Need we fear that the world stagnate under destitution. Scarcely ever does it descend to such a change? Need we guard ourselves squalor. Many causes combine to produce against the misconstruction of being held to this enviable difference; sometimes it is purrecommend a life of complacent and inglorious chased at a price which we are not prepared inaction? We think not. We would only sub-to pay; but of the fact of the difference there stitute a nobler for a meaner strife-a rational can, we believe, be no question. We all know for an excessive toil-an enjoyment that how incessantly of late years our sympathies springs from serenity, for one that springs from have been aroused, and our feelings shocked excitement only; we would enable our country- and pained by pictures of the awful depths to men to find happiness in contemplation as well which misery descends in the courts and alas in action. To each time its own preacher, leys of our great metropolis, as well as of to each excess its own counteraction. In an Edinburgh and Glasgow; of human beings age of dissipation, languor, and stagnation, we living by hundreds in dens filthier than styes, should join with Mr. Carlyle in preaching the and more pestilential than plague hospitals; "Evangel of Work," and say with him "bles- of men, women, and children huddled to sed is the man who has found his work, let him gether in dirt, disorder, and promiscuity like ask no other blessedness." * In an age of that of the lower animals; of girls delicately strenuous, phrenzied, feverish, excessive, and bred, toiling day and night for wages utterly often utterly irrational and objectless exertion, inadequate to the barest maintenance; of we join Mr. Mill in preaching the milder and deaths from long insufficiency of food; of more-needed "Evangel of Leisure." deaths from absolute starvation. We are not prepared to indorse the heart-rending and The worth of work does not surely consist in sickening delineations of Mayhew, Kingsley, its leading to other work, and so on to work up- and Dickens,* in all their details, but neither on work without end. On the contrary, the mul- are we able to withhold our assent to their tiplication of work, for purposes not worth caring about, is one of the evils of our present condition. rough and general fidelity. They are too far When justice and reason shall be the rule of hu- confirmed by the cold official statements of man affairs, one of the first things to which we blue books for that. Poverty, then, in Great may expect them to be applied is the question:- Britain, assumes many and frequent forms of How many of the so called luxuries, convenien- aggravated wretchedness and squalor, which ces, refinements, and ornaments of life, are worth change its character from a condition of prithe labor which must be undergone as the condi-vation to one of positive infliction, which make tion of producing them? The beautifying of ex- life a burden, a malady, and a curse. In istence is as worthy and useful an object as the France and Germany, we believe we are warsustaining of it; but only a vitiated taste can see ranted in stating, these abysses of misery are any such result in those fopperies of so called never found-or only as anomalous and most civilization, which myriads of hands are now occupied and lives wasted in providing. In oppo- astounding exceptions. We never hear of sition to the "Gospel of Work," I would assert them in Vienna. We believe they could not the Gospel of Leisure, and maintain that human exist there. There is nothing like them in beings cannot rise to the finer attributes of their Munich, Dresden, or Berlin. Sir Francis nature compatibly with a life filled with labor. Head and Lord Ashley put themselves in the ...To reduce very greatly the quantity of work hands of an experienced resident in Paris required to carry on existence, is as needful as with a request that they might be taken to to distribute it more equally; and the progress of science, and the increasing ascendency of jus

tice and good sense, tend to this result."

the very worst haunts and dwellings of the lowest portion of the population, and this is the testimony Sir F. Head gives :—

I must own it was my impression, and I believe it was that of Lord Ashley, that the pover ty we had come to witness bore no comparison whatever to that recklessness of personal appearance, that abject wretchedness, that squalid misery, which-dressed in the cast-off tattered garments of our wealthy classes, and in clothes perforated with holes not to be seen among the most savage tribes-Ireland annually pours out upon England, and which, in the crowded courts and alleys of London I have so often visited, produce among our own people, as it were, by infection which no moral remedy has yet been able to cure, scenes not only revolting as well as discreditable to human nature, but which are

