they must live in this style, or be pushed aside and
forgotten. The choice for them lies between very expensive society or
none at all--that is to say, none at all amongst the rising members of
the legal profession, and the sort of people with whom young barristers,
from prudential motives, wish to form acquaintance. Doubtless many a
fair reader of this page is already smiling at the writer's simplicity,
and is saying to herself, "Here is one of the advocates of marriage on
three hundred a year."

But this writer is not going to advocate marriage on that or any other
particular sum. From personal experience he knows what comfort a married
man may have for an outlay of three or four hundred per annum; and from
personal observation he knows what privations and ignominious poverty
are endured by unmarried men who spend twice the larger of those sums
on chamber-and-club life. He knows that there are men who shiver at the
bare thought of losing caste by marriage with a portionless girl, whilst
they are complacently leading the life which, in nine cases out of ten,
terminates in the worst form of social degradation--matrimony where the
husband blushes for his wife's early history, and dares not tell his own
children the date of his marriage certificate. If it were his pleasure
he could speak sad truths about the bachelor of modest income, who is
rich enough to keep his name on the books of two fashionable clubs, to
live in a good quarter of London, and to visit annually continental
capitals, but far too poor to think of incurring the responsibilities of
marriage. It could be demonstrated that in a great majority of instances
this wary, prudent, selfish gentleman, instead of being the social
success which many simple people believe him, is a signal and most
miserable failure; that instead of pursuing a career of various
enjoyments and keen excitements, he is a martyr to _ennui_, bored by the
monotony of an objectless existence, utterly weary of the splendid
clubs, in which he is presumed by unsophisticated admirers to find an
ample compensation for want of household comfort and domestic affection:
that as soon as he has numbered forty years, he finds the roll of his
friends and cordial acquaintances diminish, and is compelled to retire
before younger men, who snatch from his grasp the prizes of social
rivalry; and that, as each succeeding lustre passes, he finds the chain
of his secret disappointments and embarrassments more g