The great middle-class—supposed, before the advent of Mr. Matthew Arnold, to possess all the virtues; to be the backbone, stay, and prop of the country—must have a chapter to itself.

In the first place, the middle-class was far more a class apart than it is at present. In no sense did it belong to society. Men in professions of any kind, except the two services, could only belong to society by right of birth and family connections; men in trade—bankers were still accounted tradesmen—could not possibly belong to society. That is to say, if they went to live in the country they were not called upon by the county families, and in town they were not admitted by the men into their clubs, or by ladies into their houses. Those circles, of which there are now so many—artistic, Æsthetic, literary—all of them considering themselves to belong to society, were then out of society altogether; nor did they overlap and intersect each other. The middle-class knew its own place, respected itself, made its own society for itself, and cheerfully accorded to rank its reverence due. The annals of the poor are meagre; only here and there one gets a glimpse into their lives. But the middle-class is much better known, because it has had prophets; nearly all the poets, novelists, essayists, journalists, and artists have sprung from it. Those who adorned the Thirties and the Forties—Hood, Hook, Galt, Dickens, Albert Smith, Thackeray—all belonged to it; George Eliot, whose country towns are those of the Thirties and the Forties, was essentially a woman of the middle-class.

Middle-class life—especially in the country—was dull, far, far duller than modern life even in the quietest country town. The men had their business; the women had the house. Incomes ran small; a great deal was done at home that is now done out of it. There was a weekly washing-day, when the house steamed with hot soap-suds, and the ‘lines’ were out upon the poles—they were painted green and were square—and on the lines hung half the family linen. All the jam was made at home; the cakes, the pies, and the puddings, by the wife and daughters; the bread was home-made; the beer was home-brewed (and better beer than good home-brewed no man need desire); all those garments which are not worn outside were made at home. Everybody dined in the middle of the day. Therefore, in the society of the country town dinner-parties did not exist. On the other hand, there were sociable evenings, which began with a sit-down tea, with muffins and tea-cakes, very delightful, and ended with a hot supper. Tobacco was not admitted in any shape except that of snuff into the better kind of middle-class house; only working men smoked vulgar pipes; the Sabbath was respected; there was no theatre nearer than the county town; the girls had probably never seen a play; every man who respected himself ‘laid down’ port, but there was little drinking of wine except on Sunday afternoons; no one, not even the ladies, scorned the glass of something warm, with a spoon in it, after supper. For the young there was a fair once a year; now and then a travelling circus came along; there was a lecture occasionally on an instructive subject, such as chemistry, or astronomy, or sculpture; there were picnics, but these were rare; if there were show places in the neighbourhood, parties were made to them, and tea was festively taken among the ruins of the Abbey.

Fashion descends slowly; it is now the working man who takes his wife into the country for tea: fifty years ago he took his wife nowhere, and scorned tea. Open-air games and sports there were none; no lawn-tennis, Badminton, or anything of that kind in those days; even croquet, which is now so far lost in the mists of antiquity that men of thirty are too young to remember the rage for it, was actually not yet invented. Archery certainly existed, and the comic writers are always drawing pictures of the young ladies sticking their arrows into the legs of people a hundred feet or so wide of the target. But archery belonged to a class rather above that which we are now considering. There was not much sketching and painting. There was no amateur photography; there was no catching of strange creatures in ponds for the aquarium—a fashion also now happily extinct; there was not, in fact, any single pursuit, amusement, or game which would bring young people together in the open air. There was no travelling; the summer holiday had not yet got down in the country. In London, to be sure, everybody down to Bevis Marks and Simmery Axe went out of town and to the seaside in July or August; but in the country nobody thought of such a thing; not the vicar’s daughters, not the solicitor’s wife, not the family of the general practitioner; the very schoolmaster, who got his four weeks in the summer and his three at Christmas, spent them at home in such joy as accompanies rest from labour. With no outdoor amusements, and with no summer holiday, how much is life simplified! But the simplicity of life means monotony—faciunt vitam, balnea, vina, Venus.

