s set on fine dresses and gay society,
and weary of her lowly home and of the drudgery of daily life, learned
what she could gain if she could make up her mind to give her virtue;
many of them, indeed, owing to the disgusting and indecent overcrowding
in rustic cottages and great cities having but little virtue to part
with. Then assailed her the companionship of men of birth and breeding
and wealth, and the gaiety and splendour of successful vice. I knew of
two Essex girls, born to service, who came to town and led a vicious
life, and one became the wife of the son of a Marquis, and the other
married a respectable country solicitor; the portrait of the lady I have
often seen amongst the photographs displayed in Regent Street. The
pleasures of sin, says the preacher, are only for a season, but a similar
remark, I fancy, applies to most of the enjoyments of life. It is true
that in the outside crowd there were in rags and tatters, in degradation
and filth, shivering in the cold, wan and pale with want, hideous with
intemperance, homeless and destitute, and prematurely old, withered hags,
whom the policemen ordered to move on--forlorn hags, who were once
_habitues_ of the Argyle and the darlings of England's gilded youth--the
bane and the antidote side by side, as it were. But when did giddy youth
ever realise that riches take to themselves wings and fly away, that
beauty vanishes as a dream, that joy and laughter often end in despair
and tears? The amusements of London were not much better when the
music-hall--which has greatly improved of late--came to be the rage. One
has no right to expect anything intellectual in the way of amusements.
People require them, and naturally, as a relief from hard work, a change
after the wearying and wearisome drudgery of the day. A little amusement
is a necessity of our common humanity, whether rich or poor, saintly or
the reverse. And, of course, in the matter of amusements, we must allow
people a considerable latitude according to temperament and age, and
their surroundings and education, or the want of it; and it is an
undoubted fact that the outdoor sports and pastimes, in which ladies take
part as well as men, have done much to improve the physical stamina and
the moral condition of young men. Scarcely anything of the kind existed
when I first knew London, and the amusements of the people chiefly
consisted in drinking or going to see a man hanged. At one time there
were ma