In the eighteenth century, as gradually it was made clear how stable was the court which was established at St. James’s, the London season came to figure largely in the life of the nation.    The wife and daughters of the squire, whose parents had known no more of the world than they found in their market town, wearied of the long winters when almost impassable roads imprisoned them within the distance which, on fine days, they could walk on their pattens, when the wildest dissipation of their unending dimlit evenings was to " play Pope  Joan with  the  curate,"  when  day after  day they saw the same few faces, the same landscape, and fed on the same fare, and year after year their interests were, confined to the circle of things domestic, agricultural and sporting, varied only by gossip of the most local kind. As for dress, their only models were some twenty years behind the times.     "The rural beaus," wrote Addison, are not yet got out of the fashion that took place at the time of the Revolution, but ride about the country in red coats and laced hats, while the women are still trying to outvie one another in the height of their head-dresses." 0me papers and an  increasing  number  of books,  a very little music, reached the country ladies, or probably i they would never have been inspired even to discontent. Moreover many of them, owing to the growing fashion of boarding  schools,  had had already  direct news  of the ‘ great world, conveyed in an inaccurate but a romantic and attractive form.    And lastly they knew themselves, owing to the greater ease of travelling which modern times had introduced, not to be indeed cut off from the great world. This improvement in the conditions of travelling was a  final  cause  of the  growth  of the   "polite  end."    

It deprived countryfolk of their best excuse for never leaving  their  homes.     Already   in   1669   the   first   "flying coach "   covered  the   road   from   Oxford   to   London  in thirteen hours ;   and in  1678 a conservative pamphleteer could ascribe various  evils to the  " late grievance " of stage coaches.    Throughout the eighteenth century improvements  of roads,  an  increased  number  of  coaches and a better organisation of their stages, was in progress. The two first mail  coaches,  escorted by armed guards, left London in  1784, and accomplished the journeys to Bath and to Bristol, respectively, in fourteen and in sixteen hours.    All  this advance  benefited the ladies and gentlemen of degree who travelled in their own carriages, as  much as  the  plebeian person  who  rode  in a  stage coach.  All alike enjoyed the better roads, the better inns, where  man and  horse  found  refreshment and  lodging, and  the stages  where  fresh  horses  could  be procured. The humblest class of society still made their journeys in the old and tedious waggons.

The families who came to London to spend a period of pleasant leisure found new streets built and building, and standards of luxury and behaviour equally new, and ‘Idering in their novelty.    This was a period in which 1     s of fashion as regarded dress and manners and 11  the circumstances of life were very strict and were f 11 owed with extreme zeal.    The most courtly wits did disdain to punish the transgression of them with all the ridicule at their command.    The life of the fashionable though idle, was carefully ordered, even complicated. Already, however, the elaborate formality of an earlier age had been abandoned ;  society, while it abhorred what was  boorish,  aimed  at  an  arfful  simplicity.     " I   must observe," wrote Addison,  " a very great revolution that has happened in this article of good breeding.    Several obliging deferences, condescensions and submissions, with many   outward   forms   and   ceremonies   that   accompany them, were first of all brought up among the politer part of mankind, who lived in courts and cities, and distinguished them from the rustic part of the species   (who on all occasions acted bluntly and naturally) by such a mutual complaisance and intercourse of civilities.    These forms   of  conversation  by  degrees  multiplied and  grew troublesome ;   the modish world found too great a constraint in them, and have therefore thrown most of them aside.     Conversation,  like  the Romish religion,  was  so encumbered  with  show and  ceremony,  that  it  stood  in need  of a reformation to  retrench its  superfluities  and restore   it   to   its   natural   good   sense   and   beauty.     At present, therefore, an unconstrained carriage and a certain openness of behaviour are the height ->f good breeding, ihe   fashionable   world   is   grown   free   and   easy ;    our manners sit more loose upon us ;   nothing is so modish as an agreeable negligence." the modish were, in fact, too busy to observe all the forms which had regulated the duller lives led by their ancestors. Moreover the very circumstance that in London so many who occupied the same social station lived much with each other deprived them of self-consciousness as to their position. And finally a new element had been added to the mental equipment of the cultured of the day ; they possessed a sense of humour. It is the characteristic of an age which is critical rather than creative.

But in the country the old ceremony still prevailed. " One may know a man that never conversed in the world, by his excess of good breeding. A polite country squire shall make you as many bows in half an hour, as would serve a courtier for a week. There is infinitely more to do about place and precedency in a meeting of justices’ wives, than in an assembly of duchesses."
In like manner country society was distinguished for that exaggerated and affected delicacy which has given a derogatory sense to the word " genteel " ; while in town persons of fashion had adopted a freedom of speech which often was carried to coarseness.
For long the pulpit, the stage and the books of London had made opinion in England, and they had not lost their influence.

