large assemblies daily with claret or canary, strong beer was the
ordinary beverage. The quantity of beer consumed in those days was
indeed enormous. For beer was then to the middle and lower classes not
only what beer is now, but all that wine, tea, and ardent spirits now
are. It was only at great houses or on great occasions that foreign
drink was placed on the board. The ladies of the house, whose business
it had commonly been to cook the repast, retired as soon as the dishes
were devoured, and left the gentlemen to their ale and tobacco. The
coarse jollity of the afternoon was often prolonged till the revellers
were laid under the table."

I quote again from another portion of the same chapter in
Macaulay:--"Slate has succeeded to thatch, and brick to timber. The
pavements and the lamps, the display of wealth in the principal shops,
and the luxurious neatness of the dwellings occupied by the gentry,
would, in the seventeenth century, have seemed miraculous." Speaking of
watering-places he says:--"The gentry of Derbyshire and of the
neighbouring counties repaired to Buxton, where they were crowded into
low wooden sheds and regaled with oatcake, and with a viand which the
hosts called mutton, but which the guests strongly suspected to be dog."
Of Tunbridge Wells he says--"At present we see there a town which would,
a hundred and sixty years ago, have ranked in population fourth or fifth
among the towns in England. The brilliancy of the shops and the luxury
of the private dwellings far surpasses anything that England could then
show." At Bath "the poor patients to whom the waters had been
recommended, lay on straw in a place which, to use the language of a
contemporary physician, was a covert rather than a lodging. As to the
comforts and luxuries to be found in the interior of the houses at Bath
by the fashionable visitors who resorted thither in search of health and
amusement, we possess information more complete and minute than generally