shuts herself up in Eden with Satan. Adam is left outside.'

Drunkenness was a habit familiar to the fine gentlemen of the town and
to men occupying the highest position in the State. Harley went more
than once into the queen's presence in a half-intoxicated condition;
Carteret when Secretary of State, if Horace Walpole may be credited, was
never sober; Bolingbroke, who practised every vice, is said to have been
a 'four-bottle man;' and Swift found it perilous to dine with Ministers
on account of the wine which circulated at their tables. 'Prince
Eugene,' he writes, 'dines with the Secretary to-day with about seven or
eight general officers or foreign Ministers. They will be all drunk I am
sure.' Pope's frail body could not tolerate excess, and he is said to
have hastened his end by good living. His friend Fenton 'died of a great
chair and two bottles of port a day.' Parnell, who seems to have been in
many respects a man of high character, is said to have shortened his
life by intemperance; and Gay, who was cossetted like a favourite lapdog
by the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, died from indolence and good
living.

It may be questioned whether there is a single Wit of the age who did
not love port too well, like Addison and Fenton, or suffer from
'carnivoracity' like Arbuthnot. Every section of English society was
infected with the 'devil drunkenness,' and the passion for gin created
by the encouragement of home distilleries produced a state of crime,
misery, and disease in London and in the country which excited public
attention. 'Small as is the place,' writes Mr. Lecky, 'which this fact
occupies in English history, it was probably, if we consider all the
consequences that have flowed from it, the most momentous in that of the
eighteenth century--incomparably more so than any event in the purely
political or military annals of the country.'[6]

The cruelty of the age is seen in a contempt for the feelings of others,
in the brutal punishments inflicted, in the amusements then popular, and
in a general contempt for human suffering. Public executions were so
frequent that they were disregarded; and criminals of any note, like Dr.
Dodd, were exhibited in their cells for the gaolers' benefit prior to
execution; mad people in Bedlam, chained in their cells, also formed one
of the sights of London. As late as 1735 men were pressed to death who
refused to plead on a capital charge; and women were publicly flogged,
and we