It was the reign of the senses. Beauty was the road to greatness for women, and to beauty and wit all other qualities yielded. The great ladies who stand out most prominently on the canvas are the royal favourites, the exquisite frail beauties who dazzle the vision and eclipse the women of sterner mould. Women forgot that they had any other _rôle_ to play but one--that of syren. Those who had no power to captivate dropped into the background, were pushed aside, and forgotten. The greatest lady was she who could sell herself at the highest price, whose charms drew the largest number of bidders. What she gloried in was the rank and number of her lovers, and her ambition was to flaunt her conquests in the eyes of other women. Lady Castlemaine, Francis Stuart, Louise de Querouaille, and Nell Gwynn of immortal memory, together with many others whose task was the subjugation of man, represent the society of the Restoration period. The disintegration of the times no doubt militated against high ideals, although the Civil War itself gave rise to the display of heroic virtues on the part of both men and women. The stern and awful discipline of the sword, far from degrading, produced a nobler type of womanhood. Through the trials entailed by ruined fortunes and blasted careers, through the agonies of bereavement, women passed triumphant, but they were not proof against the war of social forces. The conflict of feeling between the opposing parties on other than State questions sent both to extremes. The Royalists, in their hearty hatred of austerity, rushed into a wild worship of the senses. The Puritans, to express their horror of the worldliness of their foes, assumed virtues they did not possess. It has been averred that if we study the characters and lives of the great ladies of the Puritan party, we shall find much laxity under the guise of strictness. It would not be matter of surprise if, in some cases, this were so, though the bulk of the party seem free from such a reproach. The general tone of society was lowered from various causes. It is seen in everything, in the literature, on the stage, in the habits of the day. The coarse tastes of the upper classes show that the standard of public propriety was not at all commensurate with the degree of enlightenment which that age enjoyed. Wanting higher intellectual interests, women in fashionable life filled up their time with cards and dice, and if they read anything they read romances of very poor quality. This condition of things continued through the century.