as occupied in proving a
grievance, and philosophical researches were printed in folio pages,
which it took a life to write, and an eternity to read. We get on
now with a lighter step, and quicker: ridicule is found to be more
convincing than argument, imaginary agonies touch more than true
sorrows, and monthly novels convince, when learned quartos fail to
do so. If the world is to be set right, the work will be done by
shilling numbers.

Of all such reformers Mr Sentiment is the most powerful. It is
incredible the number of evil practices he has put down: it is to
be feared he will soon lack subjects, and that when he has made the
working classes comfortable, and got bitter beer put into proper-sized
pint bottles, there will be nothing further for him left to do. Mr
Sentiment is certainly a very powerful man, and perhaps not the less
so that his good poor people are so very good; his hard rich people
so very hard; and the genuinely honest so very honest. Namby-pamby
in these days is not thrown away if it be introduced in the proper
quarters. Divine peeresses are no longer interesting, though
possessed of every virtue; but a pattern peasant or an immaculate
manufacturing hero may talk as much twaddle as one of Mrs Ratcliffe's
heroines, and still be listened to. Perhaps, however, Mr Sentiment's
great attraction is in his second-rate characters. If his heroes and
heroines walk upon stilts, as heroes and heroines, I fear, ever must,
their attendant satellites are as natural as though one met them in
the street: they walk and talk like men and women, and live among our
friends a rattling, lively life; yes, live, and will live till the
names of their calling shall be forgotten in their own, and Buckett
and Mrs Gamp will be the only words left to us to signify a detective
police officer or a monthly nurse.

"The Almshouse" opened with a scene in a clergyman's house. Every
luxury to be purchased by wealth was described as being there: all the
appearances of household indulgence generally found amongst the most
self-indulgent of the rich were crowded into this abode. Here the
reader was introduced to the demon of the book, the Mephistopheles of
the drama. What story was ever written without a demon? What novel,
what history, what work of any sort, what world, would be perfect
without existing principles both of good and evil? The demon of "The
Almshouse" was the clerical owner of this comfortable abode. He was
a