Mrs. Schopenhauer tells us that it is customary to go for breakfast to a pastry-cook’s shop, and eat a few cakes hot from the pan. Truly, we did not know it. Of course, she agrees with other writers as to the smallness of the houses, every room of which you can tell from the outside; but we were not aware that, as she informs us, all the doors are exceedingly narrow and high, and that frequently the front-doors look only like narrow slits in the wall. ’Bedrooms seldom can contain more than one bed; but English bedsteads are large enough to hold three persons. And it is a universal custom not to sleep alone; sisters, relations, and female friends share a bed without ceremony, and the mistress of the house is not ashamed to take her servant to bed with her, for English ladies are afraid of being alone in a room at night, having never been brought up to it.... The counterpane is fastened to the mattress, leaving but an opening for slipping in between the two.’ Again, we are told to our astonishment: ’The majority of Londoners, workmen and shopkeepers, who form but one category, on the whole lead sad lives. Heavy taxes, the high prices of necessaries, extravagance of dress, compel them to observe a frugality of living which, in other countries, would be called poverty. ’The shopkeeper, for ever tied to his shop and the dark parlour behind, must deny himself every amusement. Theatres are too far off and too expensive; the wife of a well-to-do tradesman seldom can visit one more than twice a year. ’During the week they cannot leave the shop between nine in the morning and twelve at night. The wife generally attends to it, while the husband sits in the parlour behind and keeps the accounts. True, on Sundays all the shops are closed, but so are the theatres, and as all domestics and other employés insist on having that day to themselves, the mistress has to stay at home to take care of the house. ’Merchants lead lives nearly as dull. They have to deny themselves social pleasures indulged in by the rich merchants of Hamburg or Leipsic. English ladies are more domesticated, and not accustomed to the bustle of public amusements. But their husbands, after business hours, occasionally seek for recreation in cafés and taverns.’ How very one-sided and imperfect a view of English middle life, even as it was seventy years ago, when these remarks were written, is presented to us by them is self-evident!