there is a docking of the price! You are told that there is no pleasing the hosiers at the warehouse now trade is bad; foreign goods are so cheap in the market; there are so many hands out of work, that nothing but the very best of work will go down; and what is more, they can only give out so much this week, the stock on hand is so great.

'By the time this purgatory is gone through, the poor man has wasted half away in a perspiration of agony, and his wages have wasted away as fast. There is no help for it. If he complain-the answer is. "Well, mend yourself: get work somewhere else-and pay what you owe me. Will you do that? Shall I stop that fif teen shillings? Eh! What do you say?"

"What can the poor devil say? He is only part of the machinery of a system that must follow the revolutions of the other wheels about him, or be smashed to atoms. He must do as all are doing-slave on-starve on-and die at last in the workhouse-or turn beggar, poacher, or thief. That is a nice picture of what war, and aristocratic government, and the blessings of machinery, have brought us to. If any one doubt it, let him go and see.

"For my part, I endured it in the hope of two children and a claim on the parish. The two children came and just as I was about to make my claim-the law was altered, and the New Poor Law and the union stared me in the face. Here was a go! But there was no help for it. I was now grown desperate. I resolved to go into the union. Anything seemed better than the starvation and misery that I endured. I applied and was refused relief-because I was in employ. I threw myself out of employ-no matter. I could have work. The bag-hosier offered it. I took his work, and determined to cut myself clear of this work that would not maintain me. I did it so ill that the hosier refused me any more. Now the parish was compelled to take me into the house, but this was not done till I had been sent to and fro from the overseer to the guardians, and from the guardians to the overseer, till my patience was worn out, and my family were nearly dead with hunger. At last we got in.

"It was at the time when the law was bran new, and the Whigs and their commissioners were fiery hot to carry it out to the letter. My wife went one way, the children went another, and I a third. I was turned amongst a lot of other stockingers, and we were set to work in frames ready prepared, and kept at it for twelve hours, and then let out only into a small court surrounded by a high wall to walk. It is true that our food was far better than what we could get out of doors, but to be treated like so many cattle in a stall, fed and worked, kept shut up, and not allowed to see one's own flesh and blood-that was more than could be endured long. But besides this, to be called "great hulking, idle fellows," and insulted every time we ate with being told that we liked to eat that which we did not earn; and to be dressed all in one pauper costume, and every few days to be stared at by the guardians, and called to account for not working hard enough, and not doing the work well enough, and for not being contented to be separated from our families, and threatened with beating hemp and the house of correction for every word that we spoke in our own defence-Good Lord! it was enough to drive a man mad. They told us they resolved and were bound by the law to make it bitter to us, and sure enough they did. I soon asked leave to go out and seek work, determined to live on raw cabbage and lodge in a hovel, rather than to be cooped up and hectored over there. It was granted me. I sought work in Nottingham, and got a promise in a day or two, and till then got a job of breaking stones on the road. I then went back to tell my wife that I should come and fetch her out in a few days, but I was told by the master of the union, that I must either take them away at once, or

come in myself. The one was not yet in my power, and the other I would not do. I returned to Nottingham, and the next day was seized by constables and carried before the magistrates on the charge of having left my wife chargeable to the parish, and gone off with the clothes of the parish on my back. It was declared a felony in me to have gone off with the parish property, that is, the clothes. Was the parish a felon too, for it had got my clothes? I asked the magistrate this, and he termed me insolent, and condemned me to three months hard labour in the house of correction at Southwell.

"Man alive! my blood was but poor and thin, but it boiled at this injustice. I would work and be independent of the parish, and it would not let me. It took my clothes to badge and ticket me as a pauper, and then branded me as a felon, for having these pauper garments on my back when I sought work.

"I went to Southwell, and to the treadmill. My heart swelled within me, at every turn of the wheel, and I vowed vengeance against the master of the union-the parish-the magistrates-everybody! I came out, but not before I had found others there ready to join me. There was a great poacher of Hucknal-a stockinger too. We retired to Bulwell, and took each a house, and set up our frames as an excuse, but our resolve was to plunder the game in the woods of Papplewick, Annesley, and Newstead.

