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military edifice required drainage as well as ventilation, the answer would be of the character, shown by the fact stated in respect to this very hospital at its foundation, that it had a sewer provided capable of serving for the drainage of a town having a population of 30,000 (6857),-bad work enough as a reckless waste of material and public money, but direful in its effects as a mode of construction, which, from its magnitude, detains what it ought to remove, and creates an extended surface of noxious gaseous evaporation, poisoning the atmosphere breathed by the inmates of the edifice, which the practical preventive science displayed at Scutari would have kept pure.

Progress in improvement is arrested at this point: that routine, and jealousy, and ignorance, refuses to organise new service from without, or is incompetent to create, by special training, the requisite practical preventive skill which, as the results prove, does not now exist within. In the meantime, the great lesson of the Crimea being practically lost for England and for India,special sanitary science, and proved skill, and the rudimentary elements, for the creation of an efficient preventive science, have been broken into fragments and dispersed; and whilst there are increasing demands upon the physical strength of the AngloSaxon race, for the maintenance of its industrial position, as well as for its dominion, we have in the barracks at home numbers, equal to a division of an army, constantly prostrate in hospitals, from preventible sickness, and every year at least a full brigade of strong healthy men hurried into the grave. In India, we have several thousands of able-bodied Englishmen annually slaughtered, by preventible deaths, and a whole army weakened; and in civil life at home, measured by practical standards, we have full 150,000 of the people, men, women, and children, annually sacrificed by-ignorance and mal-administration.

ART. X.-1. The Case of the Reformers in the Literary Fund; stated by CHARLES W. DILKE, CHARLES DICKENS, and JOHN FORSTER. 1858.

2. Royal Literary Fund: A Summary of Facts drawn from the Records of the Society, and issued by the Committee. 1858. 3. Royal Literary Fund: The Answer to the Committee's Summary of "Facts." By C. W. DILKE, CHARLES DICKENS, and JOHN FORSTER. 1858.

4. The Royal Literary Fund, etc. Annual Reports. 1856. 5. Claims of Literature: The Origin, Motives, Objects, and Transactions, of the Society for the Establishment of a Literary Fund. 1802.

A FEW years ago, M. de Lamartine, after a visit to London, published a somewhat rhapsodical series of letters upon the glories of the metropolis, and the grandeur of the British Empire. When a Frenchman of poetic genius had determined to praise, it was not to be expected that he would be remarkably temperate; but even Englishmen, we believe, were hardly prepared to recognise the vision which was then unfolded to them, as a likeness of themselves and of their own life and institutions. The streets of palaces, the wealth beyond the old dream of the Indies, unloaded on the quays of river and docks, the parks, the clubhouses, the new towns, which each year's building in the suburbs added to the wondrous labyrinth, were topics on which his English readers were accustomed, with no great stint, to dilate themselves; but there are other points on which even national vanity has certain doubts, and it was embarrassing to have those very points selected for a special tribute of unmeasured laudation. Irony is a bewitching figure there are minds which habitually indulge in it, and can enjoy, though no one should doubt of their plain sincerity. What if this brilliant foreigner, secretly filled with the old Gallic enmity towards England, but armed with a subtler power than gunpowder or steel, had resolved to humble us, in the eyes of all the world, by persuading us, like Christopher Sly in his drunken dream, that our very deformities were beauties? Although such a design was not so obvious as it would have been if he had selected some of the public statues, or the tall smoking chimneys, or the dismal banks of the Thames-as it winds through the metropolis-to those who had given the subject a slight consideration, it was a little suspicious that he made our innumerable public charities the object of his unqualified admiration. Those who know how a great number of these are established, the frequent motives of

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the promoters, and the mismanagement and waste of funds which accompany them, are troubled with grave doubts, and, in despair, are tempted to embrace the theory of an ultra-school, that all charity is beset with insurmountable difficulties, or mischievous in a degree which outbalances the happiness which it creates, or the true misery, and unmerited poverty, which it oftentimes unquestionably relieves.

To the political economist, who is accustomed to consider the annual income of the country as distributed among workmen, masters, and land-owners, by free bargain, it would, we believe, yield a startling result if he would endeavour to ascertain what amount is really apportioned upon quite other principles-given from charitable or benevolent motives, or bestowed upon persons who could not claim what they get as a right. Not to speak of free gifts among relatives and friends, of the large amount which is annually bequeathed by wills, of pensions, of the salaries of official and other persons, which are higher than they would be if their offices were put up to auction, our public charities would form an enormous item. Independently of the large amount collected for poor-rates in the United Kingdom, there is not a parish which is not endowed with property left by charitable persons, and every parish has its free school. Municipal corporations possess vast endowments of a similar character; so do city guilds and companies. The great metropolitan hospitals have enormous wealth, and draw annually large sums from subscriptions. Ancient endowed grammar schools have grown into rich aristocratic establishments, from the increased value of lands bestowed upon them. Every neighbourhood has its free dispensary, its visiting society, its "Dorcas" society, its coal distribution, its reformatory, its almshouses, every magistrate his "poor-box;" and at church and chapel alike, the plate is always at the door. There are many wealthy individuals who notoriously give away a large portion of their revenue in private charity, and are besieged with applications, some of whom are said to keep secretaries constantly employed in investigating appeals, and defeating, when they can, the professional begging letter-writer. But one of the most striking developments of our benevolence is the Special Institution, designed to relieve some particular calamity, or some single class or profession. Not a newspaper can be taken up without finding in its advertising columns a new scheme of this kind, announcing its first dinner, with some great celebrity in the chair, or appealing for funds, with a noble list of patrons and committee. It would seem as if the discovery of a human want, or a human misfortune, which was not already met by some institution for its satisfaction or relief, must baffle even the ingenuity of profes

