Read Ebook: The Queen's Reign and Its Commemoration A literary and pictorial review of the period; the story of the Victorian transformation by Besant Walter

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I have spoken of education in the rural districts. Long before the young rustic could learn to read, the townsmen had the chance of some education. There were many charity schools: there were the schools of the National Society and of the British and Foreign Society: there were also the Sunday Schools.

Criminal procedure does not, perhaps, affect the average civilian. At the same time one learns that before 1836 it was actually forbidden that a prisoner should defend himself before the jury by counsel. Imagine, if you can, a timid, shrinking girl, called upon to plead for her life in open court after being maddened by jargon which she did not understand and formalities which only filled her with bewilderment. It is said that the judges themselves repaired this evil: it is quite possible. Our judges have always been superior to the laws they have had to administer; but then the prisoner was at the mercy of the judge; he might, or he might not, find a remedy for the speechlessness and the incapacity of the prisoner.

If you take up a bundle of old newspapers you will find that every one of them has got a red stamp upon it. This was the tax upon newspapers. It was a penny a copy in 1760; in 1815 it was actually fourpence a copy; in 1836 it was reduced to a penny; in 1855 it was totally abolished. There was, in addition, a tax on paper, which was repealed in 1861. It is wonderful how newspapers continued to exist at all with an impost so crushing: it is still more wonderful how working-men's papers could hold their own. In fact, their circulation was very small; they were weekly, not daily; they were taken in at taverns where the men could see them, not by the men themselves. It is not one of the least reforms of this reign which has placed in the hands of everybody a cheap newspaper, full, large, with copious intelligence, and educated commentary.

The outcome of the national discontent was the organisation called Chartism. Look at the working-man of the present day. He has received an education sound and thorough, up to a certain point, at the Board School; he has had the chance of continuing his education after leaving school at evening classes. He has also had the chance of joining a Polytechnic, which is a kind of technical University, teaching everything; and a kind of public school, in which athletics of all kinds are practised and encouraged. There are a great many thousand lads in the Polytechnics, and they are as fine young fellows as one can desire to see. They are skilled in technical work; they are taught by the best men in their own subjects; they do not drink or frequent taverns; they do not loaf about the streets. I do not pretend that these lads are representatives of their own class; I admit that they are the flower of the flock. The working-man has now free libraries and reading-rooms, where he can sit and read or borrow books to take away. There is no longer any revolutionary talk among those who converse; there is Socialism, of course, but that is very different. It would be difficult indeed for a young man to escape some of the Socialist ideas which are in the air, and are producing unexpected and far-reaching results. Here, however, except among a few foreigners, we have no Anarchists. The wages are better, the hours are shorter; there is a Saturday half-holiday; there are four Bank holidays in the year, besides Christmas Day and Good Friday. Everything is cheaper--food and clothes of all kinds. Lectures, concerts, dramatic recitals, debates, dances, are got up everywhere by the working-men for themselves.

The working-man's attitude towards the Church, to which I have already alluded, has quite changed of late years. He formerly regarded it with a ferocious hatred, being taught by the papers they published for him that the clergy believe nothing, and wallow in ease and luxury at his expense. "Why," said one of them to me twenty years ago, "if the Church was abolished we should all get our breakfast for nothing." That kind of talk has now vanished. If the Sunday morning orator still denounces Christianity with perfervid vehemence--as he used to do in the Whitechapel Road--the working-man listens with a smile and presently goes on to the next ring, where the Socialist preaches universal happiness to come as soon as we can get the much-desired equal division; and him, too, he leaves presently with another smile. He is not in the least moved by either orator.

Canon Barnett's Church in Whitechapel is an example of what may be done with a parish composed entirely of working-people. They do not attend his services, I believe. But he has educated them into an audience which listens intelligently to the best and most thoughtful and most cultivated scholars and teachers of the day; they flock every year to a Loan Exhibition of Pictures which he collects for them; he gives them receptions, concerts, discussions; he has built Toynbee Hall in their midst as a settlement and place of culture. Some of them he has made students and scholars: it is not too much to say that Canon Barnett's parishioners are intellectually far above the average of the class supposed to be their superiors--that of the shopkeepers and the traders. However, it would not be fair to take these people as an average of our working-man. When I think of the mass of the people as they were sixty years ago--how ignorant they were, how drunken, how brutal, how dangerous to order and to government, how unruly, how disloyal--I cannot but claim for the men of the present a change nothing short of transformation! There is still much to be done, the Millennium is not yet reached; but there is no comparison--none--between the people of 1837 and the people of 1897; and the advantage is all on one side.

