“all silent and all d---d,” is as like a party in a parlour in Hackney as two peas. The beard movement was a failure; so was the great question of hat reform, and for similar reasons. We still scowl upon a man with a wide-a-wake, as we should upon a pick-pocket or a cut-throat. A leaden monotony hangs heavy on us all. Not more does one man or woman differ from another than does policeman A1 differ from policeman A 999. Individuality seems gone: independent life no longer exists. Our very thought and inner life is that of Buggins, who lives next door. The skill of the tailor has made us all one, and man, as God made him, cuts but a sorry figure by the side of man as his tailor made him. This is an undeniable fact: it is not only true but _the_ truth. One motive serves for every variety of deed—for dancing the polka or marrying a wife—for wearing white gloves or worshipping the Most High. “At any rate, my dears,” said a fashionable dame to her daughters when they turned round to go home, on finding that the crowded state of the church to which they repaired would not admit of their worshipping according to Act of Parliament,—“At any rate, my dears, we have done the genteel thing.” By that mockery to God she had made herself right in the sight of man. Actually we are all so much alike that not very long since in Madrid a journeyman tailor was mistaken for a Prince. It is not always that such extreme cases happen; but the tendency of civilization, as we have it now, is to work us all up into one common, unmeaning whole—to confound all the old distinctions by which classes were marked—to mix up the peasant and the prince, more by bringing down the latter than elevating the former; and thus we all become unmeaning, and monotonous, and common-place. The splendid livery in which “Jeames” rejoices may show that he is footman to a family that dates from the Conquest: it may be that he is footman to the keeper of the ham and beef shop near London Bridge. The uninitiated cannot tell the difference. A man says he is a lord; otherwise we should not take him for one of the nobles of the earth. A man puts on a black gown, and says he is a religious teacher: otherwise we should not take him for one who could understand and enlighten the anxious yearnings of the human heart. The old sublime faith in God and heaven is gone. We have had none of it since the days of old Noll: it went out when Charles and his mistresses came in. But instead, we have a world of propriety and conventionalism. We have a universal worshipping of Mrs. Grundy. A craven fear sits in the hearts of all. Men dare not be generous, high-minded, and true. A man dares not act otherwise than the class by which he is surrounded: he must conform to their regulations or die; outside the pale there is no hope. If he would not be as others are, it were better that a millstone were hung round his neck and that he were cast into the sea. If, as a