In the winter, things were somewhat different. In some towns there was the county ball. At this function one had the pleasure of gazing upon ladies and gentlemen of the highest rank and fashion, and of observing that they kept to themselves like a Hindu caste, danced with each other at the upper end of the room, cast disparaging glances at the dresses of the ladies of the lower end, and sniffed at their manner and appearance. This was true joy. There were also occasional dances at home, but these were rare, because people had not learned how to meet and dance without making a fuss over it, taking up carpets, putting candles in tin sconces, keeping late hours, and having a supper, the preparation of which was mainly done by the ladies of the house, and it nearly killed them, and drove the servants—the genteel middle-class family often got along with only one—to give notice. I think that the dances which had gone out in London still lingered in the country. There were, for instance, the Caledonians as well as the Lancers; there were country dances without end, the very names of which are now lost; the gentlemen performed the proper steps with grace and agility, while the ladies were careful to preserve an attitude supposed the only one possible for a lady while dancing, in which the figure was bent forward, the face was turned up with the chin stuck out, while the hands were occupied in holding up the dress to the regulation height. The elders, meanwhile, played long whist at tables lit by candles which wanted snuffing between the deals. The bashful youth of the party was always covering himself with shame by his clumsiness in snuffing out the candles, or, even if he succeeded in taking off the red-hot ball of burnt thread, he too often neglected to close the instrument with which he effected the operation, and thereby mightily offended the nostrils of the company. When there was no dancing the younger members began with a ‘little music.’ Their songs—how faded and stale they seem now if one tries to sing them!—turned chiefly on the affections, and the favourite poet was Felicia Hemans. After the little music they sat down to a round game, of which there were a great many, such as Commerce, Speculation, Vingt-et-Un, Limited Loo, or Pope Joan. The last was played with a board. I remember the board—it was a round thing, lacquered, and like a punch-bowl, but I think with divisions; as for the game itself, and what was done with the board, I quite forget, but both game and bowl lasted quite into the Fifties. Are there any country circles now where they still play Pope Joan with mother-o’-pearl counters, and after the game have a grand settlement, and exchange the counters for silver and copper, some with chuckles, and others with outward smiles but inward rage?

People were extremely punctilious on the subject of calls—one remembers the call in the ‘Mill on the Floss.’ The call was due at regular intervals, so that even the day should almost be known on which it was paid or returned. It was a ceremonial which necessitated a great deal of ritual and make-believe. No one, for instance, was to be surprised in doing any kind of work. There was a fiction in genteel families that the ladies of the house never did anything serious or serviceable after dinner; the afternoon was supposed to be devoted either to walking, or to making calls, or to elegant trifling at home. Therefore, if the girls were at the moment engaged upon any useful work—many of them, poor things, never did anything but useful work—they crammed it under the sofa, and pretended to be reading a book, or painting, or knitting, or to be engaged in easy and fashionable conversation. Why they went through this elaborate pretence I have not the least idea, because everybody knew that every girl in the place was always making, mending, cutting-out, basting, gusseting, trimming, turning, and contriving. How do you suppose that the solicitor’s daughters made so brave a show on Sundays if they were not clever enough to make up things for themselves? Everybody, of course, knew it, and why the girls would not own up at once one cannot now understand. Perhaps it was a sort of suspicion, or a faint hope, or a wild dream, that a reputation for ladylike uselessness might enable them to cross the line at the County Ball, and mingle with the county people.