The London preachers of this period did not differ essentially from their forerunners, although on the whole they had lost the fervour of religion. The divines had still their differences, their low church or their high church and Tory principles ; and towards the end of the century the movement led by the Wesleys brought into the church an element of vivid interest which recalls an earlier age. Whitefield’s tabernacle in Tottenham Court Road was opened in 1756.

The drama of the day found its best expression in lVht comedies of manners, fit productions of an age hich set a great value on form. They reached their highest level in the writings of Goldsmith and Sheridan. The playhouses continued to be in Drury Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Fields until 1732, when Covent Garden Theatre was substituted for that in the Fields. Two new forms of dramatic art arose at this time in London.

Early in the century Italian opera was introduced in a new theatre in the Hay market called the King’s, on the present  site  of  His   Majesty’s  Theatre and  the   Carlton Hotel.    It was fortunate in the patronage of the German kings, but in many unmusical Englishmen it evoked only ridicule.    To Addison it was without merit because the Italian libretti were not generally understood.     " Music is  certainly a  very  agreeable  entertainment ;    but  if  it would take the entire possession of our ears, if it would make us incapable of hearing sense, if it would exclude arts that have a much greater tendency to the refinement of human nature,-I must  confess  I would allow it no better quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out of his commonwealth."
The other and less dignified innovation was the pantomime. This form of entertainment was first devised by John Rich in 1717, when he was manager of Lincoln’s Inn Theatre, as an attempt to outdo in popularity his rivals of Drury Lane ; and it met with all the success which still attends the spectacular. Drury Lane was driven to copy the invention. Rich’s pantomine consisted °f a serious and of a comic part - the former was founded on some fable, often taken from Ovid’s " Metamorphoses,"   and   had   a   splendid   accompaniment   of scenery, dresses, dancing, music, and all available stage effects ;   and there was interwoven with it a comic story based   on   the   courtship   of   Columbine  and   Harlequin which  comprised surprising adventures and transformations produced by the magic wand of Harlequin.

Dramatic art lost its essentially metropolitan character about the year 1775, when several provincial playhouses were in existence.

The  writers  of books were more numerous  than ever before, and at this time they began to form a distinct class in the society of London.    Authorship became from the   hobby   of   scholarly   men   a   profession,   and   Grub Street,   "a   street   in   London,"   according   to   Johnson, " much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries and temporary poems," was founded.    So soon as authors became   professional   it   was   inevitable   that   a   class   of iscribblers   should  arise,   willing  to  undertake  any  work which gave a chance of remuneration.     The conditions of their labours,  especially the necessity of an arduous quest  among   the   great   for  a  patron,   were   not  easy ; but when once the patron had been found at least the writers were subject only to one master.    Moreover competition   among  them   was   infinitely  less   than   it   is  at present, in the days of books innumerable, and they were still entirely immune from the restrictions of a social position.    The actual Grub Street was near Cripplegate, and has since 1830 been called Milton Street.

A new art and trade, of an essentially urban character, arose among writing men, and became at once a means of considerable influence. English journalism originated in London in the eighteenth century ; newspapers, magazines and reviews came into existence.    It appeared in t artistic form in the periodicals to which the great ictci   contributed,   the   Tatter,   the   Spectator,   the
essayi=lb    _tnbler    the   Guardian,   and   the   rest,   and   it   pro-,      J a\s0 the papers which only distributed news.    Its ise was connected with the better means of travelling ; for  the  coaches  which  brought  countryfolk  to  London carried letters and papers fro’m the capital  to all parts of the kingdom-     But the  journals  were  most  read  in London, and in London that famous relation between the morning paper and the breakfast service was instituted. " I would   …" says Addison in an editorial essay in the   Spectator,   "in   a   very   particular   manner,   recommend these my speculations to all well-regulated families, that   set  apart  an  hour  in  every  morning  for  tea  and bread and butter ;   and would earnestly advise them for their good, to order this paper to be punctually served up, and to be looked upon as a part of the tea-equipage."