TRANSFORMATION OF THE BOURGEOIS

When one speaks of the Bourgeois, one means the class which Matthew Arnold was never tired of ridiculing as without culture, ideals, or standards. For my own part, I think it would be more useful to recognise, first, that there are certain occupations in life which can be carried on very well without ideals; that the advent or genesis of ideas among certain people would inevitably spoil them for their humble work; and that it is sufficient for the State if they remain on the side of order, with due respect to law and justice. Now, whatever the short-comings of these people with respect to culture, no one can complain of them with respect to their love of order.

A craftsman--a man who makes anything--may cultivate himself to the highest, and remain a craftsman; he may be an artist; he may be a poet; he may nourish himself upon the noblest thoughts, and yet remain a craftsman. Out of the trade of shoemakers have sprung poets, artists, and actors. Cobblers have been fierce politicians. But a man who sells the shoes which another man makes cannot, in the nature of things, cultivate lofty standards or aesthetic ideals. His occupation, which has in it something servile, forbids it. And I have here to speak of the English tradesman, and to show the transformation which has fallen upon him too.

Let us consider the daily life of a London shopkeeper early in the present century. He had a shop in Cheapside. The shop occupied the front part of the ground-floor: at the back was the "parlour," the family living-room, which looked out upon a small churchyard, in which funerals were conducted almost daily; the ground was covered with bones and bits of coffins; once a month or so the sexton made a bonfire of the wood. Upstairs were the bedrooms--the best bedroom in front, which nobody ever occupied because there were no guests. Here the tenant of the house lived, he and his family; they had no change, and desired none, from day to day. An apprentice lived with them, slept under the counter, and made himself useful in the house as well as in the shop--washing plates and dishes after meals and running errands for his mistress. One servant was kept; she and the daughters and the mistress of the house were all occupied perpetually in making things; they made puddings, cakes, jam, preserves, pickles, cordials, perfumes, washes, and home-made wines--thin and pallid fluids named after cowslip, primrose, raspberry, and currant. When they were not making or cooking they were sewing; all the women of the house sewed perpetually--they were slaves to the needle: they sat round the table in the parlour, with a single candle, and sewed in silence all through a winter evening. The girls had been to school; they went to a private school in the suburbs, where they learned various small feminine accomplishments; they learned from their mother certain maxims which should regulate the conduct of every maiden. And on Sunday they turned out for church in toilettes whose splendour highly gratified the pride of their father, because they seemed to challenge all Cheapside to spend more money upon the daughters' dress. Yet he knew, and all the neighbours knew, that this finery was all contrived at home--hats trimmed, ribbons and streamers put in place, and the lovely sleeve designed by the girls themselves. At church they enjoyed a service which we should call lugubrious. The psalms were read, two hymns were sung but slowly, and the sermon, an hour long, was an argument on doctrine; but there was the pleasure of sitting in the Sunday best, which made one forget the doctrine and enjoy the hymns.

All day long in the week, and during a good part of the evening, the good man served in his shop. It was a shop of which survivals may still be found in various parts of London--a shop with a round window furnished with many small panes of glass; the window was not garnished with the choicest wares which this dealer had to sell--not at all; he prided himself on keeping much better things within than those which he chose to show. After dark the window was illumined by two or three candles.

He breakfasted, for the most part, on tea and toast; he dined at one o'clock, plentifully if not luxuriously; it was not the custom, among his class, to invite friends to dinner. The house, in fact, was regarded as a kind of sacred harem, to which no one was invited. Friends, however, were taken to the tavern. Unless he was a Dissenter, this citizen was a member of the Vestry, and served all the parish offices. On Sunday he dined more plentifully than on a week day: he was a member of a club which met once a week; there he exchanged sentiments which we should call commonplace, but they were expected; any other sentiments would have affected his friends painfully, with doubt and misgiving.

These sentiments were based upon convictions fixed and unalterable. He believed--long before any Reform Bill--that the only land of liberty was Great Britain; that British armies were irresistible, and British fleets were ever victorious; that the greatest enemy to mankind was the Pope; that the greatest crime conceivable was not to pay your debts, especially debts contracted with a tradesman of Cheapside; that the greatest disgrace was to become bankrupt. A debtor's prison he regarded as the chief safeguard and stay of British trade; he would listen to no sentimental nonsense about locking up debtors--every debtor ought to be locked up, ought to be flogged, ought to be hanged!

