"the
fatal gift of beauty" has been more lavishly bestowed than upon any
other class--perhaps not excepting even the aristocracy. They are many
of them, probably, the spurious offspring of aristocratical fathers,
and inherit beauty for the same reason as the legitimate daughters of
aristocrats, because the wealth of these persons enables them to select
the most beautiful women either for wives or for concubines. Nor are
they wanting in the grace and simplicity of manner which distinguish the
aristocracy; whilst constant manual occupation produces in them more
vacuity of mind than even that which dissipation causes in their sisters
of the superior class. They are thus possessed of exterior attractions,
which will at any moment place them in a condition of comparative
affluence, and keep them in it so long as those attractions last,--a
period beyond which their portion of thought and foresight can scarcely
be expected to extend: whilst, on the other hand, they have before them
a most bitter and arduous servitude, constant confinement, probably
a severe task-mistress (whose mind is harassed and exacerbated by the
exigent and thoughtless demands of her employers), and a destruction of
health and bloom, which the alternative course of life can scarcely make
more certain or more speedy. Goethe was well aware how much light he
threw upon the seduction of Margaret, when he made her let fall a hint
of discontent at domestic hardships:--

"Our humble household is but small,
And I, alas! must look to all.
We have no maid, and I may scarce avail
To wake so early and to sleep so late;
And then my mother is in each detail
So accurate."[3]

If people of fashion knew at what cost some of their imaginary wants
are gratified, it is possible that they might be disposed to forego the
gratification: it is possible, also, that they might not. On the one
hand they are not wanting in benevolence to the young and beautiful; the
juster charge against them being, that their benevolence extends no
farther. On the other hand, unless there be a visual perception of the
youth and beauty which is to suffer, or in some way a distinct image of
it presented, dissipation will not allow them a moment for the feelings
which reflection might suggest:

"Than vanity there's nothing harder hearted;
For thoughtless of all sufferings unseen,
Of all save those which touch upon the round
Of the day's palpable doings, the vain man,