Other arts than those of letters and the drama flourished and  were fashionable.     It  is  unnecessary to  enumerate here the English painters  of real distinction who lived in London in the eighteenth century and who have left to us pictures of their contemporaries.    An epoch in the history of English art was marked by the foundation, in 1768, of the Royal Academy under the presidency of Sir Joshua  Reynolds.     In  music   Englishmen  accomplished little  creative work.    The Restoration period had been distinguished by the compositions of Lock and Purcell, but in the eighteenth century there were no native composers of merit.    A small musical public was, however, created.    Mention has already been made of the vogue of the opera, but to this the old English love of the drama, b well as the  attraction  of novelty, and the  enterprise of the management of the King’s Theatre in attempt, ing realistic stage effects, contributed. Yet music must always be the chief element in opera, and opera could not have lived in a London entirely unmusical. Some eighteenth century Londoners had undoubtedly come to love music of a less elementary kind than the melodies which belong to every simple people ; and the man who chiefly gratified their taste was a German who happened to settle in their town, Handel, whose compositions, operatic and other, did so much to educate the English people to an understanding of classical music. Music however was, of all the arts, still to continue for long an exotic thing in England, and appreciation of it was practically confined to London. Even there music which was classical was a ready subject for the sneers of the average public, and was decried as a perversion. " It was Mr. Western’s custom every afternoon," we are informed in Tom Jones, " as soon as he was drunk, to, hear his daughter play on the harpsichord, for he was a’ great lover of music ; and perhaps, had he lived in town, might have passed for a connoisseur, for he always excepted against the finest compositions of Mr. Handel. He never relished any music but what was light and airy ; and, indeed, his most favourite tunes were ‘ Old Sir Simon,’ ‘ The King,’ ‘ St. George he was for England,’ ‘ Bobbing Joan,’ and some others."
Theatres in the eighteenth century were not open in the summer. About the month of May the players divided themselves into strolling companies, packed up their wardrobes and the other accessories of their calling and departed to entertain the country. In the Londoner’s plan of life the place they had occupied was filled chiefly the pleasure gardens which he enjoyed as his ancestors i the previous century had done. In the eighteenth ceri-the gardens were most frequented by the modish in the evening, and therefore great importance was attached not only to their groves and flower beds but also to their lights. Shady and winding walks lit by lamps, illuminated fountains, grand displays of fireworks, were very popular ; and they were varied by the attractions of booths in which picnic suppers might be eaten, and bars whence might be obtained drinks and " thin wafer-like slices of beef and ham, that taste of nothing but the knife." Shows of various kinds were also provided in the pleasure gardens, and the superior of them supported orchestras.

Vauxhall Gardens, and Ranelagh Gardens which were opened in Chelsea in 1742, outdid all the others in fashion ; but scattered over London were many cheaper imitations of these places. " Every skittle alley half a mile out of town," says a writer in the Connoisseur 1X1 1755, " is embellished with green arbours and shady retreats, where the company is generally entertained with the melodious scraping of a blind fiddler."

Yet even Ranelagh and Vauxhall were far from exclusive. Thither went " poor Mr. John " to see " with a heavy heart the profits of a whole week’s card-money devoured in tarts and cheese-cakes by Mrs. Housekeeper or My Lady’s own Woman," and " the substantial cit " who came " from behind the counter two or three even-mgs in the summer," and many less respectable persons, ndeed the fashionable would appear to have visited the gardens to vary pleasures enjoyed only with those whose banners were like their own, and the unfashionable to procure the excitement of mingling with genuine f0i lowers of the mode. The pleasure gardens maintained their place down to the days when Evelina went to Vaux-hall, but they became less and less reputable, and were finally killed by the reaction of society to propriety which happened in the nineteenth century. Nothing in m.odern times fills their place.
Masks were naturally much used in the gardens. They were a feature of social life in the period ; masked balls and assemblies were often held. Card parties were another frequent form of entertainment, for the rage for games of hazard was stronger than ever before in English society, and play was very high.

A new institution in this period is, in its modern form, not unimportant to the life of London. In Anne’s reign citizens, men of fashion, and men of letters had alike formed the habit of meeting in certain houses of entertainment to drink coffee and converse, sometimes to transact business. Merchants went to Garraway’s or Jonathan’s in Change Alley, or to Lloyd’s, where eventually the shipping interest was organised, or to the Jerusalem coffee-house on Cornhill. Doctors resorted to Bateson’s at the Royal Exchange ; clergymen to Child’s in St. Paul’s Churchyard or the Chapter coffee-house in Paternoster Row ; lawyers to Nando’s and Dick’s near Temple Bar, Serle’s in Portugal Street, the Grecian in Devereux Court, Strand, and Squire’s in Fulwood’s Rents, Holborn.
The coffee houses supplied a want which had existed ever since London had ceased to be a town in which every man knew his neighbour and could chat with whomsoever he saw,  in the street  or  on doorsteps.     In the a    house Londoners could meet their fellows indepen-tlv  of all  the barriers  introduced by  a  complicated o ‘lisation.    Doubtless these places were sometimes dull ough, as dull as the parlours of those who frequented them     But there were some of them which gained an verlasting fame, because in them was cultivated an art which has nourished very rarely in England, the art of conversation.    They were largely patronised by literary men  and in this period the talent of writers could easily be adapted to pleasant talk.    It was the general tendency to examine and criticise rather than to preach ;   fancy played with an idea, placed it in every light, decorated it and stripped it bare.      Moreover, since authors were interested in form as much as in matter, it was congenial to them to adapt themselves to a new means of expression, that of conversing like another.

