associate with the working classes. The distinction may to some extent be justified. For centuries 'society' has severed manual labour from intelligence, and denied it social equity and personal respect. The lower middle class are therefore prudent in their way when they endeavour to dissociate themselves from people in a state of permanent inferiority. Position is especially important to the class which finds itself at the immediate edge of the established platform of respectability. A broad-cloth suit, soft hands, a house that has a kitchen quite distinct and separate from sitting-rooms, and the employment of a servant girl, however small and inefficient, are the strict essentials of a Londoner's gentility. A few men of the clerkly class may gain promotion in the business worlds but of necessity the great majority remain in their ambiguous condition, with an income on a par with that of decent artisans, but with pretensions quite above the level of these common people, who are workmen.
Ranks in the scale of income differ, but in each the impulse of gentility is much the same. Incomes are often fixed, but fears and aspirations are unlimited and fluctuating; and expenditure is apt to follow feeling more than calculation. When the spirit of gentility has taken hold of men and women, peace of mind escapes, desire is paramount, beneficence becomes almost or quite impossible, and honesty is honoured as a name. A clerk sees little in the business system of the present day to make him think that practical regard for other people's rights and property and interest is any mark of wisdom, or a thing that can with credit be avowed. He has been taught to make things safe, and for security to disregard the scrupulosities of rectitude. Success, according to the world and just within the law, is the great aim; and Christ's example and the golden rule are ample recognized by audible assertion of a creed in church on Sunday.
In almost every house in London there are evidences of the mental degradation that this tenure constantly occasions.
