have at once given in, and boat-building by machinery will relieve our national shipyards of one branch of their labour. If this is the case, we may feel pretty sure that the Mercantile Marine will not be far behind, and that the handicraft of the boat-builder is doomed.

ON TAKING A HOUSE.

In the Vivarium at the Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park, the curious spectator may watch with interest the actions of the Hermit Crab whilst in search of a new house. The corpus of this crab, which appears to be of a remarkably juicy and tender description, unfortunately comes into the world without that crustaceous house with which his commoner brethren are provided; consequently he is obliged to seek some habitation built by other architects, and the domicile he generally prefers is the spiral conch of some defunct whelk. It is the funniest thing to watch him looking out for a new house. With his long claws he turns over the shells that strew the bottom of the vivarium, and when he sees one to his liking he tries it on with the delicacy of a "swell" easing on a coat by Stultz. He gently backs in with a wriggle, backs out, and tries a fresh method of investiture, and if it finally is found to fit walks off with the whelk-shell over stones and rocks in the most dainty manner. He is not satisfied long, however, for as his corpus grows, the fit becomes too tight, and larger premises are required. How

many of us are in a dilemma somewhat similar to the hermit crab! Our premises are getting too small for the increasing family; consequently we have to crawl and poke over empty whelk-shells scattered about the West End to find one fitted to receive our growing and tender nursery. We don't know what the feelings of the hermit crab may be at trying on a new whelkshell, but this we know,-a change of house is a thing which disturbs us mightily. Even an old pair of slippers are not easily replaced by new ones. How much, then, must a sensitive man dislike to change his house, full of associations; where his children. have been born and brought up; behind the doors of which you leave the marks of their growth; perchance in whose chambers yet hover the ghosts of departed dear ones? An old house so grows upon a man that it is some time before he can believe in any other; it has been, as it were, a part of his being, and he can no longer judge fairly of its defects than he could judge rightly of the defects on his own face. What a common thing it is to hear one friend say of another, "I wonder how he can live in such a place." Possibly he may have wondered himself how he could have done so at first, but in this instanco familiarity breeds quite the opposite feeling to contempt. This settled feeling, which every man has, that, all things considered, his own house is the best within his reach, considerably prejudices him in looking out for

a new one.

When you have really set out in search of a new house, how little the house-agent's catalogue tells

you! What brave representations and what bald results encounter you! As well may you depend upon the auction stock phrase, "all that capital messuage," as upon the descriptions clever agents beguile the public with. When the hunt is not too much prolonged, there is, to some, a singular fascination in looking out for a house. To settle where you shall strike your roots for the next fourteen years is no inconsiderable matter. In a degree it is like moving into a new country. What streets you will have to traverse on your way home, what is the look-out, what are the neighbours like,-all these are questions which are anything but trifles to a man who will be exposed to their influences for years.

But the aspect of the house itself is enough, generally, to determine the choice of a sensitive person. Who, with a fine sense of the fitness of things, would willingly, for instance, take a house approached by a steep flight of steps? When a man comes home tired from his day's work, his door should seem to welcome him, instead of repelling by keeping him off until he has performed a certain amount of treadwheel motion.

In large towns, and especially in the metropolis, no house is allowed to have a character of its own, either good or bad. Our domiciles are like ourselves, too much alike. How could any man, possessing a marked individuality, take a house in Belgravia or Tyburnia, where whole streets of houses seem cast in moulds, like so many bullets? What a weariness of mind takes possession of a man who has to perambulate

such neighbourhoods! The policeman, for instance, whose beat is along Harley Street, or one of those deep trenches-for they can scarcely be called streetswhich run north and south, and see the sun but for half an hour in the day,-what vacuity of mind must possess him!

That our new neighbourhoods thus finished all to one pattern by some great builder are productive of a certain amount of mental disease we have no doubt. How infinitely preferable to such thoroughfares are those old straggling streets where different men have age after age moulded their houses into a hundred. quaint and irregular forms; even if the forms be ugly they are diverse, and therefore a thousand times more interesting to the eye than the dull monotony of pillar and cornice, cornice and pillar, which the architect flatters himself represents the grace and purity of some Grecian order. If a man of intellect takes such a house, he takes it as a dog would seek a kennelmerely as a place to go in and out of; it represents no human thought or mental impression. Fancy the difference of feeling the member of some old family must experience on entering his old house at home. and his new house in town. This is an extreme case, but it shows how man can stamp his own mind upon even bricks and mortar.

If a man is on the look-out for a town house, where can he turn in the hope of having his ideas fully satisfied? At South Kensington they are repeating the errors of Belgravia and Tiburnia; he feels as much a want of individuality wherever he goes as