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Goods were to be sold practically at ordinary rates; and if any storekeeper charged more, or affected to be "sold out" of this, that, or the other, the Colonel was to be told, and he would talk to the storekeeper. There followed, of course, a grand slump. The combination of the "upper" and "lower" middle-classes was irresistible. Paraffin oil is worthy of special mention.
In Germany, during the first decade of the nineteenth century, for instance, when the heyday and confusion of seeking, experimenting, destroying, promising, surmising, and hoping was sweeping in currents and cross-currents over the land, the thinking middle-classes were right in their concern for their own security.
I, mere journalist as I am, have the most friendly talks with the Prime Minister, and am a member of the swellest political clubs. We are a good deal like England, by the way: our middle-classes produce our leaders, our aristocracy lacks eloquence and talent, and has only a court influence. Our House of Commons is the most fashionable club.
The labourers whose interests turn in this direction seem to be treading in the footsteps of the skilled artisans in the town, towards ambitions not in all respects identical with those of the middle-classes.
There were carriages and gentlemen on horseback; beautiful aristocratic ladies who had alighted from their broughams or landaus; and wet-nurses with streaming ribbons, who carried infants wearing the most costly lace. Of the middle-classes, however, one found only a few matrons living in the neighbourhood, who sat here and there on the benches busy with embroidery or watching their children play.
Our shanty is the habitation of some half-dozen of us, year out and year in. There are in the district a good many settlers of the middle-classes. Men of some education, who would be entitled to the designation of "gentleman" in Europe. Of such sort are we. Some of us are landowners, and some have no capital, being simply labourers. Which is which does not matter.
The old provincial middle-classes, robust and positive in temper, but dull and sleepy as a result of their gigantic meals and the monotony of their lives, are very proud of their common sense: they have so much faith in it that they boast that there is no difficulty which cannot be resolved by it: and they are never very far from considering men of science as artists of a sort, more useful than the others, but less exalted, because at least artists serve no useful purpose, and there is a sort of distinction about their lounging existence.
That this three-guinea book was bought and read to the extent of no less than four thousand copies is a tribute not merely to its vitality, but to the eagerness of the middle-classes during the revolutionary ferment to drink in the last words of the new philosophy. A new edition was soon called for, and was issued early in 1796.
The family belonged to the middle-classes, and despised the debaucheries of the higher and lower orders of the people. The mother was pious, and Manon was placed for a year in a convent. She then spent a year with her grandparents, and returned to her father's house. Her course of reading was very much enlarged, and her attention was now specially directed to philosophical works.
The usual method of London housekeeping, even in the second ranks of the middle-classes, is for the mistress to give her orders in the kitchen in the morning, leaving the cook to pass them on to the tradespeople when they call.
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