*"London Poor," " Alton Locke," and "Bleakhouse," ""Tom-all-alone's."

to be witnessed in no other portion, civilized or doned and despairing than ours.* Why is uncivilized, of the globe. . In another lo- this? And when we thus come to compare cality, La Petite Pologne, we found the general the results of our opposite notions and procondition of the poorer classes in no way worse ceedings in matters of social policy, is there than those we had just left. On entering a not reason to suspect that, even if the ultimate large house, four stories high, running round a small square hollow court, we ascertained that it contained rather more than 500 lodgers, usually grouped together in families or little communities. In this barrack or warren, the rooms, paved with bricks, were about fifteen feet long, ten feet broad, and eight feet high. We found them, generally speaking, clean and well ventilated, but the charge for each chamber unfurnished, was six francs a month. . . . . In the most miserable district in the west end of Paris,

and average verdict be given in our favor, we may not be so wholly right, nor our neighbors so wholly wrong, as it has hitherto pleased us to imagine? There must surely be something good and imitable in a system under which, while there is more poverty, misery is less frequent and less extreme than in our free, prosperous, and energetic land.

One of the causes which contribute to this

superiority, in Germany at least, we have already incidentally noticed, and we shall pass it over the more briefly as it is of a nature which we could not imitate or approach. We allude to the care taken by the governments

we also failed to meet with anything that could be said to add opprobrium to poverty. The inhabitants of the few houses we entered were, no doubt, existing upon very scanty subsistence, but in every case they appeared anxious to preserve polite manners, and to be clean in their dress. In the Reu de la Roche, No. 2, we enter- *Even classes like the "distressed needleed a lodging-house, kept by a clean, pleasing-women" seem far less miserable in Paris than mannered woman, and as all her lodgers were in London. Compare the following from "Un out at work, we walked over her establishment. The rooms, which were about eight feet seven inches in height, contained, nearly touching each other, from three to five double beds; for each of which she charged ten sous a night, or 24d. for each sleeper, (in London the charge is usually 4d) Each room had one window, and we found every one wide open.-Head's Fagots of French Sticks, i. 114-118.

Philosophe sous les toits," with the harrowing pictures given us in "Margaret," "Alton Locke,” and "Realities: "

"Je me suis trouvé dans un wagon près de deux sœurs déjà sur le retour, appartenant à la classe des Parisiens casaniers et paisibles dont j'ai parlé plus haut. Quelques complaisances de bon voisinage ont suffi pour m'attirer leur confiance; au bout de quelques minutes je savais toute leur histoire.

"Ce sont deux pauvres filles restéos orphelines à quince ans, et qui, depuis, ont vécu comme de privation. Fabriquant depuis vingt ou trente vivent les femmes qui travaillent, d'économie et ans des agraffes pour la même maison, elles ont vu dix maîtres s'y succéder et s'enricher, sans que rien ait changé dans leur sort. Elles habitent toujours la même chambre, au fond d'une de ces impasses de la rue St. Dennis où l'air et le soleil sont inconnus. Elles se mettent au travail avant le jour, le prolongent après la nuit, et voient les années se joindre aux années sans que leur vie ait été marquée par aucun autre évènement que l'office du dimanche, une promenade ou une maladie."