Are there still any circles of society in which, if a lady with her daughters calls upon another lady with her daughters, the decanters, biscuits, and glasses are placed upon the table, and the visitors are asked whether they will take port or sherry? This, fifty years ago, was always done in country towns, and the visitors always took a glass of port or sherry. In some houses it was not port and sherry that were placed upon the table, but ‘red’ and ‘white.’ I do not know whether the red was currant or raspberry, but I think that the white was generally cowslip. When the visitors were gone, the ladies got out their work again, threaded their needles, and spent an enjoyable hour or two in discussing the appearance, the dress, the manners, and the resources of their visitors. But the visit did them good, because it compelled company manners, which are always good for girls, and it dragged them a little out of themselves. They were too much en famille, these girls; they were never separated from each other. The boys got out to school or to business all day; but the poor girls were always together. Side by side they did their household duties, side by side they sewed and dressmaked, side by side they walked, side by side they prayed in the church, side by side they slept. Small chance of happiness was theirs—happiness is a separate, distinct, individual kind of thing, in which one can consult one’s own likes—until, in the fulness of time, there came along the lover—a humdrum, commonplace kind of lover, I dare say, but his sweetheart was as commonplace as himself—and she exchanged a house, where she was a better kind of servant, for one of exactly the same sort, in which she was the mistress. And when one says mistress, it must be remembered that man was, in those days, much more of a master in the house than he is now allowed to be. I speak not at random, but from the evidence of those who remember and from study of the literature, both that written by the men and that by the women. I am certain that the husband, unless he was hen-pecked—a pleasing word, now seldom used—was always the Master and generally the Tyrant in the house.

Let me, with some diffidence, approach the subject of the Church in the country town. I never truly understood the Church of fifty years ago until, in the autumn of 1885, I perambulated with one who is jealous for Church architecture and Church antiquities the north-east corner of Norfolk, where there are many churches, and most of them are fine. In our pilgrimage among these monuments we presently came upon one at the aspect of which we were fain to sit down and weep. It was, externally, an old and venerable structure, which might have been made beautiful within. Plaster covered the walls, and hid the columns; the interior of the church was crowded with high pews, painted white, and having along the top a sham mahogany kind of hand-rail; the chancel was encumbered with these enclosures, which hid the old brass-work; that which belonged to the Squire was provided with red curtains on brass rods to keep the common people from gazing at the Quality. The reading-desk, pulpit, and altar were covered with a cloth which had been red, but had long before faded away into an indescribably shabby brown. The pulpit was not part of the old three-decker, but was stuck into the wall; the windows had lost their old tracery; the painted glass was gone; the roof was a flat whitewashed ceiling. The church, to eyes accustomed to better things, presented a deplorable appearance. My friend, pointing solemnly to the general shabbiness, remarked, ‘Donec templa refeceris.’ It was the motto of the journal started early in the Forties by a small knot of Cambridge men—among whom was Mr. Beresford Hope, now, alas! no more—who desired to raise and beautify public worship in the Anglican faith, and also, I believe, to assert and insist upon certain points of doctrine. And they clearly perceived that, while the churches remained in their neglected condition, and church architecture was at its then low ebb, their doctrine was impossible. How far they have succeeded not only the Ritualists themselves proclaim, but also every other party in the Church, and even the Nonconformists, who have shared in the increased beauty and fitness of public worship.

He who can remember the ordinary Church Services in the early Fifties very well knows what they were in the Thirties, except that in the latter there were still some venerable divines who wore a wig.