He entertained no sympathy with trades unions: the working-man was the servant of his employer; it was not for him to regulate his own wages and his hours; he was to take what he could get, what the generosity of his master, what the conditions of trade, allowed him to have.

This man, of whom there were many hundred thousands in the country, read no books; he was quite ignorant of what we call everything, that is, of literature, science, art, music, history. Something he knew of what was going on, because there were newspapers at the tavern, which he sometimes read. But he took in no newspaper, and he read no books. There were no books in his house at all; his girls read no books. A book of Family Prayers there was; and for Church purposes, Prayer Books and Bibles, but no books. And so this man, with all his household, lived and died, as Matthew Arnold pointed out, without culture, without ideals, without standards, without aspirations.

He had become, after the Mob Riots of the eighteenth century, a prodigious coward. Formerly, as in 1715, when a mob appeared in the street, he had run to the mug-house or tavern, seized a club, and sallied forth to disperse that mob. Gradually he lost courage; he stayed at home; he was sleek and fat and unwarlike; when the mob came along he put up his shutters, locked his door, and sat behind it trembling. However, the establishment of the New Police sufficiently repressed the mob, and made the question of the civic valour no longer necessary.

For holidays, he had none, that is to say, he felt no need of any change year after year; he lived the daily routine, and would not alter it if he could. Some of his neighbours--a few--had begun to go in the summer to Brighton or to Margate. Not our friend; he stayed where he was, with his nose over the churchyard, and said that London air was best. Once a year he might take his family to Bagnigge Wells or over to Vauxhall; on summer evenings he would walk with them in the pleasant fields outside the city walls; he wanted no other holiday. Nor did his people. His daughters married and left him; but he and his wife kept on where they were until the end.

The man himself, ill-educated, vulgar, incapable of understanding anything except that which lies on the surface, unfortunately stood in the eyes of the world to represent the City: the trading merchants had gradually withdrawn from the Corporation, leaving it to the shopkeepers, so that for a time the Mayor and Corporation of the greatest city of the world were drawn from a narrow, vulgar part of the community. Not only the city, but trade itself fell into contempt during this interval. You may remember that Thackeray is filled with contempt of trade, with his Alderman Gobble and the purse-proud merchants.

One point must be acknowledged in favour of this man. He was a great stickler for what he called morals--not including that part of morals which deals with the treatment of dependents. Private character he expected of his friends: a young man who came courting his daughters had to bring with him an unsullied private character. You may note, if you please, because the virtue is the foundation of all trade, that in his private expenditure he was thrifty.

How, then, has this man been affected by the changes of sixty years?

First, his trade is entirely altered. The extension of machinery has affected every line of trade. In watchmaking, for instance, the best watches were made in Clerkenwell: they cost from six pounds to a hundred and twenty pounds; a machine-made watch can now be obtained for twenty shillings. So with stuffs, velvets, silks, ribbons, everything: machinery has largely increased the production and as largely diminished the cost. This means, as one effect, that less capital is required to embark in trade. Free Trade, which has done such great things for this country, though we make no converts, has largely affected the retail trade.

Apart from his trade the English tradesman's private life has been completely changed. He no longer lives next to a noisome burial-ground in the city; he has a villa in a suburb; he goes into town every morning and comes out in the evening; the old evenings with the city cronies are things of the past. In his suburb there is very little social life even for his children; for himself there is none. He does not frequent theatres or concerts; he stays at home. In the morning he reads a newspaper; in the evening he reads books and plays cribbage. As for his children they have forgotten the former stage; they are well educated; they go into the professions; they are artistic and become Art students; they are as well read as can be desired; they are in the stream of modern ideas.

Not only this, but the social position of the tradesman has been raised: here and there one may find a huge palace devoted to the sale of everything; the palace has been created by the genius of one man, and is controlled by the mind of one man. It is impossible to feel anything but respect and admiration for a man of such great ability, who has created interests so vast and so commanding.

The shopkeeper has, for the most part, abandoned the Corporation; he no longer seeks office in the city; when he does, he is a man who can hold his own with the merchants who have once more taken over the municipality; the City is the gainer by the change, and so is the London tradesman, because what advances the reputation of the City also advances him.