As a mode of expression conversation is at a disadvantage because it must be evanescent.    It is hard to doubt, for all his animadversions  on his  own taciturnity,  that Addison   was   the   most   charming   of   talkers ;    yet   we have   no   record   of   what   passed   when   he,   Swift   and Steele met at Button’s in Russell Street.    Of Will’s, also in Russell Street, we know that Dryden before Addison’s day   presided   very   autocratically   over   its   assemblies. Another   historical   house   was   the   Bedford   in   Covent Garden whither went Foote, Fielding, Churchill, Hogarth and Goldsmith.

The most celebrated of all these societies, and that of which we know most, met at the Turk’s Head in Gerard Street  and had  Johnson  for  president.     Macaulay  has finely  described it.     "The  room  is before  us  and the ¦  on  which  stand  the  omelet  for  Nugent  and  the lemons for Johnson ; there are assembled those head which live for ever in the canvas of Reynolds. Ther are the spectacles of Burke and the tall thin form 0f Langton, the courtly sneer of Beauclerc, and the beaming-smile of Garrick, Gibbon tapping his snuff-box, and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the figures amongst which we have been brought up, the gigantic body, the huge massy face seamed with the scars of disease, the brown coat and the black worsted stockings, the grey wig with the scorched foretop, the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and the nose moving with convulsive twitches, we see the huge form rolling, we hear it puffing, and then comes the ‘ Why, sir,’ and the ‘ What, sir,’ and the ‘ No, sir,’ and ‘ You don’t see your way through the question, sir.’ "
Some of the societies of eighteenth century coffee or chocolate houses have become modern clubs, but in the process they have lost their old character. The step from coffee-house to club consisted in the acquisition of the ownership of premises and the formation of a list of members who paid subscriptions ; and in the taking of it the old distinction for conversation and good fellowship was superseded by another, political, social or merely culinary. The transition was in several cases accomplished in the eighteenth century. Among clubs which date from that period are the Thatched House, the Dilettanti Society, Boodle’s, White’s, and Almack’s or Brooke’s. Almack’s was identified in the days of the Regency with the party of the Prince of Wales, and White’s with that of Pitt and the Queen.
Nothing in England really represents the coffee-house f Anne’s day.    Upper-class Londoners resumed stay-at -habits ;   even in  clubs  a sense  of proprietorship hecame necessary to their comfort.    In houses of entertainment they adopted an attitude of suspicious reserve.

These are some of the elements of social life in London in the eighteenth century, and some of the interests which occupied Londoners in addition to the politics of a very political age, in which the divisions of parties did not correspond to those of the classes of society.

In modern London the problem of travelling from one point to another within the town’s vast tract is real, and its solution absorbs much energy and wealth. Even in the eighteenth century town, with the growing West End, it existed, but the means adopted to solve it were comparatively simple. The wealthy owned carriages, sedan chairs and saddle horses. As to public vehicles, a man might: still, like Harry Esmond, charter a boat to row him up the Thames from the city to Westminster or to Chelsea, and there were hackney coaches and hackney chairs. In 1710 an Act of parliament empowered certain commissioners to license no more than 800 coaches and 200 chairs, to ply for hire in London and Westminster, on Sundays and weekdays alike. Fares were fixed also by statute ; a coachman must drive from the Inns of Court to Westminster for a shilling, and a chairman might exact eightpence for the like journey. The commissioners were permitted in 1711 to license 100 additional coaches, and in 1725 chairs up to the total number of 400. In 1767 it was enacted that they should appoint stands for hackney coaches. A penny post within London, Westminster, Southwark, and the immediate suburbs was established in 1698     T became customary to deliver a letter within ten miles   t the city if a second penny were paid by the receiver t the man on horse-back who carried it ;  and this practic was confirmed by statute in 1731.