The musical part of the service was, to begin with, taken slow—incredibly slow; no one now would, who is not old enough to remember, believe how slow it was. The voluntary at the beginning was a slow rumble; the Psalms were very slowly read by the clergyman and the clerk alternately, the Gloria alone being sung, also to a slow rumble. The choir was generally stationed in the organ loft, which has been known to be built over the altar at the east end—as at St. Mary’s, Cambridge—but was generally at the west end. It was not a choir of boys and men only, but of women and men. The ‘Te Deum’ was always ‘Jackson’—from my youth up have I loathed ‘Jackson’; there was just one lively bit in it for which one looked and waited; but it lasted a very few bars; and then the thing dragged on more slowly than ever till it came to the welcome words, ‘Let me never be confounded.’ Two hymns were sung—very slowly; they were always of the kind which expressed either the despair of the sinner or the doubtful joy of the believer. I say doubtful, because he was constantly being warned not to be too confident, not to mistake a vague hope for the assurance of election, and because, with the rest of the congregation, he was always being told how few in number were those elect, and how extremely unlikely that there could be many of those few in that one flock. Read any of the theological literature of the period, and mark the gulf that lies between us and our fathers. There were many kinds of preachers, just as at present—the eloquent, the high and dry, the low and threatening, the forcible-feeble, the florid, the prosy, the scholarly—but they all seemed to preach the same doctrine of hopelessness, the same Gospel of Despair, the same Father of all Cruelty, the same Son who could at best help only a few; and when any of the congregation dared to speak the truth, which was seldom, these blasphemous persons whispered that it was best to live and enjoy the present, and to leave off trying to save their souls against such fearful odds, and with the knowledge that if they were going to be saved it would be by election and by no merit or effort of their own, while, if the contrary was going to happen, it was no use striving against fate. Wretched, miserable creed! To think that unto this was brought the Divine Message of the Son of Man! And to think of the despairing deathbeds of the careless, the lifelong terror of the most religious, and the agony of the survivors over the death of one ‘cut off in his sins’!

What we now call the ‘life’ of the Church, with its meetings, committees, fraternities, guilds, societies, and organisations, then simply did not exist. The clergyman had an easy time; he visited little, he had an Evening Service once a week, he did not pretend to keep saints’ days and minor festivals and fasts—none of his congregation expected him to keep them; as for his being a teetotaller for the sake of the weaker brethren, that would have seemed to everybody pure foolishness, as, indeed, it is, only people now run to the opposite belief; yet he was a good man, for the most part, who lived a quiet and exemplary life, and a good scholar—scholars are, indeed, sadly to seek among the modern clergy—a sound theologian, a judge of good port, and a gentleman. But processions, banners, surpliced choirs, robes, and the like, he would have regarded as unworthy the consideration of one who was a Churchman, a Protestant, and a scholar.

To complete this brief study of the Church fifty years ago, let us remark that out of 11,500 livings which it possessed, 3,000 were under 100l. and 1,000 under 60l. a year, that there were 6,080 pluralists and 2,100 non-residents, that the Dissenters had only been allowed to marry in their own chapels and by their own clergy in the year 1831, that they were not admitted, as Dissenters, to the Universities, and that the incomes of some of the Bishops were enormous.

As for Art, in the house or out of it, Art in pictures, sculpture, architecture, dress, furniture, fiction, oratory, acting, the middle-class person, the resident in the country town, knew nothing of it. His church was most likely a barn, his own house was four-square, his furniture was mahogany, his pictures were coloured engravings, the ornaments of his rooms were hideous things in china, painted red and white, his hangings were of a warm and comfortable red, his sofas were horsehair, his drawing-room was furnished with a round table, on which lay keepsakes and forget-me-nots; but as the family never used the room, which was generally kept locked, it mattered little how it was furnished. He dressed, if he was an elderly gentleman, in a spencer, buttoned tight, a high black satin stock, and boots up to his knees—very likely he still carried his hair in a tail. If he was young, he had long and flowing hair, waved and curled with the aid of pomade, bear’s grease, and oil; he cultivated whiskers, also curled and oiled all round his face; he wore a magnificent stock, with a liberal kind of knot in the front: in this he stuck a great pin; and he was magnificent in waistcoats. As for the ladies’ dresses, I cannot trust myself to describe them; the accompanying illustration will be of service in bringing the fashion home to the reader. But this is the effigy of a London and a fashionable lady. Her country cousin would be two or three years, at least, behind her. Well, the girls had blooming cheeks, bright eyes, and simple manners. They were much more retiring than the modern maiden; they knew very little of young men and their manners, and the young men knew very little of them—the novels of the time are full of the shyness of the young man in presence of the maiden. Their ideas were limited, they had strong views as to rank and social degrees, and longed earnestly for a chance of rising but a single step; their accomplishments were generally contemptible, and of Art they had no idea whatever. How should they have any idea when, year after year, they saw no Art, and heard of none? But they were good daughters, who became good wives and good mothers—our own, my friends—and we must not make even a show of holding them up to ridicule.

