omnibus conductors, and "larking all over the
place," as Jim says, trying to look stern (Jim
is the conductor); but failing in the attempt.
I can see all their lives, too, aiul their fathers'
before them; the old man down in Sussex tying
every shilling he possessed at the tails of his
dogs and horses, and losing them all—the sons,
inheriting their father's love of field sports and
fresh country life; inheriting, too, his depth of
chest and breadth of shoulder and thorough
Saxon development and nature, but obliged, for
the sake of their professions and the bread that
must be baked, to come to smoky London—and
now these two lads, with the old lay cropping
out in their saucy faces and golden-edged curls
and great broad frames, and all the other signs
and symbols of the English gentleman with the
fling of Esau across his raiment. One could
scarcely conceive of anything healthier or more
masculine than this type of the couutry-bred
Briton: a type which it takes many generations
of London smoke and slang to wear out.

Very different in texture altogether is the
physical humanity of the small-handed woman
opposite, dressed in a shabby gown, with a
soiled flaunting bonnet, and a torn shawl of
many colours, who evidently thinks that nerves
and idleness are three parts of the essence
of gentlehood, and that she can make herself
"a lady" by ceasing to be a woman and
becoming a doll. Her husband is a rough-mannered,
rough-handed mechanic, making perhaps
forty shillings a week or so, more or less; and
he, too, shares in the delusion that work is
"low" for a woman, and that idleness is a
refinement, and a thing to be cultivated by the
ambitious. It is his pride to boast that "his
wife is kept like a lady, with, a servant of her
own; and needn't do a hand's turn if she don't
like." So he puts her in a "nice little home"
at Camberwell, with a best parlour and a black
horse-hair sofa, quite comfortable; and there
she lords it in state over a miserable little elf, a
parish apprentice, small enough to be carried
like a lapdog in the pocket. But the elf does
all the dirty work, and the rough and the hard
work too, that my lady the mechanic's wife may
not soil her hands, or make them "hard like a
common woman's." She is one of a kind I see
a great deal of, and that I can never sufficiently
deplore; for they seem to me to be cutting at
the root of all that is most wholesome in the
English artisan class, its simple strong hold on
realities; and that while the men of that class
are so wonderfully improving, the women are
just as much deteriorating by their terrible
aping of fine-ladyism and finery.

Look at the envious glances which our lady
of Camberwell is casting at those two pretty
young creatures in bright blue silks, so
carefully tucked up over their knees, evidently off to
a friendly party somewhere. You can see that
they are ladies, even if papa's income makes it
necessary for them to peril their best dresses in
an omnibus, rather than spend a few shillings in
a cab. That they are happy and innocent, and
innocently happy in their present finery, is also
as evident; and yet both those girls would do
real good hard work if need be; and, indeed, do
so; helping their one servant, Jane, as much from
kindness and that she should not be overworked,
as from mamma's desire, and their own, to
"make things look nice." They are very charming
girls; I should say the daughters of an
artist, from a certain debonnair something—a
certain almost imperceptible loosening of stays
and slackening of ropes that belongs to this
class—and from the excellent choice of colours
in their dress. I like to think of the sweetness
of home, and the happy family life which they
help to make in their fresh little house at
Bayswater; I like to see them all crowding round
dear papa's picture, each with more loving
praises on her lips than the last; I like to see
mamma, buxom, unwearied, managing mamma,
with her faith that never fails and her hope that
never cools, believing always in the fortune
surely now within their grasp, and the sudden
outblaze of fame that is to eclipse all living
rivals. If the reality is something deader and
drier than these brilliant dreams, what matter?
the dreams are the sugar-plums helping to digest
the "salt junk" of actuality, sweetening not
supplanting meals.

As surely as these two gracious maidens are
of the artist world, so surely is that lady next
them of the literary. A square-headed woman,
with a fixed, rather hard, but not unkindly face,
wearing spectacles, short petticoats, scant crinoline,
if any, carrying an umbrella and a roll of
papers—is she not a British Museumite, and one
familiar with the printer's devil?—a practical,
strong-minded, clear-brained authoress, ready
for any work and with energy enough for any
vocation, and with half a hundred missions; of
which, however, womanly subserviency or
submission does not form one. As she sits there,
with her strongly-marked features and her
watchful eyes that see everything, yet are not
of the quick and roving kind, rather wide and
steady, I can read her history too, like the rest;
perhaps more clearly than she can read mine,
though I meet her big grey eyes fixed on me,
and know that I am being photographed for
future use. One thing I see, which has no
business there, and that is, a wedding-ring on her
left hand. Her husband, poor man! has a
hardish time of it, be sure; for those deep dints
in the forehead between the eyes, and the furrow
from the nostril to the mouth, and the look of
pain and experience and the unrest of a battle
always going on and never ended, are not
eloquent of rose-leaves and eider-down; and I fear
that, my literary friend's matrimonial possessor
may at times find a strong-minded woman,
making her due share of the family income,
rather more of a helpmate than a sweetheart.
And yet she is not bad, she is only too much
the reverse of our lady of Camberwell. When
women will leave off exaggerating good qualities
they will have achieved a more thorough freedom
than even the most emancipated dream of: and
that is, freedom from the tyranny of their own
weaknesses.