d,
in any working-class district of London. Everything was clean; most
things were bright-hued or glistening of surface. There was the
gilt-framed mirror over the mantelpiece, with a yellow clock--which
did not go--and glass ornaments in front. There was a small round table
before the window, supporting wax fruit under a glass case. There was
a hearthrug with a dazzling pattern of imaginary flowers. On the blue
cloth of the middle table were four showily-bound volumes, arranged
symmetrically. On the head of the sofa lay a covering worked of blue
and yellow Berlin wools. Two arm-chairs were draped with long white
antimacassars, ready to slip off at a touch. As in the kitchen, there
was a smell of cleanlines--of furniture polish, hearthstone, and
black-lead.

I should mention the ornaments of the walls. The pictures were: a
striking landscape of the Swiss type, an engraved portrait of Garibaldi,
an unframed view of a certain insurance office, a British baby on a
large scale from the Christmas number of an illustrated paper.

The one singular feature of the room was a small, glass-doored bookcase,
full of volumes. They were all of Richard's purchasing; to survey them
was to understand the man, at all events on his intellectual side.
Without exception they belonged to that order of literature which, if
studied exclusively and for its own sake,--as here it was,--brands a man
indelibly, declaring at once the incompleteness of his education and the
deficiency of his instincts. Social, political, religious,--under
these three heads the volumes classed themselves, and each class was
represented by productions of the 'extreme' school. The books which a
bright youth of fair opportunities reads as a matter of course, rejoices
in for a year or two, then throws aside for ever, were here treasured to
be the guides of a lifetime. Certain writers of the last century, long
ago become only historically interesting, were for Richard an armoury
whence he girded himself for the battles of the day; cheap reprints or
translations of Malthus, of Robert Owen, of Volney's 'Ruins,' of Thomas
Paine, of sundry works of Voltaire, ranked upon his shelves. Moreover,
there was a large collection of pamphlets, titled wonderfully and of yet
more remarkable contents, the authoritative utterances of contemporary
gentlemen--and ladies--who made it the end of their existence to prove:
that there cannot by any possibility be such a person as Satan; that the