sional projectors; and, indeed, it is pretty evident, on running over the titles of a few such institutions in a London Directory, that invention has been taxed almost to its utmost limit, and where, as we suppose, not of the highest order, has been driven to plagiarise without the hope of effectual concealment. As, for instance, we have in London a Mariners' Friend Society, a Sailors' Hospital, a Sailors' Home, a Sailors' Improvement Society, a Sailors' Homes and Aged and Destitute Sailors' Asylums Institution, a Sailors' Home or Brunswick Maritime Establishment, and a Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners' Benevolent Society. Again, a Strangers' Friend Society, a British Beneficent Foreign Aid Society, a Society of Friends of Foreigners in distress, a French Benevolent Society, a French Charitable Association, an Artists' Benevolent Fund, an Artists' General Benevolent Fund, etc.,-all of which, of course, compete with one another, and divide the amount disposable for such charities, each maintaining a costly separate machinery. Other projectors, more scrupulous, we suppose, about pilfering an idea, have adopted such vague descriptions as the Royal Benevolent Society, the London Philanthropic Society, and, vaguer still, the Auxilium Institution; while some express their charitable designs, by such puzzling titles as the "Aged Pilgrims' Friend Society." There are in London alone, we believe, between five and six hundred of these special institutions, whose yearly income is calculated to amount to nearly two millions sterling.

The way in which these societies are got up is notorious. To a needy, but clever fellow, a good idea for a new charity is valuable. By a plausible prospectus, and an active canvass, he may get a few respectable names: the rest will follow. The cost of obtaining subscriptions has been ascertained by an induction upon the widest possible basis of experience. The promoter, of course, obtains a secretaryship, or some other advantage, and becomes a conspicuous personage at the public dinner, which is held to be an important portion of the benevolent machinery. The theory, of course, is, that men grow generous after eating and drinking, and give with freer hand than at cooler and more reasonable hours. Nor should it be forgotten, that the subscription list is always read out at the close of the evening, loud applause from floor and galleries greeting the large sums, which directs all eyes upon the more liberal diners. To get up such a dinner is the easiest thing in the world The minute sub-division of employments natural in civilised society has, under these circumstances, produced taverns whose specialité is to furnish such banquets; and the proprietors of these taverns undertake the whole business of printing, filling up, and forwarding several hundred invitations, gathering stewards' fees-an invention for making certain

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gentlemen pay thrice as much as others-and performing every other necessary, at a fixed charge per head. A nod from the secretary to the tavern-keeper is all that is required to set the benevolent fountain, nay, the whole of the charitable grandes eaux, in active play.

Although we question the good morals, or at all events the good taste, of some of these things, we are not insensible to their better features; nor would we, but for greater evils, be disposed to make serious objection to them. The waste and mismanagement which appear to be more or less inseparable from public charities, are a far more serious consideration. Money easily got, is proverbially easily spent. This is true when the money is the spender's own, and is more true when it is not. Corporations, boards and committees, even when composed of the best and most honourable persons, are notoriously wanting in principle, in energy to do well, or in shame for proved misdeeds. Who fears or expects loss of character from one twenty-fourth share in an act in which noblemen, high church dignitaries, and possibly distinguished statesmen, take the remaining twenty-three? Such persons are found on most of the committees of our charities-it is a creditable thing in the world's eye to be there; but, in fact, the higher the position of the person, the more valuable is his time, and therefore the less likely is he to have any practical acquaintance with the transactions for which he is jointly responsible. How little this voluntary responsibility is, in such a case, considered a wrong thing, cannot be better illustrated than by the case of the venerable nobleman of high character, who, after filling for twenty-eight years the office of vice-president, president, and member of the general committee of the Literary Fund, declared by letter, that he had heard with pleasure that no improper use of the funds by the committee had been alleged, "or at least substantiated;" and added, "upon such details, having had no opportunity of inquiring fully into them, I do not venture to give an opinion." The men who are really active in such committees-we are, of course, speaking generally—are the men of inferior position, to whose misdeeds, or errors, the great names serve as a shield.

The case of the Literary Fund Society has led us into these reflections, because we perceive that the high and undoubted respectability of the names upon its committee is confidently appealed to by the committee's defenders as an answer to charges made against it by Mr Dilke, Mr Dickens, and the "reformers." The plea is well known, and will be found among Bentham's list of fallacies. All experience of committees tells us that it is worthless. What has been may be again; and the proof of one solitary case of jobbery or mismanagement, in any board com