newspapers, to realise how uneventful, how limited in thought and
feeling, as well as in incident, was the life of an English family of
retired habits and limited means, only forty years ago. The whole world
seemed to be morally, as well as materially, "adscripti glebae."

Mr. and Mrs. Ferrars did not wish to move, but had they so wished, it
would have been under any circumstances for them a laborious and costly
affair. The only newspaper they saw was the "Evening Mail," which
arrived three times a week, and was the "Times" newspaper with all its
contents except its advertisements. As the "Times" newspaper had the
credit of mainly contributing to the passing of Lord Grey's Reform Bill,
and was then whispered to enjoy the incredible sale of twelve thousand
copies daily, Mr. Ferrars assumed that in its columns he would trace
the most authentic intimations of coming events. The cost of postage
was then so heavy, that domestic correspondence was necessarily very
restricted. But this vexatious limitation hardly applied to the Ferrars.
They had never paid postage. They were born and had always lived in
the franking world, and although Mr. Ferrars had now himself lost
the privilege, both official and parliamentary, still all their
correspondents were frankers, and they addressed their replies without
compunction to those who were free. Nevertheless, it was astonishing
how little in their new life they cared to avail themselves of this
correspondence. At first Zenobia wrote every week, almost every day, to
Mrs. Ferrars, but after a time Mrs. Ferrars, though at first pleased
by the attention, felt its recognition a burthen. Then Zenobia, who
at length, for the first time in her life, had taken a gloomy view of
affairs, relapsed into a long silence, and in fact had nearly forgotten
the Ferrars, for as she herself used to say, "How can one recollect
people whom one never meets?"