"For awhile things went on gloriously. We found a ready market for our game in Nottingham, Mansfield, Derby, and Newark; but one night we were encountered by a band of keepers and watchers, and we fought with the fury of men who regarded each other with a hatred worse than that of enemies of different countries. They called us velveteen villains-the scum of the earththieves, and robbers; we looked on them as the base slaves of proud monopolizing oppressors. The poacher of Hucknal was knocked down by a pocket flail after he had shot one of the keepers, and felled another with the butt-end of his gun. We fled, and there was no remaining any longer in the neighbourhood. I decamped and reached first Leicestershire, and then Northampton, changing my name at each place. Here I soon found fresh companions of the same kind, and we came to the same conclusion of blows and murder. I was seized and imprisoned. I was condemned to transportation, but the night before we were removed from the jail, I made my escape, and got down to the New Forest. Here awhile I herded with a gang of gipsies and deer stealers. I heard that my wife had been put again into the union, and had got her death by sleeping in a room of a new erection not dry. The children were sent into Derbyshire to work in a mill.

"From that day I cursed the laws of the country, and those who administered them, as if their fellow men were vermin to be crushed and destroyed. I am an Ishmaelite-my hand is against every man of that class, as every one of their hands is against me. They shall see that those they trample on can yet turn like the trodden serpent and sting."

By the time that Bates, for so we must call him, had ended his harangue, he had worked himself up into a perfect fit of livid fury. His face was pale and almost black with passion, his lips quivered, his eyes stared at the farther end of the ceiling, and his huge knotty stick, which he had snatched up from his bedside, he held aloft and grasped with a fury that seemed to make every bone and muscle in his hand ready to burst from the skin. His long wild hair, his sandy whiskers, and unshorn chin, gave him a savage air, and Meldrum, who sympathized deeply in his story, looked on him as a man not only justified in his sentiments, but as ready to face any danger, or death itself, in his revenge.

(To be continued.)

BY WILLIAM HOWITT.

them certain privileges-a certain constitution of their own. They were allowed their own courts of justice, and the laws which regulated and defended their privileges were ultimately formed into a code. On this code grew the spirit of what is called Academical Freedom. For this every academician, whether teacher or scholar, naturally became a zealous advocate. In time, owing to aggressions and contests with encroaching rulers, this Ar a time when the continental students have once freedom came to possess also a political character, and more shewn themselves so conspicuously in the van of the universities, especially among the youthful members, the recent great revolutionary movements, it can not but became the seats and nurseries of national liberty. The be interesting to the general reader to be made acquaint-young men came to regard with pride this sacred deposit ed with the causes of the constant appearance of this class of youths on all such occasions. These causes prevail more or less all over the continent, and produce a spirit amongst the students there as opposite to that of our English universities as possible. Our students springing, for the most part, from the aristocratic class, and seeking only aristocratic favour and advantages, are distinguished for nothing so much as their opposition to all popular reform and advance. They are the unflinching, unhesitating, and we might almost say unreflecting champions of Church and State. They are ready to assault the Anti-Corn-Law lecturer, break the benches of his audience, and chase him from the city; to petition against any admission of Catholics or Jews to the merest civil rights, or to clamour against the smallest reform in the profitable trade of the established church. For the rest, boat racings and guzzlings, running into debt, and threatening the creditors, if they press for payment, to ruin them-are the chief features of our English studentlife.

of the maintenance of the spirit of freedom, and celebrated it in their songs, and paraded it in their customs. It was a spirit peculiarly fascinating to the spirit of youth. At the time of life when every noble and generous emotion is, if ever, predominant, when the inspiring sentiments of the patriots, poets, and historians of the greatest nations of antiquity-Greece and Rome-republican Greece and Rome, were the peculiar study of these young men, it was natural that such sentiments sanctioned and invigorated by the very charters and customs of the schools, should acquire extraordinary power. In fact this Academical Freedom on the continent has grown into a singular pre-eminence and has produced the most important national effects.