One point must not be forgotten. In the midst of all this conventional dulness there was, in the atmosphere of the Thirties, a certain love of romance which showed itself chiefly in a fireside enthusiasm for the cause of oppressed races. Poland had many friends; the negro—they even went so far in those days as to call him a brother—was warmly befriended; the case of the oppressed Greek attracted the good wishes of everybody. Now, sympathy with oppression that is unseen may sometimes be followed by sympathy with the oppression which is before the eyes; so that one is not surprised to hear that the case of the women and the children in the mines and the factories was soon afterwards taken seriously in hand. The verse which then formed so large a part of family reading had a great deal to do with the affections, especially their tearful side; while the tales they loved the best were those of knights and fair dames of adventure and romance.

A picture by Du Maurier in Punch once represented a man singing a comic song at an ‘At Home.’ Nobody laughed; some faces expressed wonder; some, pity; some, contempt; a few, indignation; but not one face smiled. Consider the difference: in the year 1837 every face would have been broadened out in a grin. Do we, therefore, laugh no more? We do not laugh so much, certainly, and we laugh differently. Our comic man of society still tells good stories, but he no longer sings songs; in his stories he prefers the rapier or the jewelled dagger to the bludgeon. Those who desire to make the acquaintance of the comic man, as he was accepted in society and in the middle-class, should read the works of Theodore Hook and of Albert Smith. To begin with, he played practical jokes; he continually played practical jokes, and he was never killed, as would now happen, by his victims. I am certain that we should kill a man who came to our houses and played the jokes which then were permitted to the comic man. He poured melted butter into coat pockets at suppers; he turned round signposts, and made them point the wrong way, in order to send people whither they did not wish to go. It may be remarked that his tricks were rarely original. He wrenched off door-knockers; he turned off the gas at the meter; he tied strings across the river to knock people backwards in their boats; he tied two doors together, and then rang both bells, and waited with a grin from ear to ear; he rang up people in the dead of the night on any pretext; he filled keyholes with powdered slate-pencil when the master of the house was coming home late; he hoaxed innocent ladies, and laughed when they were nearly driven mad with worry and terror; he went to masquerades, carrying a tray full of medicated sweets—think of such a thing!—which he distributed, and then retired, and came back in another dress to gaze upon the havoc he had wrought. Again, it was a time when candles were still carried about the house, and, as yet, it was thought that gas in bedrooms was dangerous. He dipped the candles waiting for the ladies when they went to bed into water, so that they spluttered and went out, and made alarming fireworks when they were lit; and then, to remove the horrible smell, the candles being of tallow, he offered to burn pastilles, but these were confections of gunpowder and water, and caused the liveliest emotions, and sent the poor ladies upstairs in an agony of nervous terror.

There was no end to the tricks of this abominable person. Once he received an invitation to a great ball, which a Royal Personage was to honour with his presence. The Royal Personage was to be regaled in a special supper-room, apart from the common herd. The table had been laid in this room with the most elaborate care and splendour: down the middle of the table there meandered a beautiful canal filled with gold and silver fish—a contrivance believed in those remote ages to set off and greatly increase the beauty of a supper table. Our ingenious friend quickly discovered that the room was accessible from the garden, where some workmen were still putting the finishing touches to their work, the men who had constructed the marquee, and had arranged the lamps and things. He went, therefore, into the garden: he invited these workmen to partake of a little refreshment, led them into the Royal supper-room, and begged them to help themselves, and to spare nothing: in a twinkling the tables were cleared. He then put certain chemicals into the canal, which instantly killed every fish: this done, he returned to the ballroom, and waited for the moment when the Illustrious Personage, the hostess on his arm, should enter that supper-room, and gaze upon those empty dishes.

