I have spoken of the wealthier class, but there was, and there is still, an immense number of girls belonging to the ranks where care and thrift were necessary in all things. In this class the unfortunate girls were slaves to the needle. All day and all the evening they were engaged in making and mending and darning. Families were large: there were little children and big boys; and the pile of linen and of stockings waiting to be mended seemed never to grow less, while the pile of things that had to be made grew steadily greater. A generation that has grown up with a sewing-machine cannot understand this slavery. Think of this machine which sews up a length of three feet in a minute, and of the time that was formerly required to do the same work by hand. It is not too much to say that the sewing-machine set free millions of girls. What they are doing with their freedom is considered in the next few pages. It was, at the best, an artificial and unnatural life. There was something Oriental in the seclusion of women in the home, and their exclusion from active and practical life; it led to many a rude awakening, many a shattered idol, many a blow which embittered the rest of life. [Illustration: LORD MACAULAY THOMAS CARLYLE WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY GEORGE ELIOT CHARLES DICKENS MATTHEW ARNOLD ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON REPRESENTATIVE WRITERS OF THE REIGN] I must not forget, in considering the Englishwoman of 1840, her extraordinary cowardice. It was impressed upon her from childhood that she was a poor, weak creature--that she needed protection even in broad daylight. Therefore, when a young lady of fortune went abroad, unless she drove in her carriage she had a hulking footman walking behind her. If she was not a lady of fortune, she was escorted by a maid; she could go nowhere by herself; she saw danger at every corner, and was ready to scream at meeting a strange man in the open street. Nor must we forget her little affectations: she could not help them; they were part of her education. For instance, it was a very common affectation with girls that they could not eat anything at all, such was their extraordinary delicacy and elevation above the common mortal. So they sat at dinner with a morsel upon their plates, which they left untouched. Some girls made up for this privation by a valiant lunch; some habitually lived low, and practised, though in no religious spirit, abstemious austerities. I think, however, that the girl who wished to be thought consumptive, cultivated a hectic bloom, and coughed and fainted, carried affectation perhaps too far. [Illustration: THOMAS HOOD ALFRED LORD TENNYSON ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING WILLIAM MORRIS ROBERT BROWNING REPRESENTATIVE POETS OF THE REIGN]