The student life of Germany has often been referred to in this country for its singular features. Those features, however, which have been most noticed are the customs of drinking and duel fighting. These have been given an undue prominence, and the German students have been represented as a wild, lawless, drunken, fighting and hectoring class, something more than half-savage. If this were their real character it would be one of the most remarkable circumstances in the world that out of these wild and lawless youths are made the most sober officers, the most domestic clergy, the most refined poets, and the most profound philosoIn order to encourage learning in times semi-bar-phers in the world. Having lived ourselves for some barous, the Princes who founded universities, granted years in the midst of these students, admitted them

On the contrary, on the continent, whether the students are of aristocratic or plebeian origin, the spirit of popular liberty has, from times almost immemorial, or at least from the very first establishment of such schools, been the grand characteristic of the foreign high schools.

freely to our house, and studied their characters and customs, we were at some pains to make our countrymen cognizant of the true facts.

What these facts are we will now endeavour to shew in as small a space as possible, and being once in possession of them our countrymen will not be so likely as they have been to be imposed upon by the ignorant mistakes of mere passing travellers. One of the commonest mistakes is that of confounding the university students with the journeyman artizans. Into this mistake Mr. Laing fell when he assured his readers that he saw students begging on the German highways. The same mistake Sergeant Talfourd fell into when passing up the Rhine to Switzerland, and unable to speak either French or German, he still thought fit to write a book, and assured us that he did not find the students quite such gentlemanly fellows as Howitt had represented them. It was, to say the least, rather wonderful that Mr. Talfourd, who only sailed up the Rhine in a steamboat utterly ignorant of the language of the country, should be able immediately to correct one who had resided three years in it, and made its life and habits a study. I however was all the time talking of students in my work, and poor Talfourd was talking of the travelling artizans and imagined them students! When either he or Mr. Laing meets with a German student begging on the highway, he may be quite sure of being able to meet with Oxford and Cambridge students doing the same in England.

Not less are the mistakes as to the great objects and spirit of continental student-life. This life is regarded as a season not only of study but of enjoyment. To it every youth looks forward as to that period in his existence in which, whatever be the despotism of the country at large, he shall by charter and precedent enjoy the fullest freedom, combined with all the social pleasures of youthful brotherhood. When song, music, social parties, new friendships, and perhaps loves, and the mutual excitement of the spirit of liberty and patriotism shall throw over life an enchantment the feeling and the memory of which shall continue to gild all his after-existence, whether it shall be passed in the distant solitude of some rural official post, or in the obscure village, amid the storms of misfortune or the shoals of poverty. Everywhere in the works of poets and philosophers do we find traces of the enthusiasm with which they regard their student years. "How shall I call thee" says Hauff, "thou high, thou rough, thou noble, thou barbaric, thou loveable, unharmonious, song-full, repelling, yet refreshing life of the Burschen years? How shall I describe you, ye golden hours, ye choral songs of brotherly love? What tone shall I give to you to make myself understood? I shall describe thee? Never! Thy ludicrous outside lies open: the layman can see that, one can describe that to him, but thy inner and lovely ore, the miner only knows who goes singing into the deep shaft * * Old grandfather, now I know what thou undertook when thou held thy annual solitary, intercallary days. Thou too hadst thy companions in the days of thy youth, and the water stood in thy grey eyelashes when thou mocked me in thy

stambook as instructed."

The youth in Germany then look forward to the days of his University life, as to the very heart and flower of his juvenescence. It is a period not merely of dry study, it is a season in which he is to meet with the youth of all the surrounding district, and in which one common bond of customs, one common enjoyment of a peculiar social life, is to open up to him everything which earth

*See the Student Life of Germany, by William Howitt, from the unpublished MS. of Dr. Cornelius, containing nearly forty of the most famous student songs, with the original music, etc. Longmans, 1841.

can offer of friendship, of the community of sentiment, and aspiration, of music, song, frolic, whim, excursions into the loveliest scenery, and compacts for the advancement of the liberties of the great Fatherland.