Now, when we remember that England is beyond comparison richer than these Continental States, and that the earnings of our laboring classes are far higher than those of the same classes in either France or Germany -higher even in reference to the price of the necessaries of life; and that we are accustomed to regard ourselves as standing at the head of European civilization, and as having pursued a more enlightened social policy than other nations; there is much in the contrast we have noticed that should startle us into inquiry and reflection. What are the causes of a phenomenon so painful and discreditable to us? As a general rule the laboring already returning, belonging to the quiet and doI found myself in a wagon near two sisters, poor abroad are more respectable in their char-mestic class of Parisians, of which I have spoken acter and mode of life than their analoga in before. Some ordinary civilities of good neighborEngland-not certainly cleverer, not better hood were enough to gain their confidence; in a workmen, not made of more sterling stuff, few minutes I knew their whole history. These two poor girls were left orphans at fifteen than most of the same class with us, but still years of age and since, they have lived, as workleading generally a more decent, worthy, satis-ing women do, by economy and privation. Making factory, social existence; their peasants are hooks and eyes, twenty or thirty years for the more contented, better-mannered, less boor- same house, they have seen ten masters in succesish, and (when unexcited) less brutal, and sion enrich themselves, while there has been no change in their own condition. They have lived more comfortable, though often with fewer of always in the same room at the bottom of one of the raw materials of comfort; their artisans those closes of the Rue St. Denis, where air and are steadier, soberer, more cheerful, more sunshine are unknown. Their labor begins before saving, and more sensible than ours; and even day, and is prolonged into the night, and years their very poor, destitute and forlorn, are less been marked by no other events than the Sunday join themselves to years while their lives have wretched, less squalid, less absolutely aban-service, a walk, or a sickness.

66

-a sum

of Central Europe that there should be a call-quent and the most powerful of all, in proing, an opening, a mode of livelihood for ev-ducing the contrast we have noticed in the ery one of their citizens as he reaches man- aspect of French and English poverty, is the hood-a place at life's banquet in short, to use more habitual sobriety of the laboring class Malthus's illustration. They take vigilant on the other side of the Channel. The vice cognizance of each man's means of support, of intemperance, or where it does not reach and do not allow him to marry till these means that point, the custom of indulgence in spiritare reasonably adequate. In Norway, no one uous liquors, so unhappily prevalent in our can marry without " showing, to the satisfac- country, may not only do much to account for tion of the clergyman, that he is permanently whatever is peculiarly afflicting and disreputasettled in such a manner as to offer a fair ble in the condition of our poor, but is the prospect that he can support a family." In one main reason why, in spite of our general Mecklenburg, marriages are delayed by the prosperity, this class has not risen to a height conscription in the twenty-second year, and of comfort, ease, and opulence unparalleled by military service for six years; besides in the old world. As is well known, our which the parties must have a dwelling, with- working classes yearly waste in the purely out which the clergyman is not allowed to mischievous enjoyments of the palate a sum marry them. In Saxony, "a man may not equal to the whole imperial revenue,* marry before he is twenty-one, if liable to which, if suffered to accumulate, would soon serve in the army. In Dresden, artisans may render them capitalists; if invested in annuinot marry till they become masters in their ties or savings' banks, would secure them trade." In Wurtemburg and Bavaria, (be- against the day of reverse or incapacity; if sides being obliged to remain single till the judiciously expended, would raise them at termination of the period fixed for military once to a condition of comfort, respectability, service), "no man may marry without per- even of luxury, and if they desired it, of mission, and that permission is only granted comparative leisure. A cessation of this exon proving that he and his wife have between penditure would be equivalent to raising the them sufficient to establish themselves and earnings of every poor man's family throughmaintain a family;-say from 800 to 1000 out Great Britain, by £10 a year, or four shilflorins in large towns; 400 to 500 in smaller lings a week. But this would be the smallest ones; and in villages 200 florins, or about portion of the saving. The whole habits and £16." In Lubeck, Frankfort, and many Can-mode of life of the individual would be retons of Switzerland, similar regulations are in generated. The home would become happy; force. It is difficult to say that there is any- the whole domestic circle would be a scene of thing in them which is inconsistent with jus- peace instead of strife. There would be few tice or a fitting amount of social freedom, filthy dwellings, few neglected children, few since the universal and tacit custom in mo- of those scandalous cases of wives half-murdern civilized states, of compelling the com- dered by their drunken husbands, which now munity to maintain those who cannot main- disgrace every police court in our cities. It tain themselves, certainly implies and involves is impossible to overcolor or exaggerate the a correlative right on the part of the commu- change which that one circumstance would nity to watch that the number of these public make. All who have had to do with the poor burdens shall not be selfishly or wantonly know how directly, how inevitably, how raaugmented and after all, these regulations pidly, a habit of drinking, yielded to by the only impose by law upon the poor the restric- head of the family, changes poverty into des tions which the middle and upper ranks by titution, stinted means into squalid wretchedhabit, and voluntarily, impose upon them-ness, a home into a den. The French artisan selves. But these restrictions are too foreign comparatively seldom gives way to this dreadto our national notions to be adopted here as ful vice, and seldom, therefore, incurs the externally imposed fetters: all that can be sordid misery which is its invariable consehoped for is that in time our laboring classes quence. He is often, generally, much poorer may become enlightened enough to assume than his English brother; his fare is scantier; them of their own free will, as they become his house is smaller; his bed is harder; but conscious of the beneficial effect they could not fail to produce on their condition, and cognizant of the general though moderate and monotonous wellbeing which they are instrumental in diffusing among the inhabitants of central Europe.

