Samuel Smiles：Thrift, Excerpt 476

But bull-baiting, cock-fighting, and other ferocious amusements, have now departed. Even the village stocks have rotted out. Drunkenness has become disreputable. The "good old times" have departed, we hope never to return. The labourer has now other resources beside the public-house. There are exhibitions and people's parks, steamboats and railways, reading-rooms and coffee-rooms, museums, gardens, and cheap concerts. In place of the disgusting old amusements, there has come a healthier, sounder life, greater enlightenment, more general sobriety, and a humaner spirit. We have in a hundred years outgrown many of our savage tendencies. We are not less brave as a people, though less brutal. We are quite as manly, though much less gross. Manners are more refined, yet as a people we have not lost our pluck, energy, and endurance. We respect ourselves more, and as a nation we have become more respected. We now think with shame of the manners of a hundred years ago.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14418
Locator：Excerpt 476 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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