eighteenthcentury social practices such as the salons: informal gatherings held in private drawing
rooms, of educated and refined individuals. It was manifest through groupings of private individuals who
came together for the purposes of social intercourse, ultimately drawing their values and ideas from
smaller units such as the family. In order for such people and their values to coalesce, the right political
conditions must prevail. In Britain, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the establishment of a free press and
the newly public role of the Bank of England facilitated the formation of communities grounded in
independence of thought, active commercial lives and freer expressions of taste (Brewer, 1997, xx–xiv).
David Solkin (1993, 27–28) has argued that such values expressed how the British middle and upper
classes wished to see themselves. The discourses of art shaped such values, even if some of these were
difficult to apply in practice (Link, 2013, 108, 115). The vogue for prints representing exhibition crowds
was indicative of a public conscious of its own image (Matheson, 2001, 39; T.W. Gaehtgens, 2003, 88).
The cultural interests of this public could thrive in Britain where the monarchy interfered far less in
matters of artistic taste and production. Closely identified at the time with the ideals of the Whig party, the
eighteenthcentury British public sphere saw itself as a force of reasoned consensus, increasingly
reconciling itself to lively market forces and the growing professionalization of occupations. The
development of a public sphere was also linked in Britain with significant urbanization, which facilitated
economic and social exchange allowing it to compete with the generous royal sponsorship of art that had
allowed Catholic countries such as France and Spain to shine in the preceding century. By the middle of
the century, London was the largest city in western Europe, followed closely by Paris, then Naples.
Britain was regarded by Voltaire as the center of civilization as his own country, France, was in his view
weakened by religious superstition, the arbitrary rule of an absolutist monarch and a lack of respect for
liberty and commerce (Brewer, 1997, xxiv). The Enlightenment was, however, an international movement,
its ideals of education and progress adapting to a variety of political regimes. As the cultural practices
and standards of a broader, urbanized public became more influential, the role of court, church and state
in such matters became less important across Europe (Brewer, 1993, 94–95).
Cosmopolitan standards of social behavior developed. We have already encountered the British notion of
“politeness,” honnêteté being the nearest equivalent in relation to seventeenth and eighteenthcentury
France. In France this social virtue involved a dispersal of traditional aristocratic values through the
middle ranks of society, including nonhereditary nobles, writers and members of the haute bourgeoisie
or professions who had made their fortunes during the Regency (Ebeling, 2007, 73–76). Both “politeness”
and honnêteté involved good breeding or refined manners that eased social intercourse. In Britain the
Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711) by Anthony AshleyCooper, Third Earl of
Shaftesbury (1671–1713) were instrumental in conveying this ideal from a distinctively patrician point of
view. His own views were derived, in turn, from classical Greek (and particularly ancient Athenian)
notions of the civic humanism of a disinterested, rational and educated elite, as well as from a wealth of
conduct books and moral commentaries, one of the most influential being The Book of the Courtier
(1528) by Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529). Shaftesbury’s moral exhortations were based on his
view, as a member of the landed gentry, that he might act as a conduit for pronouncements on divine
beauty and goodness. His vision of benign aristocratic paternalism in matters of taste and morality was
founded on strong notions of class solidarity, and his writings proclaim a confidence that this will
generate a pleasurable consensus rather than create dissent.
Earlier thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733) had
challenged the plausibility of a convivial publicspiritedness (see Chapter 5). Their followers saw
Shaftesbury’s aristocratic expressions of taste as essentially dishonest and oppressive, humankind being
destined for a life of discord, strife and selfishness (Solkin, 1993, 3–25). These divisive qualities were
connected increasingly with the threat posed by “sordid” market forces, and indeed Shaftesbury himself