and in their antipodes Paddington, Bermondsey and Lambeth.The disreputable and the criminal classes and the working people are environed with nuisances and live in dwellings which barely supply the most elementary wants of our being, and where the moral as well as the physical atmosphere is full of poison, especially for the susceptible nature of youth. If there be goodness, generosity, nobility in any toiling inhabitant, it is poluted and cramped by the poison and penury of all around. But of these redeeming qualities there is, we fear, but little. The majority of the resident families are drunken and destitute, and filth and immorality abound to an extraordinary extent.

In the districts occupied by the better class of laborers-the the porters, policemen and such like-there is likewise extreme poverty. Though their wages are high, so are their rents. Can any one wonder that rent troubles exist in England as well as Ireland? There is another drain upon them, the almost constant presence of sickness in their dwellings, and the want of medicines and medical advice. A few years ago, the philanthropic Lord Shaftsbury made a visit to one of the favored localities, as they are regarded, near Golden Squares, and thus describes it: "It is a quarter inhabited by the most respectable of the laboring classes. They were all deeply sensible of the misery brought on them by the condition of their dwellings and the impossibility of keeping them tidy, and by the fetid smells to which even habit had not reconciled them. These families have each but one room, about twelve feet square, in which they sleep and live, and some in addition carry on their trade. I found many of them full of steam, exhaling from clothes hung up across the room to dry, after having been washed, many of them in the same water, owing to its scarcity. In every family we heard of sickness and death; some had lost two thirds hardly any less than one-half of their children. Their houses had been for the most part once inhabited by separate families of some fortune, and were partitioned off into lodging rooms, at weekly rents, varying from Is.6d for a very bad cellar, to 5 shillings for a large upper room. In no case had they any but an intermittent supply of water at the bottom of the house, which in some cases was kept in water butts of decaying wood. Some of these rooms were in overcrowded cow houses, where cows diseased by the badness of the air, supply the neighborhood with diseased milk, some close to slaughter houses."

From this description it is readily seen that the mortality must be frightful. Indeed it is said to exceed that of a well regulated hospital, and is far beyond any losses England sustains in Afghan and Zulu campaigns. Typhus fever is a constant denizen. What else, indeed, is possible when each small house is occupied on an

average by seventy? The lessee who pays from £20 to £30 rent, sublets the rooms at from two to three hundred per cent. on the original rental. It is common for thirty and forty children to sleep in a single room 18x20 feet. These are the scenes of defilement and pestilence in which thousands of children are reared. Their only education is obtained in such homes and in the streets round about them. They are constant witnesses of drunkenness which grows out of this state of physical defilement, and thus become familiar with beastly scenes.

From these dens and haunts issue the lawless, roaming and deserted children of the Metropolis, over fifty thousaud in number. One half of these dine out, living on garbage and sleeping under porticos, sheds, carts, the dry arches of bridges and viaducts, in out houses, saw pits, stair cases, in the open air, or in those cheap lodging houses where forty are placed in a small room 12x18, the floor of which is covered with straw, shavings or old rags, and where they pay a penny each for the night's accommodation. It is in such haunts that the larger part of the crime which is com mitted is concealed. They are but nurseries or breeding places for the prisons; the homes of wild, neglected, lawless children. These gamin are seen in every part of London. They are bold, pert and dirty, half starved, hali clad, haggard, yet vivacious. They talk obscene slang, raise the shout of laughter at the reeling drunkard, pick pockets and prowl in all directions in search of prey. Their only education is obtained in their lodging houses or gathered from the festering gutters. The principal part of their education consists in learning the art of picking pockets and committing other crimes without detection. To facilitate the work of instruction, the professors, who are aged and experienced old rogues, who have retired from active life, resort to many ingenious devices and contrivances. Among those for testing the ingenuity and skill of youth aspiring to become a pick-pocket, is a lay figure suspended by a small elastic cord from a bell fastened in the ceiling. Stuffing the pockets of this figure with port-monies, pencil cases, hankerchiefs, etc., they are then buttoned up and the senior class of light fingered gentry is brought in for instruction. The professor now diligently practices them in all the arts and ways of emptying the pockets of the lay figure without sounding the bell, Those who perform the task again and again with dexterity, are graduated and sent abroad to prey upon the public, while those who do not, are soundly flogged. If after repeated floggings and months of instruction, they do not acquire the requisite delicacy of touch and agility of action to perform such sleight of hand feats they are permanently passed into another class and become apprentices to less difficult branches of the robbing profession.

In the complicated state of modern society there are many causes operating to produce the crime that nestles in the streets of great cities, which meets us at every turn in the rural districts, which haunts us in our going out and coming in, which spares neither age nor sex. It may be born of ignorance, of depravity, of want, but above all it must be set down to intemperance; to the whiskey bottle and the ginpalace. These are the fruitful sources of the frightful demoralization of the people. In London there are 180,000 gin drinkers, who spend $15,000,000 a year in this spirituous drink alone. During a period of thirteen years 249,000 males and 183,920 females were taken in custody in London alone, for being drunk and disorderly. Of the ten or twelve thousand charges entered annually at Bow Street police station, one-half are for being drunk Samuel Warren, author of "Ten Thousand a Year," who was in 1871 Recorder of Hull, in the course of a long and luminous charge to the grand jury, recently said: "As all crimes have their origin in intemperance or ignorance, there are two causes to which it is your duty to pay parti cular attention." 30,000 persons are annually committed to prison in Scotland, 40,000 in England and it is estimated that go per cent. of these crimes arose out of the drinking custom of society. These are terrible facts.

