90 
ago, the practice by which so many persons who happen to have 
sufficient wealth or leisure go habitually to the south of France or 
to some other warm climate, to avoid the cold of an English 
winter! Certainly the various nations of Europe are more closely 
bound together in commerce, and have more intercourse with each 
other than the north and south, east and west of England had, 
only sixty years since! 
I might go on to speak of smaller changes, yet changes which 
would strike us very forcibly, if they came suddenly, For instance, 
imagine London, as it was sixty years ago, without a cab or an 
omnibus! or think that in those days there were no policemen, 
only the old watchmen. One wonders how in the world order 
was preserved, or crime checked! Or compare Mrs. Gamp with 
the modern trained nurse—a sufficiently startling contrast ! 
But I pass on to the social state of England in other respects. 
I have already said that I know no more instructive reading, more 
especially as regards the state and habits of the middle classes 
fifty or sixty years ago, than the earlier works of Charles Dickens. 
Take for instance the description in the ‘‘Pickwick Papers” of the 
life of the well-to-do Kentish yeoman, at Dingley Dell, a personage 
who (I fear) has nearly vanished out of the land during the last fifty 
years. One of the few changes which I very greatly regret, is the 
decay of purely rural life—the yeomen and statesmen now well 
nigh extinct—the farmers in many districts more or less impover- 
ished—while the agricultural labourers are indeed more educated 
and better off, but are changed in character and far less numerous. 
I confess to a regret for the loss of the smock-frocked labourers of 
my boyhood. For it seems to me that the village folk, ignorant 
perhaps ‘and prejudiced, but kindly, simple, hardy,’ healthy, and 
the most numerous class of the community, were the backbone of 
England. 
Or, to turn to changes which are very markedly for the Jeter. 
Throughout the book to which I have been referring, you will see 
on almost every page some evidence of the general _drinking habits 
of the nation, for instance the large consumption of brandy and 
water at all times and on every possible excuse, Drunkenness 