A second cause, and perhaps the most fre

*See Senior on Foreign Poor Laws. Answers obtained from our consuls abroad.

he rarely aggravates these privations gratuitously by sensual indulgence; seldomer still does he cast these privations on his wife and children, while living in wasteful intemperance himself.

But connected with this greater sobriety, and operating in the same direction, is an

*Mr. Porter has shown that this amount cannot be less than £54,000,000 per annum.

son! Combien de fois je le verrai braver pour bise ou le soleil! Mais aussi, aux jours les plus elle, comme aujourd'hui, le froid ou le chaud, la ardents de l'été, quand une poussiére enflammée tourbillonnera dans nos rues, quand l'œil, ébloui par l'éclat du plâtre, ne saura où se reposer, et que les tuiles échauffées nous brûleront de leurs rayonnements, le vieux soldat, assis sous sa tonnelle, n'apercevra autour de lui que verdure ou que fleurs, et respirera la brise rafraîchie par un ombrage parfumé.*

other cause of the superiority of the French | l'insecte, disposer les fils conducteurs pour les poor man. He is by no means always better tiges grimpantes, leur distribuer avec précaueducated, but he has nearly always, whether tion l'eau et la chaleur. from nature or training, a degree of taste and Que de peines pour amener à bien cette moisimagination of which our poor are sadly destitute. These qualities give him, in however straitened circumstances he may be, a fondness for the embellishments and amenities of life, which makes him strive against squalor to the very last. He refuses to accept an utterly unornamented and inelegant existence, and because he is pinched, overworked, and even almost destitute, he does not see why he should also become thoroughly hopeless, spiritless, and degrading. Much of this æsthetic How rarely do we find among our town superiority is owing, no doubt, to original dif- poor this cherishing of flowers and green ference of constitution; much of it may, we plants! And how invariably, when we do believe, be traced to peculiarities of educa- find it, is it a sign of a comparatively refined tion. The French peasant is probably in disposition, and hopeful and easy circumstangeneral as ignorant as our own; but in what ces!

education he does receive there is mingled The same difference of character in the less that is merely rudimentary and mechani- two people manifests itself in other ways. An cal, and more that is imaginative and refining. English artisan will spend any extra earnThis is still more the case with the German ings in adding to his comforts or luxuries,-a and the Swiss. They have less of the alpha- French one in purchasing another ornament. bet instilled into them, but more of music, The cottage of the Englishman will often be poetry, and the sentiments of poetry. Alto- better furnished and more comfortable; but gether, the temperament of the laboring class everything in it will be for use, not show. on the Continent, while sometimes more ex- The Frenchman will have fewer chairs, a citable, and sometimes more homely and stu- less solid table, and a poorer bed; but he pid than in England, is nearly always more will probably have a bit of a mirror, or an poetical. One fact has always struck our at- ornamental clock. He will have scantier and tention very strongly in Paris. In the worst very inferior crockery, but is nearly certain dwellings of the poor-we do not mean the to have a fragment of Sèvres China on his haunts of the actually vicious and criminal, chimney-piece or chest of drawers. He will but, in the wretched attics, seven or eight sto- feed much worse in order that he may look ries high, quite in the roof, and with little somewhat better. There is something of the light, which must be fearfully close in sum- swell, and something also of the decayed genmer, and painfully cold in winter-we almost tleman about him. He will live in the poorest always see the little window not only orna- garret, and on the scantiest crust,-food and mented by a coarse muslin curtain, but adorn- lodging which the English artisan would scout ed with flower-pots, or boxes of cress, or mignonette, or some humble vegetable, and evidently tended with the utmost care. There will never be absolute despairing squalor, however great the poverty, where there is this love of flowers, this passion for fragments of simple nature. Here is a sketch of the proceedings of a poor old soldier, who inhabited the garret opposite that of our philosopher :

