Much may be forgiven, no doubt, to those who can afford little, but might they not at least make better use of the space which the builder has given them, not by filling every inch of it, but by letting it do a little more work unhindered? Most English rooms give one the sense of being hemmed in on every side by the furniture and of being at all points afflicted by a multiplicity of objects which seem unable to give any satisfactory explanation of their presence to any interested observer. This mania for overcrowding rooms is not confined to any one stratum of society: the millionairess who encumbers herself with Chinese porcelain, Chelsea figures, brocade cushions and satinwood tables suffers from it just as badly as the greengrocer’s wife whose parlour, with its photographs of all possible relations, its glass vases dangling prisms, its presents from various seasides, its mats, antimacassars and footstools, has hardly a spare inch of space uncovered. We have not much to learn from the Japanese, I believe, but a touch of their unfailing eye for the proper effect of simplicity and congruity would be an excellent addition to the æsthetic equipment of the Englishwoman, just as in dress she owes herself a lesson from the Frenchwoman in the art of completeness in every detail from hat and hair to shoes. In matters of decoration, domestic as well as personal, the Englishwoman is a good improviser but a bad composer. * * * * * It might seem unnecessary to dwell at all on what the English wife takes from her husband and what she gives him, seeing that we are a race of the most frantic writers and readers of novels under the sun. Nevertheless it would be impossible in this chapter to omit the conjugal relation which, while it reflects in its changes the manners of different generations, remains all through something essentially English. The humility of the mediæval _châtelaine_ which persisted in the ceremonious respect of a Duchess of Newcastle for her “dear lord,” and the rather pompous solemnity of the early nineteenth century with which Mrs Briggs addressed “Mr Briggs” as such even in his portly presence are now things of the past, having fled scandalised before the easy familiarity of more modern husbands and wives: but there would appear less difference than might be supposed if the Duchess of Newcastle beloved by Lamb could exchange sentiments with a wife of to-day. They would find, in particular, a common fund of that protective tenderness which is characteristic in the attitude of an Englishwoman to her husband, whom she regards in some aspects as a mother regards her son strutting in his first pair of trousers before admiring friends: she adores his grown up airs and would not reveal to him for worlds that he is not yet quite capable of looking after himself. It is for this that she puts up so kindly with his idiosyncracies, not because he is a man whose will is law and whose whims are not to be questioned.