of the lower section of the middle classes
is penetrated through and through with the worship of pinchbeck, and for
one family that holds itself in the honor and simplicity of truth, ten
thousand lie, to the world and to themselves, in frippery and pretence.

The greatest sinners in this are women. Men are often ostentatious,
often extravagant, and not unfrequently dishonest in that broadway of
dishonesty which is called living beyond their means--sometimes making
up the deficit by practices which end in the dock of the Old Bailey;
but, as a rule, they go in for the real thing in details, and their
pinchbeck is at the core rather than on the surface. Women, on the
contrary, give themselves up to a more general pretentiousness, and,
provided they can make a show, care very little about the means;
provided they can ring their metal on the counter, they ignore the want
of the hall-stamp underneath. Locality, dress, their visiting-list, and
domestic appearances are the four things which they demand shall be in
accord with their neighbor's; and for these four surfaces they will
sacrifice the whole internal fabric. They will have a showy-looking
house, encrusted with base ornamentation and false grandeur, though it
lets in wind, rain, and sound almost as if it were made of mud or
canvas, rather than a plain and substantial dwelling-place, with comfort
instead of stucco, and moderately thick walls instead of porches and
pilasters. Most of their time is necessarily passed at home, but they
undergo all manner of house discomfort resulting from this preference of
cheap finery over solid structure, rather than forego their "genteel
locality" and stereotyped ornamentation. A family of daughters on the
one side, diligent over the "Battle of Prague;" a nursery full of crying
babies on the other; more Battles of Prague opposite, diversified by a
future Lind practicing her scales unweariedly; water-pipes bursting in
the frost, walls streaming in the thaw, the lower offices reeking and
green with damp, and the upper rooms too insecure for unrestricted
movement--all these, and more miseries of the same kind, she willingly
encounters rather than shift into a locality relatively unfashionable to
her sphere, but where she could have substantiality and comfort for the
same rent that she pays now for flash and pinchbeck.

In dress it is the same thing. She must look like her neighbors, no
matter whether they can spend pounds to her shillings,