Another ingredient in happiness is physical comfort. We are all much better fed than we were, better housed, better clad; all along the line the standard of comfort has been advanced. The huge barracks in which the working-classes of the great cities now live are not pretty, but consider how much more comfortable they are than the old court of tumble-down cottages with a street about four feet wide. The new barracks are fully provided with water, they are kept in a sanitary condition as good as any palace of prince or peer, they are light and airy. Go into any of the old courts--there are a few still at Westminster--and see for yourselves the dirty, dilapidated dens in which the people formerly lived. Then, while you think of the advanced standard of comfort, remember the cheap bread, the cheap tea, the cheap meat, the cheap butter, cheese, bacon, eggs, fruit, which are now offered to the working-man. Not only have his wages gone up, but their purchasing power has advanced as well. If instead of eighteen shillings a week he now gets thirty, and if a shilling now could buy twice as much as a shilling sixty years ago, the standard of comfort for this man and his family has been advanced indeed. This standard of comfort, this increase in solid happiness, has by long custom and usage become the right of the people. They consider it as much their right as any of the liberties secured by Act of Parliament. This new right constitutes a danger, because a national disaster might run food up to famine prices, and then we should see, what we have not seen for a long time, the tigerish side of the Anglo-Saxon. [Illustration: THE JUBILEE PROCESSION (1887) LEAVING BUCKINGHAM PALACE] [Illustration: _Photo by Hughes & Mullins_ HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN IN JUBILEE DRESS, 1887]