Ashbourne Crescent may possibly soon be replaced by something better, but at present it commands our admiration, for it is, more than all else, typical England.  Neither ideas nor much lucidity will be found there, but much belief in the wisdom shown in the present ordering of things, and much plain sense and much honesty of purpose.  Certainly, if your quest be for hectic emotion and passionate impulses, you would do well to turn your steps aside; you will not find them in Ashbourne Crescent.  There life flows monotonously, perhaps sometimes even a little moodily, but it is built upon a basis of honest materialism—­that materialism without which the world cannot live.  And No. 31 differs a little from the rest of the houses.  The paint on its walls is fresher, and there are no flowers on its balcony:  the hall-door has three bells instead of the usual two, and there is a brass plate with ‘Dr. Reed’ engraved upon it.  The cook is talking through the area-railings to the butcher-boy; a smart parlourmaid opens the door, and we see that the interior is as orderly, commonplace, and clean as we might expect at every house in the crescent.  The floorcloths are irreproachable, the marble-painted walls are unadorned with a single picture.  On the right is the dining-room, a mahogany table bought for five pounds in the Tottenham Court Road, a dozen chairs to match, a sideboard and a small table; green-painted walls decorated with two engravings, one of Frith’s ‘Railway Station,’ the other of Guido’s ‘Fortune.’  Further down the passage leading to the kitchen-stairs there is a second room:  this is the Doctor’s consulting-room.  A small bookcase filled with serious-looking volumes, a mahogany escritoire strewn with papers, letters, memoranda of all sorts.  The floor is covered with a bright Brussels carpet; there are two leather armchairs, and a portrait of an admiral hangs over the fireplace.

Let us go upstairs.  How bright and clean are the high marble-painted walls! and on the first landing there is a large cheaply coloured window.  The drawing-room is a double room, not divided by curtains but by stiff folding-doors.  The furniture is in red, and the heavy curtains that drape the windows fall from gilt cornices.  In the middle of the floor there is a settee (probably a reminiscence of the Shelbourne Hotel); and on either side of the fireplace there are sofas, and about the hearthrug many arm-chairs to match with the rest.  Above the chimneypiece there is a gilt oval mirror, worth ten pounds.  The second room is Alice’s study; it is there she writes her novels.  A table in black wood with a pile of MSS. neatly fastened together stands in one corner; there is a bookcase just behind; its shelves are furnished with imaginative literature, such as Shelley’s poems, Wordsworth’s poems, Keats’ poems.  There are also handsome editions of Tennyson and Browning, presents from Dr. Reed to his wife.  You see a little higher up the shelf a thin volume, Swinburne’s Atalanta in Calydon, and next to it is Walter Pater’s Renaissance—­studies in art and poetry.  There are also many volumes in yellow covers, evidently French novels.