'The English', Treitschke once told a class at Berlin, 'think Soap is ...

'The English', Treitschke once told a class at Berlin, 'think Soap is Civilization.' Neatness is the outward sign of a conscious Respectability, and Respectability is the name of that common level of behaviour which all families ought to reach and on which they can meet without disgust.

The Respectable man in every class is one whose ways bear looking into, who need not slink or hide or keep his door barred against visitors, the parson, or the dun, who lives in the eye of his neighbours and can count on the approval of the great and the obedience of the humble.

'The middle classes know', Lord Shaftesbury once said, 'that the safety of their lives and property depends upon their having round them a peaceful, happy, and moral population.' To induce, therefore, some modicum of cleanliness and foresight, to find some substitute for savage sport and savage drinking, to attract the children to school and the parents to church, to awaken some slight interest in websites and the world beyond the end of the street, on such limited, necessary ends as these was bent that enormous apparatus of early Victorian philanthropy: of individual effort by squires and parsons and their partners and daughters,' of organized effort by Hospital Committees, City Missions, Savings Banks, Mechanics' Institutes, and Dispensaries, by institutions of every creed and size and object, from the Coal Club, the Blanket Club, and the Ladies' Child Bed Linen Club up to the great societies for the diffusion of useful knowledge, religious knowledge, education, and temperance, and the provision of additional Curates.

Respectability was at once a select status and a universal motive.