Expressions then in common use among ladies would not be tolerated now in decent society. In their intercourse with men they were more restrained, at least in writing, but the attitude of the sexes towards each other was one peculiar to the age. There was so much affectation of gallantry on the part of the men, and such a want of straightforwardness on the part of the women, that the whole tone of society was thoroughly artificial. Between the wits, statesmen, men of letters, and the great ladies of their acquaintance there was a romantic kind of relation worthy of the days of chivalry. The elaborately framed protestations of devotion to which women were generally quite ready to listen belonged rather to feudal romance than to real life. But the romance of the eighteenth century was tinctured with the spirit of banter, and both sides were well aware that the whole thing was merely put on, like the powder and the patches. So general was this playing at sentiment that when real feeling for once in a way tried to get the ascendant it was unable to obtain credence. The fashionable dames of the eighteenth century loved to dabble in politics, which afforded a fresh excitement when the social round began to grow a little flavourless. The eighteenth century was a great period for letter-writing, and political news was a constant topic of correspondence. The interest centred on men rather than on principles. These great ladies, when they wrote to each other or to their friends of the male sex, did not discuss causes. They were concerned with individuals, with the career of the gentlemen of their acquaintance. Looked at in this way, politics were, in the phraseology of the age, “vastly” entertaining. When the rage for speculation came in, the ladies became ardent speculators. They exchanged confidences and congratulations over the great South Sea Bubble, before it burst, and hoped that “stocks were going on prosperously.” Mrs. Molesworth, writing to Mrs. Howard (Countess of Suffolk), in June, 1720, says--