The forces which have changed the common people have also acted upon himself and his family: the widening of the world, improved communication, and cheap postage and the rest. His young people are not concerned with the polytechnics, but they are moved by the spirit of athletics that drag all the youth of this country into the playing-fields. They career over the country on bicycles; they play golf, lawn-tennis, cricket, football; they are not shut out from suburban society by the old exclusiveness with which "wholesale people" formerly regarded "retail people." The playing-field is a leveller; there is no rank in a football team.

Let us not forget to remark how large a knowledge of geography is possessed by our friend of Cheapside. You would be amazed at the extent: sure and certain I am that the average American citizen cannot compare with my man in this respect. He has learned this knowledge by following day after day the wars and rumours of wars which assail the country continually. Since the accession of Queen Victoria, we have carried on war in Canada, at the Cape, in India, in New Zealand, on the West Coast of Africa, in the Crimea, in Egypt, in China, in Abyssinia, in Dahomey, in Burmah, in Afghanistan, in Chitral, and I know not where beside. This good man, with his newspaper and his atlas, gets up his geography from day to day and from war to war.

There is perhaps a "seamy" side to trade of every kind. With that I have no concern whatever; I have only to show here how the events of sixty years have affected the London tradesman, and this, I venture to hope, I have succeeded in doing. Again, it must be understood that I am talking of the better class--not necessarily the richer class--of London retail dealers. There are, I believe, those who live for making money, and have no other care or thought. For them order, law, peace, justice exist for no other purpose than to allow the most perfect freedom for the besting of the customer. The old Cheapside trader was narrow and stupid; these people are neither narrow nor stupid; they are sharp; they exist in every trading city; they are purse-proud and ostentatious; they flourish their wealth at the "Grand Hotels"; they wear the finest fur and the richest silk--and, if you please, we will say no more about them.

TRANSFORMATION OF THE PROFESSIONS

Sixty years ago there were three professions and two services. The two services were the Army and the Navy; the three professions were the Church, Law, and Medicine.

The Church was the natural home of the scholars: a few scholars drafted off into the Law; there were also a few in the House, where they made apt quotations from Horace, and delighted the members by giving a Virgilian turn to a debate. Nowadays--alas!--were a scholar to venture on a Latin quotation, the House would not understand.

All the clergy were not College Dons and great scholars. Yet there was always, at that period, a flavour of scholarship about them: the beneficed clergy of the country were generally younger sons of the country gentry, because almost every family had a church living in its gifts, and these livings were too valuable to be bestowed out of the family. A young man who took a curacy in the country without family influence probably found himself stranded for life on eighty pounds a year. Those of the benefices which did not belong to private patrons were either in the gift of the Lord Chancellor, with whom interest was required; or of the Bishop, who had his own relations to provide for: of the sons, nephews, and cousins, for instance, of Dr. Sparke, sometime Bishop of Norwich, it was said "as the Sparkes fly upwards;" or of some college at Oxford or Cambridge which wanted them for its Fellows. The only chance for such a man was to attract attention as a preacher in some town. But this chance came to few; therefore for half the clergy at least their profession was a starveling. Yet those who had no interest entered it, in hopes and under the pressure of a call which they believed to be real, and not to be disobeyed under penalties too awful to be contemplated. Meantime it is now nearly fifty years since Charles Kingsley, who could never shake off the prejudice of small middle-class gentility, uttered the sneer that the modern way of making your son a gentleman was to send him to Oxford first and to put him in Holy Orders next. He here expressed, however, a common feeling about the clergy, which was that they should be scholars first, gentlemen next, and Divines last. And there is no doubt that the social position of the Church, and, therefore, the adhesion of all the better classes to the Church, has proved of the greatest value, in times of religious decay, towards maintaining the Church in her position of ascendency.

The administration of the parish was still that of the eighteenth century. That is to say, the Church was there, before all people, with open doors, offering its services, its sermons, its offices, freely to all who chose to accept them. It was not considered the business of the clergy to run after those who refused their offices. As for the piety and the reputation of the clergy, their lives were pure; there was commonly no scandal: they were supposed, however, to be addicted to wine, and in the City there were some who were known as "three bottle men." In opinions the majority were of the Evangelical type, with Calvinistic leanings: they preached sermons wholly on points of doctrine. The general belief was that mere membership in the Church was of no importance at all, and that the salvation of the soul was an independent and separate transaction carried on between the individual and his Creator. This kind of preaching has not yet wholly ceased, but it is rare: such preachers are no longer heeded.