On another occasion, he discovered that a respectable butler was in the habit of creeping upstairs, in order to listen to the conversation, leaving his slippers, in position, at the head of the kitchen stairs. He therefore hid himself while the poor man, after adjusting the slippers, walked noiselessly upstairs. He then hammered a tintack into the heel of each slipper, and waited again, until a confederate gave the alarm, and the fat butler, hurrying down, slipped one foot into each slipper, and—went headlong into the depths below, and was nearly killed. ‘Never laughed so much in all my life, sir.’

At Oxford, of course, he enjoyed himself wonderfully. For, with a party of chosen friends, he met no less a person than the Vice-Chancellor, at ten or eleven at night, going home alone, and peacefully. To raise that personage, lift him on their shoulders, crown him with a lamp cover, and carry him triumphantly to the gates of his own College, was not only a great stroke of fun, but a thing not to be resisted. And he blew up the group of Cain and Abel in the Quadrangle of Brasenose. And what he did with proctors, bulldogs, and the like, passeth all understanding. It was at Oxford that the funny man made the acquaintance of the Major. Now the Major was in love, but he was no longer so young as he had been, and his hair was getting thin on the top—a very serious thing in the days of long hair, wavy, curled, singed, and oiled, flowing gracefully over the ears and the coat-collar. The Major, in an evil moment, commissioned the Practical Joker, whose character, one would think, must have been well known, to procure for him a bottle of a certain patent hair-restorer. Of course, the Joker brought him a bottle of depilatory mixture, which being credulously accepted, and well rubbed in, deprived the poor Major of every hair that was left. It is needless to relate how, when he was at Richmond with a party of ladies, the introduction of the ‘maids of honour’ was a thing not to be resisted; and one can quite understand how one of the young ladies was led on to ordering, in addition to another ‘maid of honour,’ a small Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, if they had one quite cold.

The middle-class of London, before the development of omnibuses, lived in and round the City of London, Bloomsbury being the principal suburb; many thousands of well-to-do people, merchants and shopkeepers, lived in the City itself, and were not ashamed of their houses, and filled the City churches on the Sunday. Some lived at Clapham, Camberwell, and Stockwell on the south; a great many at Islington, where a vigorous offshoot of the great city ran through the High Street past Sadler’s Wells as far as Highbury; a few even lived at Highgate and Hampstead. There were the ‘short’ stages from London to all these places, but, so far as can be gathered, most of those who lived in these suburbs before the days of the omnibus had their own carriages, and drove to town and home again every day. On Sunday they entertained their friends, and the young gentlemen of the City delighted to hire horses and ride down. The comic literature of the time is full of the Cockney horseman. It will be remembered how Mr. Horatio Sparkins rode gallantly from town to dine with his hospitable friends on Sunday.

