RESPECTABILITY.-A DIALOGUE. IRENEUS had a little adventure the other night, which came without his seeking. Hearing a sort of creaking, squeaking, screwing noise at his drawing-room window, which is below his bedroom, he got up stealthily, armed himself, went out by the back-door, stole round the house, and under the trees on the lawn, till he could reconnoitre the point assailed by the enemy; and descried, as he expected, a man trying to force his way into the house, the fact being shown by the luminous disc of a dark-lantern being directed on the shutters. Irenæus, by name peaceful, is by nature brave. He did not rush into sudden action, but, time sufficing, stood in observation in the nearest covert, to see what our gentleman would do next. The window in question was a few feet from the ground. As soon as a pane of glass had been artistically removed with a pitch plaster, the centre-bit had done its work, and through the hole made by that instrument the burglar had succeeded in unbarring a shutter. This done, he placed two bodies, which looked very much like a horse-pistol and a crowbar, on the sill, which projected outside, sprung on the edge of the window, and was proceeding to force himself into the room, head and shoulders first. This was what Irenæus waited for. Knowing the whereabouts of a piece of cord, as he stole down stairs he had formed it into a sort of lasso, and with this, before our friend could recover from his first astonishment, he had pinioned his legs, with an almost simultaneous motion pushing his pistol and crowbar down on the lawn. His own barkers were in his capacious dressing-gown pockets. The thief beginning to struggle, he then upset him head foremost into the drawing-room, and jumped in after him, and, cocking one of his pistols, placed the muzzle close to his ear, threatening to shoot him if he resisted. By this time the scuffle had brought the male household, and the prisoner was made safe in an outhouse t should be wanted. Well, said I Irenæus, as he sat telling met story, soon after, over our clart the octagon snuggery, I suppose fellow has been committed, and will have to stand in the with box at the quarter-sessions, as a b for the sarcasm of his counsel. pend upon it he will make out the the burglar was the injured man carpenter doing job-work or thing of the kind, against who have had a spite ever since election, and terrify you with action for false imprisonment. IRENEUS.-No fear of that; I not commit him. TLEPOLEMUS. Then you com ted yourself. You did not vindic the majesty of law. But you dai mean to say you let him loose society again. IRENEUS.-Not that either. I thought one ticket of leave enough for him. TLEPOLEMUS.-I hope you did take the law into your own hand and put him to death; it would har been just, but scarcely constitutiona IRENEUS.-Not that either. TLEPOLEMUS.-Then have you g him still a prisoner, paying for keep? I would rather keep another big dog like my Newfoundland. IRENEUS.-I see that I must k you into my secret, which belongs, well as to myself, to my butler s footman. I bound them, not by oath for I have still some Quakerish scruples and I think I can depend on them on that point, but by solemn promise The fact is, I have taken the fellow into my service as a wood-cutter.* TLEPOLEMUS.-And poacher. IRENEUS. Very likely. It wa through poaching he got into his first trouble; he had knocked down gamekeeper. TLEPOLEMUS. How could have been so rash? IRENEUS. Considering circumsta lid not other • This is borrowed from an incident in the li out J Hul I y sprawling on oor, I observed agitated than I that the work ural to him. nd found it not a mixture of I which I could missed the sered him, having for my female urport that the in the struggle. e that he was a I hardly wantple to convince of changing as at nonsensical ched, being out his family. A n him suddenly e him, he had and for some as despaired of. for some time; ell, and received Loose on the ked at a good ployment, but ected from all. two classes of che illegal. One im hungry and about the fields. en were safe in tation to take a irresistible in empty stomach. o more glasses, ves. The conI out Irenæus's were to meet on on and rob it. was soon given. han was true to the friend had and in an evil seeing that he d would, if sucn share of the under a threat t to work alone. to act as I did, xpression in the at touched me. gh and low for the world too in that word und force give him the only chance of reformation, by taking him into my service in an out-door situation. I am prepared against a repetition of the burglary; and the temptation to poaching will furnish me at a small cost with a test of the man's sincerity. TLEPOLEMUS. Now I begin to understand you. My own utter aversion to respectability gives me a certain sympathy with your burglarious friend; and I do in my heart believe, that your experiment will turn out well. As for our Reverend Celsus, he has the audacity to tell his Congregation that Respectability is the English Antichrist, an assertion which may do harm if unexplained. Do you agree with me in this matter? IRENEUS.-I don't know. I never thought much about it. However, we'll have the curtains drawn, order in coffee, and discuss Respectability over, or rather under, a havannah. TLEPOLEMUS. Respectability never smokes. IRENEUS. Never mind, we'll make her for once. TLEPOLEMUS.-Don't say her, say it. I never give the feminine gender anything I do not like. IRENEUS. If respectability smokes not, does it drink? to TLEPOLEMUS.