The word respectable has a strange history. In the days of the later Roman Empire its equivalent “spectabilis” was applied to the highest dignitaries. In France it is a title of honour--“votre respectable mère” means something very different from “your respectable mother.” In England respectability is associated with primness, faded clothes, and possibly necessary penuriousness. One would not seek a way to a lady’s good graces by describing her as a respectable woman. When we say a man’s abilities are “respectable,” it is in order to get someone else to give him employment. It is a word which conveys ridicule ever since the famous dialogue in Thurtell’s trial for murder: _Witness._ The prisoner was a respectable man. _Counsel._ What do you mean by respectable? _Witness._ Well--er--he kept a gig. The characteristic of Mid-Victorian society was respectability, and I shall try to show that its chief exponent W. M. Thackeray was its prophet. The English race has always had a bias in favour of what is known as Puritanism, not only in religion but in life. I think it may be said of us that we dislike intensely to have a thing forbidden by law, but love to have many forbidden by custom. We abhor a number of notices put up to say we must do this or that, that most things are forbidden, we detest a police who interfere with the ordinary affairs of life and force us under penalty to submit to trivial regulations. But we have no objections to the erection of a number of conventions far more irksome than any legal code of morals and we submit to a police system created by ourselves, more vigilant, more inquisitive, more given to informing than any secret service in the world. For what laws were ever devised more drastic in their operation than those of public opinion, and has any _vehmgericht_ or inquisition ever judged unseen and condemned unheard on the report of the police, in a more secret and summary fashion than that of the tea table of Mrs. Grundy? Never was society more under the thrall of these dominating influences than in the Early and Mid-Victorian age.