Sometimes the rustic thought for himself, and scepticism took formal possession of his mind; but, as we see from one of Cowper's letters, it was a coarse scepticism which desired to be buried with its hounds.

Ignorance and brutality reigned in the cottage.

Drunkenness reigned in palace and cottage alike.

Gambling, cockfighting, and bullfighting were the amusements of the people.

Political life, which, if it had been pure and vigorous, might have made up for the absence of spiritual influences, was corrupt from the top of the scale to the bottom: its effect on national character is pourtrayed in Hogarth's _Election_.