pavements; the garret windows opened and pails emptied upon the heads below; thieves prowling about the dark streets at night, amid constant rioting and drunkenness; the difficulties and discomforts of travelling, when the carriages stuck fast in the quagmires; the travellers attacked by highwaymen.  He narrates how it took Prince George of Denmark, who visited Petworth in wet weather, six hours to go nine miles.  Compare this to a journey in a first-class carriage or Pullman car upon the Midland Railway, and think of the luxuries demanded by the traveller on his journey if he is going to travel for more than two or three hours:  the dinner, the coffee, the cigar, the newspaper and magazine, etc., etc.

There is a passage in the beginning of Tom Brown’s School Days in which the author ridicules the quantity of great coats, wrappers, and rugs which a modern schoolboy takes with him, though he is going to travel first class, with foot-warmers.  Then, in our houses, what stoves and hot-water pipes and baths do we not require!  How many soaps and powders, rough towels and soft towels!  Sir Charles Napier, I think, said that all an officer wanted to take with him on a campaign was a towel, a tooth-brush, and a piece of yellow soap.  The great excuse for the bath is that if it is warm it is cleansing; if it is cold, it is invigorating; but what shall we say to Turkish Baths?  Surely there is more time wasted than enough, and, unless as a medical cure, it may become an idle habit.  I have seen private Turkish Baths in private houses.  What are we coming to?  We used to be proud of our ordinary wash-hand basins, and make fun of the little saucers that we found provided for our ablutions upon the Continent.  At the time of the great Exhibition of 1851 Punch had a picture of two very grimy Frenchmen regarding with wonder an ordinary English wash-stand. “Comment appelle-t’on cette machine la,” says one; to which the other replies, “Je ne sais pas, mais c’est drole.”  A great advance has been made in the furniture of our houses.  We fill our rooms, especially our drawing-rooms or boudoirs, with endless arm-chairs and sofas of various shapes—­all designed to give repose to the limbs; but I am sure they tend towards lazy habits, and very often interfere with work.  Surely there has lately risen a custom of overdoing the embellishment and ornamentation of our houses.  We fill our rooms too full of all sorts of knick-knacks, so much so that we can hardly move about for fear of upsetting something.  “I have a fire [in my bedroom] all day,” writes Carlyle.  “The bed seems to be about eight feet wide.  Of my paces the room measures fifteen from end to end, forty-five feet long, height and width proportionate, with ancient, dead-looking portraits of queens, kings, Straffords and principalities, etc., really the uncomfortablest acme of luxurious comfort that any Diogenes was set into in these late