some customer, with any thing but complacency. Why are our innocent and nobly-born girls, our beautiful and well-educated young women, exposed to the unhallowed gaze of libertine eyes, the coarse observation of criticizing tongues, here chartered by charity, forsooth?—Why is the gay, witty one of the party tempted to use her faculty beyond discretion?—the arch one to exert her powers to beguile and refuse change for a note, that she may, by and by, produce the greatest sum for the charity?—a ruse practised on myself—in short, why are foreign countries to be told that British feelings can only be cheated into compassion?—that the richest people in the world have the hardest hearts in it, and refuse to help their fellow-creatures, save through the medium of ostentation, and in return for value received?—that the highest and oldest nobility in Europe—the purest blood which ever mantled in the lovely cheek of virgin woman—is regularly exhibited in large bodies, under the protection of British matrons, policemen, and constables, at half-a-crown a head?"
"There is much truth in what you say, Sir Robert; but still we live in a world that must keep moving—the impetus is given, and we can't stop it. Fashions are foolish things, but the change they adopt is the very soul of trade. Railroads are dangerous, but they save time, the most valuable of all commodities—the march of mind renders multitudes averse to the privileged classes; therefore, it must be more wise to mix
