wants of the middle class, who neither drove about in coaches of
their own, nor were carried by their own men in their own sedans
into the very halls of their friends. The professional men and
their wives, the shopkeepers and their spouses, and all such
people, walked about at considerable peril both night and day.
The broad, unwieldy carriages hemmed them up against the houses
in the narrow streets. The inhospitable houses projected their
flights of steps almost into the carriage-way, forcing
pedestrians again into the danger they had avoided for twenty or
thirty paces. Then, at night, the only light was derived from the
glaring, flaring oil-lamps, hung above the doors of the more
aristocratic mansions; just allowing space for the passers-by to
become visible, before they again disappeared into the darkness,
where it was no uncommon thing for robbers to be in waiting for
their prey.

The traditions of those bygone times, even to the smallest social
particular, enable one to understand more clearly the
circumstances which contributed to the formation of character.
The daily life into which people are born, and into which they
are absorbed before they are well aware, forms chains which only
one in a hundred has moral strength enough to despise, and to
break when the right time comes--when an inward necessity for
independent individual action arises, which is superior to all
outward conventionalities. Therefore, it is well to know what
were the chains of daily domestic habit, which were the natural
leading strings of our forefathers before they learnt to go
alone.

The picturesqueness of those ancient streets has departed now.