The inferior clergy as a body were far nearer in character to Trulliber than to Dr.Primrose; coarse, sordid, neglectful of their duties, shamelessly addicted to sinecurism and pluralities, fanatics in their Toryism and in attachment to their corporate privileges, cold, rationalistic and almost heathen in their preachings, if they preached at all.

The society of the day is mirrored in the pictures of Hogarth, in the works of Fielding and Smollett; hard and heartless polish was the best of it; and not a little of it was _Marriage a la Mode_.

Chesterfield, with his soulless culture, his court graces, and his fashionable immoralities, was about the highest type of an English gentleman; but the Wilkeses, Potters, and Sandwiches, whose mania for vice culminated in the Hell-fire Club, were more numerous than the Chesterfields.

Among the country squires, for one Allworthy or Sir Roger de Coverley there were many Westerns.

Among the common people religion was almost extinct, and assuredly no new morality or sentiment, such as Positivists now promise, had taken its place.