children...

step, his gray moustache, and the ribbon which *You may know the soldier by his measured adorns his button-hole. You might guess him by the care he takes of the little garden which decorates his aerial gallery-for these are two things particularly loved by old soldiers-flowers and my neighbor from his balcony. He works away at the earth in his green boxes, and carefully sows there the seeds of the scarlet nasturtium, and of the green pea. Every day afterwards he comes to from parasitic herbs and insects, to arrange the watch their sprouting, to defend their young growth conducting threads for the climbing creepers, and carefully to give them light and heat.

So the cold wind has not driven

How much trouble for this little harvest!

How

On reconnait le militaire à sa démarche cadencée, à sa moustache grise, et an ruban qui orne sa boutonnière; on le divinerait à ses soins attentifs pour le petit jardin qui décore sa galerie aérienne; car il y a deux choses particulière- many times I have seen him for this, brave, as he ment aimées de tous le vieux soldats, les fleurs does to-day, cold and heat, the sun and the wind! et les enfans. . Aussi le vent froid n'a But then, in the hottest days of summer, when inpu chasser mon voisin de son balcon. Il laboure the eye, dazzled by the glare of plaster, knew not flamed clouds of dust whirl through streets; when le terrain de ses caisses vertes; il y sème avec where to rest, and the hot tiles burn us with their soin les graines de capucine écarlate, de volubi-reflection, the old soldier, seated under his shed, lis, et de pois de senteur. Désormais il viendra sees nothing around him, but verdure and flowers, tous les jours épier leur germination, défendre and breathes the breeze refreshed by a perfumed les pousses naissantes contre l'herbe parasite ou shade.

-in order that he may drink his eau sucrée, How "un-English" is the following narrativeand read his journal at a decent Café, or take The next neighbor of our Philosopher in the his wife and children a walk on the boule- garret, is an old soldier named Chaufour, vards, or in the Tuileries gardens in respecta- minus one leg and one arm, and earning a ble attire. The desires and expenditure of scanty subsistence by working at coarse paper the Englishman may be for the more solid articles from long before sunrise till long after good; but we doubt whether the preferences nightfall. He explains to his companion that of the Frenchman are not far the surest guar- he lost his leg at Waterloo, and his arm antee against sinking in the social scale.*" while working in the quarries of Clamart:" The love of the latter for holidays and gala days, we hold also to be a wholesome safe- Après la grande débâcle de Waterloo, j'étais guard, even though sometimes carried a little demeuré trois mois aux ambulances pour laisser too far. These festivals are something to look à ma jambe de bois le temps de pousser. Une forward to, something to save for, something fois en mesure de ré-emboîter le pas, je pris congé to enliven and embellish an otherwise monot- du major et je me dirigeoi sur Paris, où j'espéonous existence. Man's nature requires these rais trouver quelque parent, quelque ami; mais breaks and brighteners to keep up its elastic rien; tout étoit parti, ou sous terre. J'aurais été spring; without them he becomes dull and moins étranger à Vienne, à Madrid, à Berlin. spiritless, or gross; he cannot without injury nourrir, je n'enétais pas plus à mon aise ; l'appetit Cependant, pour avoir une jambe de moins à to both soul and body live on work and sleep était revenu, et les derniers sous s'envolaient. alone; to keep up heart, to maintain cheerfulness through the dull routine, the daily repetitions, the hot and dusty thoroughfares of this world's ordinary lots, some of these gay, stirring, enlivening "solutions of continuity are imperatively needed. We, in this country, have far too few of them; and it is not easy to say how much of the depth to which poverty allows itself to sink is owing to this paucity.

