Family Life of the Middle Class. 217 



much, control. A possibility of isolation at fitting times, 

 liberty in the choice of pursuits, facilities for gratifying them — 

 these are requisites for the best development of girls. If 

 their home-life is always passed in the common sitting-room of 

 the family, if at years of discretion they cannot buy a book, 

 obtain an instrument, and take a walk to look at a picture, or 

 pick a flower, without interference and supervision, their 

 characters are dwarfed, and their faculties have no fair play. 

 The "fast young lady" may be an unpleasant symptom of 

 social disorder, but the tame young lady is a more hopeless 

 product of social disease. 



The want of tastes is a serious family evil, as well as an 

 individual fault. A life without excitement is impossible for 

 many, and objectionable for all. Good honest tastes form the 

 springs of useful exertion, and in the endeavour to gratify 

 them a wholesome excitement is to be found. Exclude the 

 tastes for good things, and tastes for bad things will spring up ; 

 because some human faculties will be active, and if the finer 

 elements of our nature are enfeebled by want of exercise, 

 lower propensities and passions are left in sway. There are pain- 

 fully respectable natures, incapable of any but cheap virtues, 

 and without the vigour needful for great defects ; but they are 

 not objects to be contemplated with any approval. There 

 should be something heroic and dignified in every life, and no 

 human being should be permitted to grow up without throbs 

 of aspiration towards that which is noble, beautiful, and true. 



Tastes for good things are, in the higher natures, so strong 

 as to command their means of cultivation, even under adverse 

 conditions ; but in ordinary mortals they must be cultivated, or 

 they will never exist. Even in childhood, the family atmo- 

 sphere, or the influence of some special person, determines for 

 the major part of mankind whether they shall grow up with 

 or without strong tastes for something useful and elevating. 

 If circumstances hinder, or fail to favour, such cultivation and 

 growth in early years, it becomes exceedingly difficult or im- 

 practicable afterwards. Parents often wonder why the young 

 man of sixteen or eighteen is headstrong and dissipated, when 

 the seeds of such conduct and character were sown in his 

 childhood, through the inaptitude of the family life to stimulate a 

 higher sense of duty, or cultivate a taste for worthier pursuits. 



Family life presupposes the daily meeting of the same per- 

 sons, often with a very moderate allowance of intercourse with 

 outsiders. The male part of a quiet family, through their 

 occupations, usually get most change, while the women suffer, 

 like greenhouse plants under a bad gardener, who keeps the 

 doors and windows shut. Even frivolity of admixture with 

 other fellow- creatures is better than the damp, mildewy influ- 

 ence of isolation, with nothing elevating to do. But a family 