The time arrives; he quits the paternal home with a beating heart, he enters the university town, often a small one, seated amid mountains and forests, and what does he first observe? Troops of those who are to be his fellow students-of those with whom he is to form the closest intercourse, with whom he is to fight, to carouse, to study, to pledge eternal friendship, and to pass through a score of ceremonies and processions in the cause of Freedom. They are a strange generation to look on. They affect a quaint and somewhat antique costume. None of your gowns with hanging sleeves, and tile caps, but surtouts of singular cut, often belted, spurs frequently on heel, on the head little caps of shapes and colours denoting the particular state to which they belong; many with cane or stick in hand, more with a long and ornamental pipe, and some with a large dog following their steps. There is no lack of beard and moustache, nor of a certain swaggering air which inspires foreigners, and especially ladies with a most erroneous idea that they are rude, wild fellows, who would push you off the causeway-while, in fact, they would find them in society perfectly well-bred gentlemen. Such a Bursche was Prince Albert at Bonn, such was his brother the reigning Duke who bears a sword-cut still on his cheek, the memorial of a student duel, and such are all the Princes of this country in their days of student life.

The student now matriculates by presenting himself on the appointed day, and at the appointed hour, before the board of matriculation with his certificates, from the gymnasium, of learning and morals. These found satisfactory, the board delivers to him the printed academical regulations. He signs the reverse, as it is called, that is, a declaration that he will not take part in any prohibited unions, but conform to the academic laws, and giving what is termed the hand-gelübde, or literally hand-oath, that is, giving the pro-rector of the university his hand, he receives his matriculation certificate, which confers on him the enjoyment of all the rights of academical citizenship. These include the benefit of the university library and all its learned institutions, and he has only to take his choice of the courses of lectures that he will attend, and pay the fees.

This portion of his academic life, however, that of attending the lectures of the University, would be of itself which he looks forward with the most anxious interest. a very prosaic and dull affair. There is another life to If he choose to remain a solitary student he may; if he choose to take his chance of making such acquaintances he may; but there exists in every university a peculiar as may fall in his way through ordinary circumstances life which he will hasten to enter, and which flings wide to him the social advantages of all studentdom. This is

the chore-life.

chores wear the colours of the particular state or nation Every particular state has its chore or club. These whose name they bear, though they no longer consist exclusively of subjects of that state, but admit members from any. The colours are displayed on the cap, and also on a broad band which is worn over the breast. The colours consist, like those of the nations, for the most part of three. As we shall see, the wearing of these colours, has been prohibited by the different governments owing to political causes; and most strictly of all, those of the old Germanic Empire, and afterwards of the Burschenschaft, a society formed for its restoration, which could not be worn on the person, or even printed in a book, without incurring the penalty of banishment.

I say, that is, the muse says, had there been
Such an academy as may be seen,
To-day at Saffron-hill, and other places,

Where ragged rascals, with their unwashed faces,
At visitors and teachers make grimaces,
Another fate had this poor wretch awaited,
Another tale would have to be related.
Is it not possible, the muse would ask all
Readers, if to school he had been sent,
He might have proved a shining ornament,
A human bude-light, not a ragged rascal ?
Therefore, the muse bestows her approbation
On 'ragged schools,' and trusts the time is nigh,
When even knowledge,

That keeps close at college,

And costs, to-day, so large a sum to buy, May be accessible to all the nation.)

IV.

There was a red mark round his wrist,
And he knew the weight of his brother's fist,
So the wretched child fell back in his place,
At his leader's heels, and looked up in the face
Of every passer by,

To see if he could note the trace

Of some humanity;

For God bestows a mark of grace
On the Samaritans of the race,

And with his hand, and with His seal,

6

Attests The heart within can feel.'

But no one felt,

Nor did any heart melt

For the ragged rascal with shoeless feet: "An't you ashamed"

T'was thus they blamed, "You imp and you egg Of a thief, to beg,

So young, as you are, in the public street?"

But they who thus censured, had bread to eat,
And had dined that day off a joint of meat.
I cannot relate

Each step of his fate;

LETTERS FROM PARIS.