-Yes, spirits in secret. Witness the traitorous erubescence on the wings of its nose. Otherwise it might be suspected of a pious horror of fermentation, from its present efforts to introduce the Maine Liquor Law, the real effect of which is known to be to make drinking private instead of public, and to turn public-houses into sly grog-shops. I confess myself rather partial to the thoroughly British term public-house, as it shows that whatever is done there, right or wrong, is done openly, at least, if not honestly. IRENEUS.-I confess to a prejudice against public-houses. I will not grant a licence in my parish. TLEPOLEMUS.-So the people go farther and fare worse. It is because respectability has tabooed publichouses that they have become, as they undoubtedly are, instruments of demoralisation to the poor. How would respectability have the labouring man live? I can about tell you. He mu rise at four or at six, according to the season. mill, and respectability turns the neighbours send him to the t eyes and wonders that such vide ness should exist in the world. heart believe that that poor ma Now, Irenæus, I cannot in naturally worse than you or me know the strength of temptation, not even in you is the animal extinct. You belong to the Cogit: Club, do you not? Answer me tro What use do you make of it! IRENEUS.-I do not abuse it. A though the cuisine at the Cogi is irreproachable,-in fact, the bes the world, as it applies French an English materials;-yet my bas dinner (for Mrs I. is not ashame apply her attention to these ma ters), combined with domestic soc generally counterbalances and org balances the club's attractions. !| wife, she has been to school; she will be sincere in my confessions. I' knows how to read, write, and cast sometimes do go there for a changeaccounts; has learned at the Sunday for a little men's society, and for the theoretically; at the day school, the the libra use of the globes and universal history; As for Joan his There are two ways of abusing clas neither of which I practise. which some men do when they ar the domestic cold mutton was families at home. But I suspect th and once a-month she has attended is that of dining there perpetuai ing, patient, industrious, and Hodge is ginally at the bottom of that gr perhaps a brute not to appreciate her ance. The other is that of more tha because she cannot keep a cottage taking out the annual six guine clean, or dress a dinner that will agree in bread and beer, both of which are like the costumed peasants of the But there are so few who practis reason that she has never been taught, of luncheon in the middle of the dar Continent, to set off her personal at- this that it does not much matter, tractions to advantage. course, is all vanity in the eyes of reThat, of they are chiefly poor idletons; for spectability. Alas, poor Hodge! He is tempted, and falls. He wants to it, are engaged at that hour. know what is going on in the world, à discretion, do not they take too to look at a paper, to have a chat much of it? and what effect has it on with a neighbour who understands something more homely than hydro the servants? IRENEUS. The club is the loser, enough to wish to indulge in a game of either masters or servants, was statics; perhaps he is unreasonable but they are the gainers. Not a man, of skittles. All these things are to ever the worse. As for the latter, it be had at the Blue Lion for the price all goes to swell the porter's checks of a pint of beer. But the beer at and the waiter's calves. The reason the Blue Lion is poisoned with in- is easily told. It is Ind and Coope's toxicating drugs. His intellect grows A. K., one of the most translucent, in him is stirred to madness. His cendent, if not transcendental, berdarker and darker. The animal with- honest, refreshing, beneficent, transhim, but in vain. He becomes that their species in October. Some peoSaxon cannibal, a wife-beater, and ple believe in the infallibility of the erages ever concocted by lovers of poor helpless helpmate tries to wean Pope: they may believe as they like; I believe in the infallibility of the great firms of British beer-kings; and if new constellations are ever discovered, I should not object to place them in the heavens with Orion and the ship Argo. Quite as good as those names of heathendom would sound Ind, Coope, and Co., Barclay and Perkins, Coombe and Delafield, &c. &c. As for Bass and Allsop, they have been tested by Liebig, and come forth from the ordeal pure as gold from the refiner; and the triumph has even seemed to my fancy to increase the friskiness of the liquid gold they produce. All honour to our noble ale-kings! As their ancestors the sea-kings ruled the waters, may their beneficent sway long continue over the fermented liquors of our land! They never poison poor Hodge's beer. He suffers from the low class of retailers, for there are dishonourable as well as honourable publicans, and the former class ought to be branded. TLEPOLEMUS.Brandied! no, indeed; so far from that, I would punish them with death; for their crime is the crime of Palmer, and like him they poison for base gain, and scarcely more slowly. Yet there is some excuse for them, because respectability has all along treated those of their calling as Pariahs. Well, Irenæus, I now come to what I was going to say when you brought in your panegyric on the beerocracy-a better thing, I grant you, than bureaucracy. Let the poor man have his club as well as the rich. Recognise the publican, and do not, as a matter of course, assimilate him to his Scriptural namesake, who also had much unjust obloquy to bear. After all, how often has his refreshing glass been to you and me, shooting, hunting, or simply pedestrianising οδοιπόρῳ δοψῶντι πηγαῖον ρέος— a very fountain-rill to the thirsty wayfarer, when no other fountain was at hand, even though a single draught contented us. Good as model lodging-houses may be, I think model public-houses quite as great a desideratum. Let there