The existence of the dangerous classes, to which we have referred briefly, in the midst of modern society, under the shadow of our churches, schools and libraries, is one of the most deplorable incidents connected with the vaunted progress of the age. Classes who owe nothing to society but a bitter grudge who owe nothing to, as they never derive anything from civilization. The ferocity of these classes was brought to light in Paris by the French Commune-classes of whose existence scarcely any one had previous knowledge, and greatly added to the horrors and terrors of that era of crime and bloodshed. Assi and his associates were little else than "tiger apes" or demons in human shape. They were gaunt, inhuman, merciless and savage; a frightfully demoralized brood, who sprang as if from the earth, and filled the streets of the city, the halls of the Tuileries and the saloons of the aristocracy. All law and order was overturned and these barbarians held for a time supreme command. Everybody knows the excesses and crimes of that second "reign of terror." There cannot be a doubt that London contains an equally savage race of "tiger apes" ready to rush forth on the least occasion, to commit equally savage and revolting excesses. The world is not their friend, or the world's law. Nor have they any idea of the governing authorities than that they constituted an armed despotism which prevents their earning a livelihood. They hate all law because they are

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taught to believe that it is but a tyranny administered for their oppression. They have no idea of religious or moral principles, and when they are aroused, what is to restrain the exercise of their grossest passions? Society has no greater enemy than these neglected classes - the wretched-the half fed dregs of the nation, who fester in the cesspools of all great cities. All must shudder at the flood of crime which, like a lava stream flowing from a volcano and destroying the vineyards of the sunny land, is apparently, in spite of repression and detection, withering the good of the world and scorching its promises into the ashes of disappointment. Yet in our opinion there is no reason for despair. The earnest and thoughtful know that below, deeper than all these bad influences and more powerful, there is the true spirit bubbling up, through the hot crust of evil and neglect, in springs of puritythat truth and falsehood are grappling and no one has ever known truth to have the worst of it, in a fair and open encounter. spirit is pouring itself forth by a thousand channels, is making religion its minister and science its handmaid. It is sent forth in sermons, essays, lectures, pamphlets, novels, poetry-in a thousand ways we are told that refinement and barbarism are contending powers, and in order that the rich may enjoy their luxury the poor must be elevated; that one class of the family of man can never be happy while others are miserable. This is the voice which urges noble men to give to the poor parks, picture galleries and libraries, baths and wash houses, improved dwellings which will enable them to live with some decency and refinement. In short, the true spirit of the times is one directed to the improvement of the moral and social state of the masses. This spirit has already accomplished much since these notes were penned, in eradicating and repressing the evils of which we have spoken, and when it was impossible utterly to eradicate them, to mitigate their evils. Let us hope that this great and beneficent work will be ceaselessly prosecuted until the holy mission is accomplished. It is no doubt painful to have seen, at times it may be depressing to reflect over such things and scenes as those just described. The man, however, who has a heart to appreciate and a brain to understand, cannot but be improved by such extension of his knowledge. No matter where he may be afterwards placed, he has laid up for himself mental food for life.

Charity, curiosity and philanthropy have united to portray with uniform accuracy all the incidents in the life of the London poor. Home missionary societies, newspaper reporters, adventurous philanthropists, and the intelligent foreigner have pene. trated into their retreats and have brought to light innumerable details, curious, sad and revolting. The darkest recesses of their

social state have been revealed to us. An elaborate inventory has been made of their defects, physical, moral and spiritual. We know what their dwellings are, how they live; the amount of their incomes and how they spend them; what they save or rather what they do not save; how they are taxed and what usury they pay; how many can read and write, what they eat, drink and wear, how many live in one house and sleep in one bed, and and finally how much sooner they sink into graves than the comfortable classes. All has been investigated and lies exposed to the public gaze. The physician has inspected their sores, and the inagistrate their vices. The Divine knows how many do not attend church, and the teetotaler how many frequent the gin shop. It was highly desirable that such information should be obtained. Having procured it, those who are willing and able to aid the poorer classes in their efforts to elevate themselves, now know what measures to take, how the existing evil may be remedied.

We

It is not our purpose to enter into these grave questions. shall confine ourselves to giving some of the details of the daily life of the 50,000 prowlers of the streets. The people and authorities of London will doubtless know how to grapple with the subject in its practical bearings.

The nomadic population of London, the vagabonds or Metro-. politan Gypsies, or those who live upon the settled classes at large, is composed pretty much as follows: Beggars of all kinds, bone grubbers, mud larks, patterers, costermongers, fruit-and-fish sellers, dogsellers, hawkers of all kinds, finders, sifters, street artists, musicians and showmen, acrobats; in short, the entire loose and wandering population. The "finders" are a leading class and live by picking up in the public thoroughfares, bits of coal, ends of half smoked cigars, bones, rags, and such like odds and ends, which they manage to sell for money.

In addition to the waifs, in the way of lost articles, picked up by these Finders, they in the course of their trade of living in the thoroughfares, occasionally find the way into the pockets of the inexperienced and unwary. Indeed it is believed that the larger part of the "findings" of these light fingered gentry, are of small articles which have never been lost. The largest and most influential division of the street Bohemians goes by the name of the costermongers, and this class includes fish sellers, retailers of vegetables, oranges, ginger beer, pop-cock, fruit and such like articles These wandering traders, people who carry their stock upon their backs or in a hand barrow, are the hucksters and greengrocers of the streets, and supply a large portion of the working population with food, little comforts, and the lighter articles of