None, at all events, will deny that England stands to-day otherwise
than she stood a hundred and thirty-two years ago, when George was
born. To-day we are living a decadent life. All the while that we are
prating of progress, we are really so deteriorate! There is nothing
but feebleness in us. Our youths, who spend their days in trying to
build up their constitutions by sport or athletics and their evenings
in undermining them with poisonous and dyed drinks; our daughters, who
are ever searching for some new quack remedy for new imaginary megrim,
what strength is there in them? We have our societies for the
prevention of this and the promotion of that and the propagation of
the other, because there are no individuals among us. Our sexes are
already nearly assimilate. Women are becoming nearly as rare as
ladies, and it is only at the music-halls that we are privileged to
see strong men. We are born into a poor, weak age. We are not strong
enough to be wicked, and the Nonconformist Conscience makes cowards of
us all.

But this was not so in the days when George was walking by his tutor's
side in the gardens of Kew or of Windsor. London must have been a
splendid place in those days--full of life and colour and wrong and
revelry. There was no absurd press nor vestry to protect the poor at
the expense of the rich and see that everything should be neatly
adjusted. Every man had to shift for himself and, consequently, men
were, as Mr. Clement Scott would say, manly, and women, as Mr. Clement
Scott would say, womanly. In those days, a young man of wealth and
family found open to him a vista of such licence as had been unknown
to any since the barbatuli of the Roman Empire. To spend the early
morning with his valet, gradually assuming the rich apparel that was
not then tabooed by a hard sumptuary standard; to saunter round to