be clubs for the poor, and clubs in every sense of the term. To prevent any interfer ence with domesticity, let them provide every day a labourer's ordinary, where men, wives, and children may dine, as at some places on the Continent. Nothing puts a small establishment so much out of its way as the necessity of providing a daily dinner at home. It is one of those things which is done more cheaply and much better by combination. You know that the combinationrooms at Cambridge have some of the best port in the world. Let the landlord himself preside at such ordinary, and the clergyman occasionally look in and say grace. Let there be half an hour of chat, repose, or amusement afterwards, and the men might be allowed an extra glass wherewith to talk over their own affairs, after the retirement of the ladies, as their betters are. But such places must be thoroughly well regulated, and there is no reason they should not be; the higher classes have been sobered by public opinion, and not by Maine liquor laws; and if they will look well to the matter, that public opinion will gradually extend itself amongst the poor. Restriction has been weighed in the balance, and found wanting it only leads to concealment and hypocrisy while respectability throws a coat of whitewash on the ruinous wall, pronounces it sound, and then is exceedingly astonished when it comes down with a crash on its own head. IRENEUS.-But you have said that respectability drinks not in public but in private, and does not smoke. These are only accidents-what is its essence? I want to understand better what it is. TLEPOLEMUS.--What do you sometimes call this room-this octagon snuggery of yours-where you wish all your guests to speak their minds? IRENEUS.-The Temple of Truth. You see here I have a statuette of that goddess in a glass shrine, with the motto IRENÆUS. — Yes, the heavenly Aphrodite. Truth is so beautiful when seen unveiled that she attracts the love of all. No wonder that Bacchus winks; but she will have nothing to say to him, at least till he is sober. TLEPOLEMUS.-You call this room the Temple of Truth. As you ask me for a definition of respectability, I shall take the liberty of calling it the Temple of Untruth. IRENEUS.-What is its style of architecture? TLEPOLEMUS. Churchwarden's Gothic, well whitewashed, or else that aberration from the Grecian, for which I know no fitter name than Meeting-house Renaissance, or New-birth Cheap and Nasty. the clean and respectable dodgy Dodger wears a stiff hat, naples well brushed, with a narrow a white neckcloth, not tied like t of the orthodox clergy, but garçon d'hotel; rusty black h ments, upper and nether, also wa brushed, large low shoes with stockings; old black gloves much t large, one of which holds a bu tracts, and the other very app ately a bundle of lucifers; his h loosely on his shoulders, down eyelids, sleek hair, a closely-shar chin, and a bent posture, signi like that of Uriah Heap in Cop field, of humility. This is of cours a caricature of a favourite styl among the priests of respectably for the clean and respectable dog is really a deep humourist, and known as the soul of the company at the "Ken" in the evening. It hard, as I say, to particularise the stiff round hat and shaven ch are de rigueur; no priest of respect ability would dare a beard and wil awake, except when in strictes mufti, and out of the eyes of all met There is one great difference betwee the votaries of respectability, all of whom aspire to be priests, and th neophytes of the Sophists ridiced by Aristophanes. The latter we obliged to enter undraped into the sacred schoolroom. Respectability requires of its novices and proficients that they should be clothed to the chin. Indeed, from its aversion to Truth, which is a naked deity, it has a nervous horror of the nude on all occasions, and delights at running atilt at all pictures and statues which represent mankind as it came from the hand of its Maker. But all the garments which hang in the greenroom, or rather vestry of respectsbility, are sad-coloured; even your high drab, Irenæus, would not pass IRENEUS.-Who are its priests? TLEPOLEMUS.-Every possible decription of impostor, except those comparatively honest deceivers who are vulgarly known by that name. In some pungent lines, two thousand years ago and more, Aristophanes made out the list of the priests of Athenian respectability, with whom, by a fatal mistake, he confounded Socrates. "Diviners from Thurium," nowadays represented by Exeter Hall divines; "Medicine-men," nowadays fashionable quacks; "Idletons with rings and fovelocks," nowadays popular preachers; "Composers of staves for the cyclic chorusses," now inventors of music for the million; deceivers in things above the earth," alas! their name is now legion. But the strongest resemblance between the sophists of Athens and the priests of respecta bility in the present day is, that both talk a world of rubbish about education, and corrupt youth by leading them from honest and manly pursuits into useless speculations and sedentary habits, under the plea of improving their minds and morals. IRENEUS.-What are the pontifical habits? TLEPOLEMUS.It would be invidious to particularise. They differ, like those of the Romish Church or its imitators, according to the services they are engaged in. As a general hint, I cannot help referring to what is called, in the slang of London beggars, and those who know them, muster there. were IRENEUS.-I do not like to hear you attack the Society of Friends, to which you know I used to belong before my conversion to Orthodoxy. Several of my fastest friends still belong to that community. TLEPOLEMUS.-A fast friendmeaning, I suppose, the same thing as a wet (Irenæus, I am quite of y at many |