anne was thought to be learned enough if she could barely read and write. If she could finish a letter without notorious bad spelling, she might pass for a wit. She plunged into all the amusements of the day with an intensity proportioned to her lack of moral and intellectual resources. A whirl of daily varieties was necessary to occupy the emptiness of her mind. She dashed over the town, upon a round of visiting, in a carriage with four laced and powdered footmen behind it. When she was obliged to stay at home, she regaled herself with frequent libations of tea, sometimes qualified with brandy. When her female friends dropped in, the scandal of the day commenced, and reputations were torn to tatters. When she held her levees, the dashing rake and notorious profligate had free access, and the lewd jest scarcely raised the fan to a single check. It was unfashionable to be religious; and if a lady of _ton_ went to church, it was to see company and to deal courtesies from her pew. She patronised French milliners, French hairdressers, and Italian Opera singers. She loved tall footmen and turbaned negro footboys. She doated upon monkeys, paroquets, and lap-dogs; was a perfect critic in old China and Indian trinkets; and could not exist without a raffle or a sale. The manners of high life being thus frivolous and depraved, no wonder that servants were neither wiser nor better than their employers. Complaints were universal of the arrogance, dishonesty, laziness, and luxury of valets and footmen; whilst charges against pert, mercenary, intriguing Abigails were equally loud and numerous. Their cleverness, to a great extent, consisted in obtaining the largest wages for the smallest services. Such a condition of the national character was a fruitful soil for superstition and credulity. Almost every old mansion was still ghost-haunted, and almost every parish was tormented by a witch. Fortune-telling was a common and thriving occupation; and quack-doctors were, if possible, still more numerous than astrologers.