sh and Lord Foppington, Western and
Tom Jones, my Father and my Uncle Toby, Millament and Sir Sampson
Legend, Don Quixote and Sancho, Gil Blas and Guzman d'Alfarache, Count
Fathom and Joseph Surface--have all met and exchanged commonplaces on
the barren plains of the _haute litterature_--toil slowly on to the
Temple of Science, seen a long way off upon a level, and end in one
dull compound of politics, criticism, chemistry, and metaphysics.'

Very pretty writing, certainly; {244} nor can it be disputed that
uniformity of surroundings puts a tax upon originality. To make bricks
and find your own straw are terms of bondage. Modern characters, like
modern houses, are possibly built too much on the same lines, Dickens's
description of Coketown is not easily forgotten:

'All the public inscriptions in the town were painted alike, in severe
characters of black and white. The jail might have been the
infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail, the town hall might
have been either, or both, or anything else, for anything that
appeared to the contrary in the graces of their construction.'

And the inhabitants of Coketown are exposed to the same objection as
their buildings. Every one sinks all traces of what he vulgarly calls
'the shop' (that is, his lawful calling), and busily pretends to be
nothing. Distinctions of dress are found irksome. A barrister of
feeling hates to be seen in his robes save when actually engaged in a
case. An officer wears his uniform only when obliged. Doctors have long
since shed all outward signs of their healing art. Court dress excites a
smile. A countess in her jewels is reckoned indecent by the British
workman, who, all unemployed, puffs his tobacco smoke against the window-
pane of the carriage that is conveying her ladyship to a drawing-room;
and a West-end clergyman is with difficulty restrained from telling his
congregation what he had been told the British workman said on that
occasion. Had he but had the courage to repeat those stirring words, his
hearers (so he said) could hardly have failed to have felt their force--so
unusual in such a place; but he had not the courage, and that sermon of
the pavement remains unpreached. The toe of the peasant is indeed kibing
the heel of the courtier. The passion for equality in externals cannot
be denied. We are all woven strangely in the same piece, and so it comes
about that, though our modern soc