THE MARCH OF THE CARAVAN 159

table. There seemed to be too much roast-beef <in them. Some-
times they were lean, gaunt and awkward; more often they ran
to fullness of flesh, brick-red faces and apoplectic tempers;
Taine met such a one in the train going to the Derby—"large
ruddy features Xvith flabby and pendant cheeks, large red
whiskers, blue eyes without expression, an enormous trunk,
noisy respiration."1 Probably beneath that alarming exterior
there beat a kindly and, if only its sympathies could be awakened,
boyishly chivalrous heart. The difficulty was to awaken them.

For those with gentle blood, with family traditions and
connections, and the status afforded by a University degree,
there was employment in the civil and military services of
the crown, in the empire and the learned professions. For
the great majority commerce was the one sure road to the
desired' goal of private wealth, security and comfort. With the
rapidly expanding population and with improved transport—
supported by British sea-power and arms—opening ever new
markets in lands overseas, the opportunities for growing rich
were enormous.* Between 1850 and 1872 the annual exports
of Britain, almost doubling themselves every ten years, increased
from £90,000,000 to £315,000,000.

A walk through the central districts of London bore eloquent
testimony to that wealth. A wide circumference of nearly a
mile round the country-like parks of the west end was being filled
by large six or seven-story houses, mostly built in the Italianate
style, for the residence of the upper middle merchant and pro-
fessional classes. "Paris," Taine reported, "is mediocre compared
with these squares, these crescents, these circles and rows of monu-
mental buildings of massive stone, with porticos, with sculptured
fronts, these spacious streets.... Sixty of them as vast as the Sue
de la paix; assuredly Napoleon m. demolished and rebuilt Paris
only because he had lived in London."2 Such great houses needed
establishments of seven or eight servants apiece and could not be
supported by incomes of less than £2,000 or £3,000 a year: yet
scarcely any were empty. They were the homes of "carriage-
folk"—of families who kept private carriages, whose numbers by
1856 ran into five figures.

The great summer afternoon parade in Hyde Park between
four and six revealed Victorian society in all its glory: the long
unbroken stream of brilliant equipages and lovely horses between

lNotes on England, 50. *A0fef on England, 16.