this be but a feeble one, of any attainment by the nation in the future o any true liberty and cleanliness in political aims.

I cannot conclude these few remarks upon his Italian stories without a word of thanks to him for the pleasant hours he has often given me, and the gallery of interesting portraits with which he has enriched the memory of all those who read his novels.

QUIDA.

rules would have a beneficial effect. But hitherto the new factory regulations as to air and space have had one result which was by no means desired: they have tended to drive a large quantity of the work from the factories to the home-workers. Now if the condition of things in the factories is bad, in the rooms of the home-workers it is many degrees worse; and it is exceedingly difficult to see how legislation is to interfere effectively in such places.

The report, having remarked that any old dilapidated buildings are considered good enough for the accommodation of the fur-pullers,' proceeds with suggestions-viz, that the Secretary of State should license every building in which the trade is carried on, that health registers should be kept, and periodical visits be paid by the certifying surgeons. But this would apply only to the factories. With the host of isolated workers, constantly changing and moving, the difficulty of efficient registration seems almost insuperable. To extend the rule effectively to home-workers, power would have to be given to factory inspectors to enforce sanitary regulations of a similar character and standard to those required in the factory; a licence being granted only after the house had been visited and certified as a place where the work could be done without injury to those working there. Whereas, as the law now stands, the factory inspector, though empowered to demand from the employer a list of his out-workers and to visit them in their homes, has no authority to remedy any of the evils he may find there; and the sanitary authorities, who alone have power to act, can only do so in cases where complaints are made of a public nuisance. Moreover, every home-worker who can plead irregularity of employment-and all home-work is irregular-can thereby claim exemption from all the provisions of the Act.

It does not, in short, seem practicable to make the worker responsible. To prohibit home-work altogether is equally impracticable. But what does seem practicable is to throw the responsibility on to the employer. It is not beyond his power to ensure that the homes' to which work is given out answer to the necessary conditions. Moreover, the adoption of this principle would have one very marked advantage. In order to avoid the trouble of attending to the condition of the home-workers, the employer would find a strong inducement to get as much work as possible done in the factory or workshop proper. A tendency would set in, working towards the gradual extinction of home-work; and the effect of that would be infinitely more satisfactory than any system of registration, inspection, or regulation of actual home-work that can be devised.

The evils of both subcontracting and home-work in all departments have become so thoroughly realised in the United States that a Bill was last year introduced by Mr. Sulzer which certainly had the effect of annihilating home-work entirely. It provides that, when a wholesaler gives out work to be done not by his own employés

oral no less than a physical barrier, shutting them off from every ope and every aspiration beyond the unending struggle somehow to eep alive.

This perpetually shifting population is as perpetually recruited rom the larger pitiful army of the helpless and inefficient. The otsam and jetsam from other quarters and other classes who come to nerge their individual failure in the general failure of the inverterate mass where room seems somehow to be made for all who drift nto it. Hopelessly excluded by their own incompetence from a ecure position in the labour market, with a natural abhorrence and ncapacity for the discipline of regular employment, the men, for the nost part, pick up odds and ends of jobs at the riverside or in the treets; working two or three days a week and loafing for the remainng four or five. Under these circumstances it is the women who aust, perforce, become the staple breadwinners, and accordingly we find them working with far greater regularity than the men, ising in the early dawn, toiling through the long weary day, and natching a few brief hours of sleep as the exigencies of their trade llow.

A few find employment in factories and workshops; others—and is with these that we are dealing-take work given out at the actories to be done in their own homes. This work is, to an excepional extent, fluctuating and casual; it demands little specialised kill or intelligence, and offers the maximum of long hours with the minimum of pay. There are, among these women, isolated cases f flower makers, tailoresses, machinists, sack makers, paper-bag akers, &c.; but a close investigation shows the main industries to e three, i.e. fur-pulling, box-making, and brush-drawing. Whole treets are given up to these, and in almost every room of some of he wretched tenement dwellings are inert, exhausted women plying ne or other of these trades, and using up life and strength in a hard, navailing struggle to keep the wolf from the door.

The inquirer who turns aside out of that historic street from hich one April day there started long ago a famous and jocund ompany of pilgrims-where to-day a sadder stream of humanity easelessly ebbs and flows-and who plunges under one of the narrow rchways on its western side, will find himself at once face to face with he lowest depths to which the toil of women can be dragged. Here, n an endless network of pestilential courts and alleys, into which an penetrate no pure, purging breath of heaven, where the plants nguish and die in the heavy air, and the very flies seem to lose he power of flight and creep and crawl in sickly, loathsome adhesion o mouldering walls and ceilings-here, without one glimpse of the eauty of God's fair world, or of the worth and dignity of that uman nature made after the image of the Divine, we find the niserable poverty-stricken rooms of the fur-pullers.

SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS

THE irrepressible globe-trotter, who believes that a sojourn of fortyeight hours in any country entitles him to pronounce an authoritative judgment upon its social and political characteristics, is hardly an admirable character. But that there is something in first impressions-even the first impressions of the merest outsider is undeniable, and occasionally the fresh view of things familiar to others which is taken by such a person may have a certain measure of interest. Thus it was my fortune, the other day, to pay a flying visit to four European capitals which I had never seen before; and though my glimpse of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Stockholm, and Copenhagen was nothing more than that of the mere tourist, it taught me some things which I had not learned from my visits to all the other capitals of Europe. The Baltic and the countries which border it are becoming as familiar to the English holiday-maker as the Mediterranean was twenty years ago. Every year two or three yachts, conducted on the co-operative system, visit the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland, and give their passengers an opportunity of seeing more of Northern Europe than could be seen by any, save a few adventurous travellers, even so recently as thirty years since.

My co-operative yacht was the Garonne, a fine vessel of about 4,000 tons burden, in which I steamed out of the Thames on the 25th of August last, bound for the Baltic Sea.' The company on board consisted of about ninety men and women, and one charming little boy. We belonged to different sections of society, and included the representatives of all professions save that of the Church-a rare omission, I am told, in these voyages. For a whole month we remained together in the close confinement of a ship, and for that space of time we constituted a little cosmos of our own-one which loomed so largely before our eyes for the moment, that the outside world seemed to be practically banished, and the small events of our daily life on board assumed proportions of historical importance. It is not a bad thing for the toil-worn man or woman thus to escape from the environment of everyday life, and to find a new and peculiar environment, which, though for the moment as engrossing as any other, is dropped as easily as an old shoe when the cruise is over

and the tourist steps ashore once more. That there were degrees of congeniality among the members composing our little company need hardly be said; but like gathered to like as the voyage proceeded, so that there was social as well as physical recreation in the brief holiday. One further remark must be made before I dismiss the subject of the Garonne. Nothing could well have exceeded the attention paid to the comfort of the passengers by those responsible for the management of the cruise. If each of us had been a millionnaire travelling in his own private yacht he could hardly, in some respects, have enjoyed greater attention and comfort.

The food, too,

was so excellent that even the attractions of the best restaurants of St. Petersburg and Stockholm were readily put aside in favour of dinner on board ship. I need say nothing of the convenience of carrying one's own home, one's own little bed-room, from place to place, and of thus being spared the usual disagreeable attendants upon foreign travel-the packing and unpacking, the change of beds, and change of servants. Every yachtsman knows the luxury which this implies.

The Baltic Canal was the first novel sight presented to the passengers on board the Garonne. It was one which exceeded the anticipations of most of us, and especially of those who are acquainted with the more famous canal of Suez. The magnitude of this engineering work is, indeed, hardly realised by those who have not seen it for themselves. It is some fifty miles in length, has a breadth of 197 feet at the water level, and of more than seventy feet at the bottom, whilst its depth is twenty-nine feet and a half. It is thus capable of accommodating even the largest German man-of-war. There are several bays on the route where ships of this class can pass each other, but the canal itself is wide enough to permit two mail steamers of ordinary dimensions to pass without difficulty. The only locks are those at the entrance to the canal from the North Sea, and the exit at Haltenau in the Bay of Kiel. Four lines of railway cross the canal, and two of these do so on viaducts 138 feet above the level of the water. The scenery on either bank is varied and picturesque, thus presenting a marked contrast to the monotony of the desert through which the Suez Canal wends its dreary way. Indeed, there are portions of the route where woods and trees, handsome villas with sloping lawns, and picturesque villages remind one strongly of the Upper Thames, so that we had the sensation of steaming on a 4,000ton vessel past Taplow and Henley. No ten hours of our trip were passed more agreeably than those which were occupied in traversing this remarkable water-way, the commercial prosperity of which is not, I am sorry to say, equal to its undoubted strategical value.

Three days after leaving the canal we cast anchor in the Roads off Kronstadt, seventeen miles below St. Petersburg. No one was allowed to land here, but it was possible from the deck of the vessel