ound basis of general culture.
Austerity, gloom, and Pharisaism had no place among the better class of
Evangelicals. Wilberforce, pronounced by Madame de Stael to be the most
agreeable man in England, was of "a most gay and genial disposition;"
"lived in perpetual sunshine, and shed its radiance all around him."
Legh Richmond was "exceedingly good company." Robinson of Leicester was
"a capital conversationalist, very lively and bright." Alexander Knox
found that Mrs. Hannah More "far exceeded his expectations in pleasant
manners and interesting conversation."

The increasing taste for solid comfort and easy living which accompanied
the development of humanitarianism, and in which, as we have just seen,
the Evangelicals had their full share, was evidenced to the eye by the
changes in domestic architecture. There was less pretension in exteriors
and elevations, but more regard to convenience and propriety within. The
space was not all sacrificed to reception-rooms. Bedrooms were
multiplied and enlarged; and fireplaces were introduced into every room,
transforming the arctic "powdering-closet" into a habitable
dressing-room. The diminution of the Window-Tax made light and
ventilation possible. Personal cleanliness became fashionable, and the
means of attaining it were cultivated. The whole art or science of
domestic sanitation--rudimentary enough in its beginnings--belongs to
the nineteenth century. The system which went before it was too
primitively abominable to bear description. Sir Robert Rawlinson, the
sanitary expert, who was called in to inspect Windsor Castle after the
Prince Consort's death, reported that, within the Queen's reign,
"cesspools full of putrid refuse and drains of the worst description
existed beneath the basements.... Twenty of these cesspools were removed
from the upper ward, and twenty-eight from the middle and lower
wards.... Means of ventilation by windows in Windsor Castle were very
defective. Even in the royal apartments the upper portions of the
windows were fixed. Lower casements alone could be opened, so that by
far the largest amount of air-spaces in the rooms contained vitiated
air, comparatively stagnant." When this was the condition of royal
abodes, no wonder that the typhoid-germ, like Solomon's spider, "took
hold with her hands, and was in kings' palaces." And well might Sir
George Trevelyan, in his ardent youth, exclaim:--

"We much revere our sires; they were a famous race of men