enough. But we have other
things to go on. We know well the way in which children of this period
were brought up. We remember the life of 'The Fairchild Family,' those
putative neighbours of this family--in any case, its obvious
contemporaries; and we know that the life of those hapless little prigs
was typical of child-life in the dawn of the nineteenth century. Depend
on it, this family (whatever its name may be: the Thompsons, I
conjecture) is no exception to the dismal rule. In this schoolroom,
every day is a day of oppression, of forced endeavour to reach an
impossible standard of piety and good conduct--a day of tears and
texts, of texts quoted and tears shed, incessantly, from morning unto
evening prayers. After morning prayers (read by Papa), breakfast. The
bread-and-butter of which, for the children, this meal consists, must
be eaten (slowly) in a silence by them unbroken except with prompt
answers to such scriptural questions as their parents (who have
ham-and-eggs) may, now and again, address to them. After breakfast, the
Catechism (heard by Mamma). After the Catechism, a hymn to be learnt.
After the repetition of this hymn, arithmetic, caligraphy, the use of
the globes. At noon, a decorous walk with Papa, who for their benefit
discourses on the General Depravity of Mankind in all Countries after
the Fall, occasionally pausing by the way to point for them some moral
of Nature. After a silent dinner, the little girls sew, under the
supervision of Mamma, or of the grown-up sister, or of both these
authorities, till the hour in which (if they have sewn well) they reap
permission to play (quietly) with their doll. A silent supper, after
which they work samplers. Another hymn to be learnt and repeated.
Evening prayers. Bedtime: 'Good-night, dear Papa; good-night, dear
Mamma.'

Such, depend on it, is the Thompsons' curriculum. What a painful
sequence of pictures a genre-painter might have made of it! Let us be
thankful that we see the Thompsons only in this brief interlude of
their life, tearless and unpinafored, in this hour of strange
excitement, glorying in that Sunday-best which on Sundays is to them
but a symbol of intenser gloom.

But their very joy is in itself tragic. It reveals to us, in a flash,
the tragedy of their whole existence. That so much joy should result
from mere suspension of the usual re'gime, the sight of Lady Noble, the
anticipation of a nectarine! For us there is no comfort in the
knowle