The manners and customs of the Islington colony, which may, I suppose, be taken for the suburban and Bloomsbury people generally—except that Russell and Bedford Squares were very, very much grander—may be read in Albert Smith’s ‘Adventures of Mr. Ledbury,’ his ‘Natural History of the Gent,’ ‘The Pottleton Legacy,’ and other contemporary works. Very good reading they are, if approached in the right spirit, which is a humble and an inquiring spirit. Many remarkable things may be learned from these books. For instance, would you know how the middle-class evening party was conducted? Here are a few details. The gentlemen, of whose long and wavy hair I have already spoken, wore, for evening dress, a high black stock, the many folds of which covered the shirt, and were enriched by a massive pin; the white shirt-cuffs were neatly turned over their wrists, their dress-coats were buttoned, their trousers were tight, and they wore straps and pumps. The ladies either wore curls neatly arranged on each side—you may still see some old ladies who have clung to the pretty fashion of their youth—or they wore their hair dropped in a loop down the cheek and behind the ear, and then fastened in some kind of band with ribbons at the back of the head. The machinery of the frocks reminds one of the wedding morning in ‘Pickwick,’ when all the girls were crying out to be ‘done up,’ for they had hooks and eyes, and the girls were helpless by themselves. Pink was the favourite colour—and a very pretty colour too; and there was plenty of scope for the milliner’s art in lace and artificial flowers. The elder ladies were magnificent in turbans, and the younger ones wore across the forehead a band of velvet or silk decorated with a gold buckle, or something in pearls and diamonds. This fashion lingered long. I remember—it must have been about the year 1850—a certain elderly maiden lady who always wore every day and all day a black ribbon across her brows; this alone gave her a severe and keep-your-distance kind of expression; but, in addition, the ribbon contained in the middle, if I remember aright, a steel buckle—though a lady, one thinks, would hardly wear a steel buckle on her forehead. Sometimes there was a wreath of flowers worn like a coronet, and sometimes, but I think hardly in Islington, a tiara of jewels. In middle-class circles, the fashion of evening dress was marred by a fashion, common to both sexes, of wearing cleaned gloves. Now kid gloves could only be cleaned by one process, so that the result was an effect of turps which could not be subdued by any amount of patchouli or eau-de-Cologne. There were, as yet, no cards for the dances, and when a waltz was played, everybody was afraid to begin. Quadrilles of various kinds were danced, and the country dance yet lingered at this end of the town. The polka came later. Dancing was stopped whenever any young lady could be persuaded to sing, and happy was the young man whose avocations permitted him to wear the delightful moustaches forbidden in the City and in all the professions. Young Templars wore them until they were called, when they had to be shaved. For a City man to wear a moustache would have been ruin and bankruptcy.

Other portions of Albert Smith’s works, if read with discernment, will enable one to make discoveries of some interest. One is that our modern ’Arry is really a survival, not, as is sometimes believed, a growth of modern days. His ally and mistress, ’Arriet, does not seem to have existed at all fifty years ago; at least there is no mention of her; but ’Arry flourished. He did really dreadful things. He was even worse than the Practical Joker. When he took Titus Ledbury abroad, he went into the cathedrals on purpose to spill the holy water, to blow out the candles, and to make faces at the women kneeling at their prayers; he got barrel-organs into lofts and invited men to bring grisettes and dance all night, with a supper brought from the charcuterie; wherever there was jumping, dancing, singing, and riot, ’Arry was to the fore. On board the steamer he seized a bottle of stout and took up a prominent and commanding position, where he drank it before all the world, smoking cigars, and laughing loudly at the poor people who were ill. At home, he wrenched off knockers, played practical jokes, drank more stout, ate oysters, chaffed bar-maidens, and called for brandy and water continually. He was loud in his dress and in his voice; he was insolent, caddish, and offensive in his manners. Generally, one thinks, he would end his career in Whitecross Street, or the Fleet, or the Queen’s Bench. Doubtless, however, there are still among us old gentlemen who now sit at church on Sunday with venerable white hair, among their children and grandchildren, and while the voice of the preacher rises and falls, their memory wanders back to the days when they danced and sang with the grisettes, when they wrenched the knockers, when they went from the theatre to the Coal Cellar, and from the Coal Cellar to the Finish; and came home with unsteady step and light purse in the grey of the morning.

The Debtors’ Prison belonged chiefly to the great middle-class. Before them stalked always a grisly spectre, called by some Insolvency and by others Bankruptcy. This villainous ghost seized its victims by the collar and haled them within the walls of a Debtors’ Prison, where it made them abandon hope, and abide there till the day of death. Everybody is familiar with the inside of the Fleet, the Queen’s Bench, the Marshalsea, and Whitecross Street. They are all pulled down now, and the only way to get imprisoned for debt is to incur contempt of court, for which Holloway is the reward. But what a drop from the humours of the Queen’s Bench, with its drinking, tobacco, singing, and noisy revelry, to the solitary cell of Holloway Prison! The Debtors’ Prison is gone, and the world is the better for its departure. Nowadays the ruined betting-man, the rake, the sharper, the profligate, the fraudulent bankrupt, have no prison where they can carry on their old excesses again, though in humbler way. They go down—below the surface—out of sight, and what they do, and how they fare, nobody knows, and very few care.