We have seen what it cost a respectable householder to pay his way in the time of Charles the Second. The following shows the cost of living a hundred years later. The house is supposed to consist of husband and wife, four children, and two maids: Food, coals, candles, small beer (of which 12 gallons are allowed--that is, 48 quarts, or an average of one quart a day per head), soap, starch, and all kinds of odds and ends are reckoned at £3 12_s._ 5_d._ a week, or £189 18_s._ 8_d._ a year; clothes, including hair-dressing, £64; pocket expenses, £15 12_s._; occasional illness, £11; schooling, £8; wages, £14 10_s._; rent and taxes, £66; entertainments, wine, etc., £30 19_s._: making a total of £400 a year. If we take the same family with the same scale of living at the present day, we shall arrive at the difference in the cost of things: 1890 1760 £ £ Food, coals, ale, etc. 420 190 Clothes 120 64 Pocket expenses 45 15 School 143 8 Illness 42 11 Wages of two maids 42 14 Rent and taxes (not counting income-tax) 150 66 Travelling 150 _nil_ Books, Magazines, and Journals (say) 40 _nil_ Wine 70 31 On furniture and the house 100 _nil_ A comparison of the figures shows a very considerable raising of the standard as regards comfort and even necessaries. It is true that the modern figures have been taken from the accounts of a family which spends every year from £1200 to £1400. It may be remarked in these figures that schooling is extremely cheap, viz., £8 per four children, or ten shillings a quarter for each child. Therefore for a school-master to get an income of £250 a year, out of which he would have to maintain assistants, he must have 125 scholars. The "pocket expenses" include letters, and all for six shillings a week, which is indeed moderate. Entertainments, wine, etc., are all lumped together, showing that wine must be considered a very rare indulgence, and that small beer is the daily beverage. Tea is set down at two shillings a week. In the year 1728 tea was thirteen shillings a pound, but by 1760 it had gone down to about six shillings a pound, so that a third of a pound was allowed every week. This shows a careful measurement of the spoonful. Of course there was not as yet any tea allowed to the servants. Coals are estimated at £14 a year--two fires in winter, one in summer. Repairs to furniture, table-linen, sheets, etc., are set down at two shillings a week, or five guineas a year. Happy the household which can now manage this item at six times that amount.