Let us compare the Church of the present day. It is no longer a Church of scholars: there are still some learned members in it, but the old presumption that a clergyman must be a scholar, is quite lost and forgotten; rather the presumption is the other way, that a clergyman is not a scholar. The young scholars of the day do not, as a rule, take upon them Holy Orders: there are too many openings for their intellectual activities. Moreover, the prizes are not what they were. Agricultural depression has ruined the fellowships, cut down by one half the country livings, destroyed the value of Deaneries and Canonries. The Bishoprics still, however, keep their value, and a profession cannot be thought very poor which numbers so many prizes as the Church of England, with her Archbishops and her Bishops. Preaching, which was formerly so important a part of Church work, has decayed deplorably. The reason is the development of the parish work, which now occupies the whole time of the clergy, leaving them no time for meditation and study. For, since the people will not come to the clergy, the clergy condescend to stoop to the people. At the present moment the Church is the centre of numberless institutions and associations which aim at civilising the people rather than making them religious. The clergy preside over clubs for the lads, clubs for the girls, temperance associations, mothers' meetings, sales of clothing, lectures, concerts, care of the poor and of the sick, benefit societies, visiting organisations, Sunday schools, country holiday funds, convalescent homes, and a thousand other things. Now the working people, and especially the very lowest class, regard this activity with a kind of admiring wonder; they see these young fellows--many of whom are not clergy, but live among them--working morning, noon, and night for no reward: they are touched by this devotion; their lads would follow them to the death. I do not say that this example makes them religious, but it fills them with that new feeling towards religion which has been already considered. The doctrines held by the present clergy are in most cases High Church, with which, personally, I have no kind of sympathy. At the same time, one must admit that the modern views have destroyed the dreadful terrors about Election and Predestination: in the Anglican, as in the Roman Church, once more the Fold protects.

In Law and Medicine, fewer changes have been made. In the former, a barrister was not allowed to make a friend of an attorney, or to take his hand, or to visit at his house. The low class attorney-at-law, of whom there were a great many, practised with impunity all kinds of iniquities and conspiracies; he was, indeed, an enemy to the human race; he was usurer; he was the concoctor of civil actions, which he dragged on interminably;--it was he who filled the prisons with unfortunate prisoners; he robbed the widow and defrauded the fatherless; he took advantage of difficulties which he aggravated--he charged what he pleased. The power of the attorney--now called solicitor--for mischief is very greatly curtailed;--a taxing master looks after his bills; he can no longer clap a debtor into prison; he is liable to be struck off the rolls for misconduct.

In Medicine the physician never claimed so great a superiority over the surgeon. If he did, that superiority has vanished. Great are the recent triumphs of surgery: not so great, perhaps, those of medicine. In those days the surgeon operated in the presence of the physician; he did not aspire to the medical degree; he could not be called "Doctor." There were no anaesthetics in those days; operations of all kinds were limited by the patient's power of endurance: a long operation killed, because there is a limit to the endurance of pain. The discoveries of the laboratory have placed the treatment of all disease on a new and more scientific footing. Fortunately, I am not called upon in this place to do more than indicate changes that only a medical student could properly explain. We can, however, all understand the ward, clean and neat, with regulated temperature; the patients under the care of bright and cheerful nurses; the hospitals "walked" not by the young ruffians of the "Bob Sawyer" type, but keen and eager students, with whom science is more than a mere profession, and the causes of diseases more than their cure.

Sixty years ago, I said, there were only three professions. How many are there now, recognised as on an equal footing of dignity and importance with these three?

Formerly, Architecture was not considered a profession. I remember long ago, in the Sixties, listening to a group of men who were discussing whether architecture had any claims at all to be a profession--certainly the local architect was also the house-agent--and whether a gentleman could belong to it. I believe they agreed that it was only a trade.