A la vérité, j'avais rencontré mon ancien chef d'escadron, qui se rappelait que je l'avais tiré de la bagarre à Montereau en lui donnant mon cheval, et qui m'avait proposé chez lui place au feu "et à la chandelle. Je savais qu'il avait épousé, l'année d'avant, un château et pas mal de fermes; de sorte que je pouvais devenir à perpétuité brosseur d'un millionnaire; ce qui n'était pas sans douceur. Restait à savoir si je n'avais rien de mieux à faire. Un soir je me mis à ré

flection.

Voyons, Chaufour, que je me dis il s'agit de Lord, help us poor people!—and that's my de-se conduire comme un homme. La place chez

fence

If we'd nothing to trust to but wisdom and sense!

The ready and susceptible imagination of the Frenchman, too, must be of inestimable service in enabling him to embellish and glorify his poverty in ways that an Englishman would never dream of. Not only we believe are our poor, as a general rule, more discontented with their lot in life than the same class among our mercurial neighbors, but even where submissive and unmurmuring, they are so in a different spirit. The Englishman accepts his meagre fare and humble position doggedly, when the Frenchman accepts them cheerfully. The latter makes the best of matters, and puts a bright face on everything that will bear it; the former is too apt to take a diametrically opposite course.

"Riding through Normandy one beautiful Sunday evening, I overheard a French peasant decline the convivial invitation of his companion. 'Why-no, thank you,' said he, 'I must go to the guinguette for the sake of my wife and the young people, dear souls!'

The next Sunday I was in Sussex, and as my horse ambled by a cottage, I heard a sturdy boor, who had apparently just left it, grumble forth to a big boy swinging on a gate: You sees to the sow, Jim, there's a good un; be's just a-going to the Blue Lion, to get rid of my missus and the brats-rot 'em!''-Bulwer's England and the Eng

lish.

le commandant te convient; mais ne peux-tu rien faire de mieux? Tu as encore le corse en bon état et les bras solides; est ce que tu ne dois pas toutes les forces à la patrie, comme disait l'oncle de Vincennes? Pourquoi ne pas laisser quelque ancien plus démoli que toi prendre ses invalides chez le commandant? Allons, troupier, encore quelques charges à fond puis qu'il te reste du poignet. Faut pas se reposer avant le

temps.

offrir mes services à un ancien de la batterie qui Sur qui j'allai remercier le chef d'escadron et était rentré à Clamart dans son foyer respectif, et qui avait repris le pince de carrier.

Pendant les premiers mois, je fis le métier de conscrit, c'estrà-dire, avec plus de movements que de besogne; mais avec de la bonne velonté on vient à bout des pierres comme de tout le reste: sans devenir comme on dit, une tête de colonne, je pris mon rang, en serrefile parmi les bons ouvriers, et je mangeais mon pain de bon appetit, vu que je le gagnais de bon cœur. Cest que, même sous le tuf, voyezvous, j'avais gardé ma gloriole. L'idée que je travaillais pour ma part, à changer les roches en maisons, me flattait intérieurement. Je me disais tout bas.

Courage, Chaufour, mon vieux, tu aides à embellir tu patrie. Et ça me soutenait le moral.

Malheureusement, j'avais parmi mes compagnons des citoyens un peu trop sensible aux charmes du cognac ; si bien qu'un jour, l'un d'eux qui voyait sa main gauche à droite, s'avisa de battre le briquet près d'une mine chargée: la mine prit feu sans dire gare, et nous envoya une