There is a note of English severity in Mr. Day’s reading of Rousseau. His notion of self-control is stricter than anything in the _Emile_: “Mr. Barlow says we must only eat when we are hungry and drink when we are dry”; he is utterly intolerant of wealth: “The rich do nothing and produce nothing, the poor everything that is really useful”. Mr. Barlow, Harry Sandford and the amiable Miss Simmons take it in turns to express Mr. Day’s opinions of the idle and frivolous pastimes of Society. Mr. Barlow was “an odd kind of man who never went to assemblies and played upon no kind of instrument,” he was “not fond of cards” and preferred relating moral histories. Harry Sandford found the theatre “full of nothing but cheating and dissimulation;” and when the youthful guests of Tommy’s house-party were preparing for a Ball, “Miss Simmons alone appeared to consider the approaching _solemnity_ with perfect indifference”.