Formerly, there was no profession of science at all. At Cambridge there were chairs of Mathematics, of Chemistry, and of other branches. But there was no profession of any branch of science. No man set up a laboratory and said "I am a chemist by profession"; there were none of the great Schools for Physical Science, such as now exist at Cambridge, at South Kensington, at Newcastle, and at other places; no young men began by "going in" for science, as they do at present. That profession which offers the noblest prizes of fame and name, together with a sufficiency of income, has been created in all its numerous branches within the last sixty years. The British Association made the world familiar with the claims and the work of the new science. Such men as Humphry Davy, Faraday, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and so many others, who will be accounted the chief luminaries of this age, planted firmly the claims of science in the minds of the people, and raised the position of science to the same level as that of Latin and Greek scholarship. All these physicists, electricians, zoologists, biologists, chemists, and the rest have come into existence during the Queen's reign. The teaching of science at our Universities and Schools, the multiplication of new Colleges in all the Colonies, as well as at home, have created places for these students and a demand for their teaching: they have also created a demand for new books, which only these teachers were able to supply.

Formerly, again, the position of teacher in a school, except when one was Headmaster of Eton, Harrow, or Winchester, was one of curious contempt. The reason for this contempt was simple: it was the connection between a schoolmaster and his floggings. That connection has now ceased. At a few schools, the Head exercises the old business with the birch: it is regarded as a custom or a usage rendered venerable by antiquity. "I was swished," said a young fellow the other day, "nineteen times when I was at school. I have always regretted that I didn't make it twenty." But the assistant masters have no power of inflicting personal chastisement.

This old contempt has vanished: the profession is now regarded with great respect, and carries with it a proper amount of social consideration. No young man, formerly, who could by any possibility get into any other line of life, would take a place as assistant master even in a public school. If he did, it was in hopes of obtaining a boarding-house and making a rapid fortune. The position is now literally run after by young University men of the greatest distinction and the best credentials as to scholarship. The present Headmaster of Harrow, writing to the papers some time ago, made this suggestive observation. I quote from memory--"I believe that I have at Harrow, at this moment, the best collection of assistants that were ever gathered together at any public school. Yet I am certain that if they were all to resign, I could replace them very shortly by another collection equally good." So ready, so eager, are the young scholars of the day to become masters in the public schools. Sixty years ago they would have stayed on at Oxford or Cambridge, and led the life already described of the Scholar, the Fellow, and the College Tutor.

Another new profession, though to the younger men it seems an old profession, is that of engineering. There are many branches of engineering: one constructs piers, jetties, railways, bridges, great works like the Forth Bridge, or smaller bridges, tunnels, roads, embankments, and the like. Another devises and constructs machinery of all kinds, another controls electricity: there must be an engineer in every factory as in every little steamer. Great prizes in money and fortune belong to this profession. It is eminently a learned profession: to attain unto any degree of eminence in it one must be a good mathematician.

Other new professions are those of the actuary and the accountant. And there are "followings" once not allowed to be professional, such as that of the painter and the sculptor, the work of literature, music, acting, etc. A young man may enter any one of these branches of mental achievement: he may choose his own department; he will occupy as good a social position as the young barrister; he will belong to the professional class. As for the prizes in some of them, if they are not equal to those of the Bar or the Church, they are considerable; in some kinds of literature, such as educational books, fiction, and the drama, successful writers command incomes which would be considered incredible by Douglas Jerrold and the wits of the early Victorian era.

To recapitulate. Where there were three professions sixty years ago there are now dozens: given a young man of ability and activity, it is difficult not to find for him an opening where he will get a chance of gaining a splendid prize of success. For the man of exceptional ability, the Church leads him to a Bishopric with a life peerage and ?10,000 a year; the Bar leads him to an income of ?10,000 a year, and, if he pleases, a peerage; Medicine may give him ?15,000 a year, also with a peerage, or a baronetcy, if he wishes one; all the other professions have their splendid prizes and their magnificent chances which are open to a young man of ability. Compared with the condition of 1837, we are like the occupants of a broad expanse of country which has been suddenly widened in all directions by the removal of walls and fences and the abolition of prohibitions.

One thing remains with the new as with the old professions: they all demand an apprenticeship and a training. No one can enter the Law, or Medicine, or any other, without being able to pay, over a period of five years, at least a thousand pounds, probably two thousand when all is done. Until this condition is removed, which is not likely to happen, it is not true to say, or to think, that every career in this country is open to every boy.

TRANSFORMATION OF WOMAN

"A perfect Woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light." WORDSWORTH.

Let me present to you, first, an early Victorian girl, born, indeed, about the Waterloo year; next, her granddaughter, born about 1875.