(For Howitt's Journal.)
No. V.

THE ORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY.

DEAR FRIENDS,

We have promised in the course of these letters to shew that the movement in France of February, is not only critical, but constructive, not only political and republican, but also industrial and associative. We now proceed partially to fulfil this pledge, by shewing the present position of the doctrine of industrial organization in relation to the last French Revolution.

The revolution of '89 up to the period of the further revolution of '93 was purely political. '93, was the pivotal point on which the revolutionary machine turned towards social and industrial amelioration. At the conclusion of that great date, before the counter-revolutionary proceedings of Buonaparte, Babeuf arose, and said,-"What is your convention, what is your directory, what are all your mere changes of governmental reform, without the amelioration of the industrial and social condition of the masses?" He said this in a conspiracy which vanished in a sanguine cloud for the time, but through his disciple, the graceful and talented Buonarotti, a descendant of the great Italian painter, it yet lived, it re-appeared again, not as a conspiracy, but as a school of political economy and societary organization. Buaronotti did his work, and St. Simon arose. 1830 was the apogee of

St. Simonism. The Revolution of 1830 was the echo of that of '89. St. Simonism continued in it the industrial protestation against mere political change, which had been previously made by Babouvism. It is true that the protestation was less fierce, but it was all the better for that. Its roots insinuated themselves, and grew even in sterile soil. To St. Simon is due the honour of first giving a science and a nomenclature to the new ideas. His catechism for the industrials, was

The soft heart would bleed, if my pen could record it. the first published primer of societary science. His

Of this we are sure,

That a rascal so poor

Will meet his desert, and the law will award it.

V.

Long years have passed;-no elder brother now
Drags through the snow

A helpless, unresisting child,

With aspect mild;

Whom you or I, to virtue might have reared,
Had we appeared

In time to rescue him, and been inclined,
Possess'd by Heaven with so good a mind.
Our rascal is the inmate of a gaol,
Where food at least, and shelter never fail;
And where instruction,-but it comes too late-
Defects of rearing strives to obviate.

Come, tell me," says the chaplain, "tell me true," -Gently he spoke,- "How has it been with you ? Where are your parents?" "Parents?" "Where are they, Who gave you birth ?" "Why dead for many a day : I never knew them." "And your home?" "The street.' "Your bed?" "A door-step, and my rest was sweet." "You know your duty?" 'No, nor wish to know." "At least, you know the catechism ?" "No!" "How shall you live when you are free once more?" 'Why, live by stealing, as I lived before!" "To steal is wicked!" "And to starve is hard!" "But industry will bring its own reward." The rascal laughed aloud, for who would give Him work to do, if he must work to live? (To be continued.)

newspaper, the Organizer, first shewed, how chaotic was our commerce, how unorganized, anarchic, and parcelled our industry. St. Simon's was eminently a practical mind, If his own works had been studied instead of those of his disciples, the public would have had a better idea of St. Simonism. After his death, however, his disciples, by their bizarre proceedings brought a discredit upon the name they bore, which for a while, was injurious to the cause of industrial organization. Meanwhile while Fourier was writing down his views on associative industry, and ultimately collected around him some of the chiefs of the dispersed St. Simonians, who organized a new propagand, differing in its views but little from the St. Simonians, with the exception that the new associative school admitted interest on capital as one of the cardinal points of their social economy. Many of the theories of Fourier, on psychology and cosmogany, were however as bizarre, as the doctrines of the Religion St. Simonierme. These with some formed an insuperable objection. Pretty generally, however, the views of industrial organization, distinct from the categories of any particular school, have been imbibed by the literary and working classes, in France, as the present revolution shews. These have selected the good from every school of societary science-they have taken the wood, and left the varnish. These wanted however an exponent of their simple acceptation of industrial organization, and Louis Blanc is the man. In 1839, he published first his small work on the organization of industry. In 1840, when I was in Paris, seeking for such works, it was not heard of. It has since then, however, quietly made its way, as a