What else, too, have the poor?—not the very poor, whose want of bread of their own baking forces the oven-doors of the rich—but the comparatively poor—those who have enough whereby to live, but nothing left for enjoyment—who have the necessaries, but not the comforts, nor the graces, nor the pleasures of life? No one pities them, though they suffer in their own way quite as much as those ragged brethren who go cold and hungry for want of clothing and food. These others have to offer a brave front to the world, and to make a little seem a mickle, and not enough a full measure. It is done only at the cost of the night’s sleep and the day’s peace—at the cost of this thing pinched and that pared, and the deft interlacing of two gaping ends. No one pities all this, because no one realises it; and it may be, as has been known too sorrowfully before now, that those who have almost more than they can do to live decently are blamed for parsimony because they do not live luxuriously. Perhaps no people deserve more sympathy than those poor gentry whose means fall below the standard of their original condition, and thus fail the present needs and degrade the future position of the family. Gentlefolks born and bred, with the niceness of feeling and delicacy of taste included in that term, they are forced to abandon all the embroideries of class refinement, and to see their children grow up with manners below their own mark, and with an education of less beauty if of as substantial value. They cannot give them the ‘advantages’ which count for so much. The girls do not learn music from the best masters, and their painting lessons leave much to be desired. The boys have to associate with lads of lower breeding, who teach them rude ways and vulgar expressions, so that all the influence of home goes to undo what that of the school has done. Neither boys nor girls can learn to ride, to hunt, to shoot, like their cousins—the rich branch of this unequally developed family tree; they cannot be taken to the seaside if they fail in health; and, when they are ill, they cannot be nursed so sedulously as if mamma had nothing else to do, and a nurse with brains and experience could undertake the rest. They are heavily handicapped all through, and set to play blindfold with Fortune, who holds loaded dice and marked cards. From the first, væ victis! has been recorded against them; and unless they have exceptional power, on which we cannot always count, they are foredoomed to comparative failure, and to that painful process of winnowing whereby the conquered fall through the meshes into the abyss, and only the victors remain safe on the surface.