The tradesmen of the town have their club, which meets every night, but not in the tavern; they frequent a place of lesser repute, where they are alone. They are shy of admitting strangers. It is not known how much they drink; but one hears of families where there are daughters who, on the arrival of the familiar footstep, hurry out of the way. The town is eight miles from any other town. A stage-coach passes through every day, but there is very little done to encourage it. The oldest inhabitant has lived here, man and boy, for eighty years, but he has never seen any other town. The coach drives merrily down the High Street, with the horn blowing: the coachman pulls up at the inn, the passengers all get down and have a drink, the horses are changed, the coachman mounts, the guard blows his horn, and the excitement of the day is over. The interests of the town are wholly self-centred: it is not conscious of any other place. There were wars twenty years ago. There is a fellow, somewhere, who fought at Waterloo; but nobody asks him questions. A weekly paper, published at the nearest town, comes over on Sunday mornings and gives them news of the outer world; but, indeed, the news of the outer world drops on their ears like the murmurs of the ocean in the shell, it means nothing. The yearly holiday has not yet reached this place. The vicar, the lawyer, the doctor, want no holiday, and take none. The schoolmaster takes his in his garden. Year after year, month after month, day after day, they do the same things in the same way, they have the same talk. As for books they have none, only a dozen or so in a row. Boys who are fond of books are regarded askance; they are dragging down upon their heads a terrible future; no money is to be made by reading books. Boys who are fond of making music, who take to a piano as other boys do to a cricket bat, are considered as in a dangerous way. It is remarkable, and is to me inexplicable, how this country, where formerly every gentleman played some instrument, came to regard music with suspicion. The fact, however, is undoubted. In the same way, a boy who could draw and paint was looked upon with mingled pity and contempt. There was a great deal of caste in the profession chosen by the boys. The vicar’s son went to Oxford or Cambridge and took orders; the lawyer’s eldest son was articled to his father; the doctor’s eldest son was articled to his father; in the principal shops the eldest son was brought up to carry on the shop. The professional people, who called themselves gentlemen, would not associate with the shopkeepers; the county people would not associate with the professional people; thus society was hedged about and kept in gradations. As regards other professions, the banks took some of the young men; one or two turned out to be clever, got scholarships, and went to the universities, there to settle down for life on a College Fellowship; necessity compelled a few into