The young lady of 1837 has been to a fashionable school: she has learned accomplishments, deportment, and dress. She is full of sentiment: there was an amazing amount of sentiment in the air about that time--she loves to talk and read about gallant knights, crusaders, and troubadours; she gently touches the guitar--her sentiment, or her little affectation, has touched her with a graceful melancholy, a becoming stoop, a sweet pensiveness; she loves the aristocracy, even though her home is in that part of London called Bloomsbury, whither the belted earl cometh not, even though her papa goes into the City; she reads a deal of poetry, especially those poems which deal with the affections, of which there are many at this time; on Sunday she goes to church religiously and pensively, followed by a footman carrying her Prayer Book and a long stick; she can play on the guitar and the piano a few easy pieces which she has learned; she knows a few words of French, which she produces at frequent intervals; as to history, geography, science, the condition of the people, her mind is an entire blank; she knows nothing of these things. Her conversation is commonplace, as her ideas are limited; she cannot reason on any subject whatever because of her ignorance,--as she herself would say, because she is a woman. In her presence, and indeed in the presence of ladies generally, men talk trivialities. There was indeed a general belief that women were creatures incapable of argument, or of reason, or of connected thought. It was no use arguing about the matter. The Lord had made them so. Women, said the philosophers, cannot understand logic: they see things, if they do see them at all, by instinctive perception. This theory accounted for everything--for those cases when women undoubtedly did "see things." Also, it fully justified people in withholding from women any kind of education worthy the name. A quite needless expense, you understand.

The theatre was very seldom visited; indeed there were reasons why it was not desirable that young ladies should go to the theatre; if they did go it was an event very much discussed both before and after. There were only one or two theatres that respectable people could possibly attend, and the one part of the house where ladies could be seen was the dress circle. Now in the Thirties, if my information is correct, there were good actors, but the plays were monstrously bad. The Queen, however, used to like going to the theatre. If you walk down to those north of the Strand, you may see how the road was widened for her to go to the Adelphi melodramas. The reading of girls was carefully selected for them; in serious circles--there were many circles in 1840 privileged to be serious--fiction was absolutely forbidden; its place was taken by religious biography: wonderful to think how large a part was played by religious biography about that time. I do not know what books besides these biographies and records of "conversation" were allowed, but I imagine that there were not many. At all events, a young woman must not be allowed to read anything which would suggest to her the wickedness of the world, the realities of the world, the truth about men and women, or the meanings of humanity. She was to leave her mother's nest not only innocent--girls do still leave their mothers in innocence--but also in a state of ignorance, which was then mistaken for a state of grace. How far she really was ignorant no one but herself could tell; one imagines that there may have been some knowledge behind that demure countenance that was not generally suspected.

It has been often charged against Thackeray that his good women were insipid. Thackeray, like most artists, could only draw the women of his own time, and at that time they were undoubtedly insipid. Men, I suppose, liked them so. To be childishly ignorant; to carry shrinking modesty so far as to find the point of a shoe projecting beyond the folds of a frock indelicate; to confess that serious subjects were beyond a woman's grasp; never even to pretend to form an independent judgment; to know nothing of Art, History, Science, Literature, Politics, Sociology, Manners;--men liked these things; women yielded to please the men; her very ignorance formed a subject of laudable pride with the Englishwoman of the Forties.

As for doing serious work, the girl of that period shrank appalled at the very thought. To earn one's livelihood was the deepest degradation; the most sincere pity was felt for those unhappy girls whose fathers died or failed, or left them unprovided, so that they must needs do something. It was pity mingled with contempt. Even this meek and gentle maiden of the early Victorian period could feel--and could show--the emotion of contempt. Readers of Cranford will remember how the unfortunate lady opened a tea shop; those ladies who were too old or too ignorant for teaching--"going out" as a governess--sometimes set up a "fancy" shop, where children's things--lace, embroideries, things in wool and pretty trifles--were sold. I remember such a shop kept by two gentlewomen, old, reduced, decayed; but they were very sad, always in the lowest depressions; I fear it was but a poor business. There were no professions open to women. Those who did not marry--they were comparatively few--stayed at home with one of the brothers, generally the eldest, and as often as not, such an unmarried sister proved the angel of the house. Sometimes, to be sure, the lot was hard, and she was made to feel her dependence. In general, I like to believe, the single woman of the family, in whom all confided, in whom all trusted,--the nurse of the sick; the contriver and designer of the girls' frocks; the maker of fine cakes and the owner of choice recipes; who knew all the branches of a numerous family; who kept together the brothers and cousins who would fly apart but for her,--was as much valued as she deserved to be.

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