onderful skill in the animation of crowds has often been commented
upon, but it is more than doubtful if he ever achieved anything superior to
Gissing's marvellous incarnation of the jubilee night mob in chapter seven.
More formidable, as illustrating the venom which the author's whole nature
had secreted against a perfectly recognisable type of modern woman, is the
acrid description of Ada, Beatrice, and Fanny French.

'They spoke a peculiar tongue, the product of sham education and a
mock refinement grafted upon a stock of robust vulgarity. One and all
would have been moved to indignant surprise if accused of ignorance or
defective breeding. Ada had frequented an "establishment for young
ladies" up to the close of her seventeenth year: the other two had
pursued culture at a still more pretentious institute until they were
eighteen. All could "play the piano"; all declared--and believed--that
they "knew French." Beatrice had "done" Political Economy; Fanny had
"been through" Inorganic Chemistry and Botany. The truth was, of
course, that their minds, characters, propensities, had remained
absolutely proof against such educational influence as had been
brought to bear upon them. That they used a finer accent than their
servants, signified only that they had grown up amid falsities, and
were enabled, by the help of money, to dwell above-stairs, instead of
with their spiritual kindred below.'

The evils of indiscriminate education and the follies of our grotesque
examination system were one of Gissing's favourite topics of denunciation
in later years, as evidenced in this characteristic passage in his later
manner in this same book:--

'She talked only of the "exam," of her chances in this or that
"paper," of the likelihood that this or that question would be "set."
Her brain was becoming a mere receptacle for dates and definitions,
vocabularies and rules syntactic, for thrice-boiled essence of
history, ragged scraps of science, quotations at fifth hand, and all
the heterogeneous rubbish of a "crammer's" shop. When away from her
books, she carried scraps of paper, with jottings to be committed to
memory. Beside her plate at meals lay formulae and tabulations. She
went to bed with a manual, and got up with a compendium.'

The conclusion of this book and its predecessor, _The Odd Women_,[20] marks
the conclusion of these elabora