of the poor. It suits their tastes and anticipates their fancies. And to have really happy holiday-making among the lower orders, they must have the privileges of eating, drinking, and smoking freely.

They may enjoy that to the utmost, assuming them to have the money, in the summer excursions which are now universal. In these days of rival railway companies, with perpetual excursion trains, it is hard to realise the state of mind of the London working man at the accession of her Majesty. Unless he retained some faint recollections of the parish of his boyhood, his vision had been bounded all his life by the London bricks and mortar. He might have strolled under the elms in Hyde Park, or seen the spire of Harrow from the heights of Hampstead; but he knew nothing of shady and flowery field - lanes far away from gas - lamps and watchmen; he had never seen the sea or the Channel; and his knowledge of ornithology was gathered from the sparrows in the streets, or the parrots and canaries in the windows of the bird-shops. When the Child of the Marshalsea cross-examined her friend the Turnkey about the buttercups and the daisies, he had promptly to turn the conversation to hardbake. Many a man, not always "on the lock" of a City prison, was at least as ignorant as the kindly Bob. Now the frequent

summer excursions to the sea have been brought within the reach of everybody who has a trifle in the savings bank or "tick" with the master. We do not know that these brief outings bring unmixed good, as they are certainly far from being unadulterated enjoyment. Any ordinary day's labour would seem less fatiguing than the early start, the scramble for tickets, the hustling for places, the comfortless carriages, the terribly long day on the melancholy shore, with no shelter between the sea and the shingle, and the slow return in the shadows of the night, halfstupefied with bodily fatigue, if not with spirits and tobacco-smoke. The morning must often bring regrets, if not repentance, and that single toilsome holiday necessarily involves sundry others. But at any rate, the sea trips must expand the mind, as they are becoming a condition of the existence of the modern working

man.

Personally we should prefer the lot of the skilled artisan with fair and regular wages to that of the ordinary clerk or shopman. But as far as the new holidays are concerned, the latter have decidedly the advantage; and it seems to us that it is the clerks and shopmen who chiefly profit by them. Unless the quarterly Bank holimiddle of the week, they can generally arrange for several days of liberty.

day falls in the

The scenes at the great metropolitan stations are striking on the first evening, when the City drudges have broken loose from harness. Special succeeds special at the bustling platforms, each of them, of course, being despatched after time, but still with creditable punctuality considering the circumstances. The first-class carriages are few and far between; the luggage-vans are neglected. The passengers are chiefly of the male sex, and for the most part they are young. They are bound for Inverness, for Holyhead en route to Ireland, for Penzance, Penrith, or the Isle of Man. The forethought necessary for financing them. has been teaching lessons of self-denial, and they have been stinting themselves in more selfish pleasures to pay for their railway tickets. Assuredly they will make a fairer start on their return, humanised and invigorated by the memories they have been reviving. Nor can anything show the hold these holidays have been taking upon the City youth, like the swelling of the traffic in the most inclement seasons on the cheaper Continental routes. The steamers from Harwich or from Queensborough have filled to overflowing of a sudden; for the Dutch and the German clerks are revisiting their fatherlands, risking storms and sea-sickness and scrambling discomfort, in the touch of human nature that makes all the world kin.

CHAPTER XII.

THE COUNTRY FIFTY YEARS AGO.

COUNTRY residents of all classes have gained

immensely by the changes of the last half

century. Life in the country was wont to be isolation or stagnation at the best, and many of the remote parishes lay literally out of the world. The Lake poets had huddled themselves together like the sheep in their Cumberland snow-drifts, and they cramped the genius that might have done greater things in voluntary sequestration from the society of their compeers. We see the indefatigable Southey forced to collect a library almost unparalleled for a hard-working writer of very moderate means who supported a family from hand to mouth; and Scott beyond the Border, in the receipt of a magnificent income, grumbled, with great reason, at the enormous cost of postages and packets, although no man had a more influential connection, and though he drew freely on his friends in Parliament for

franks. The ordinary country gentleman was fettered physically and intellectually. He almost lost the habit of letter-writing, and consequently fell out of acquaintance with absent friends, because postal charges were felt to be wasteful extravagance. The trouble as well as the ex

pense of a journey was so serious that he seldom stirred from home. There was no certainty of booking a coach-seat from intermediate stations; he could only be accommodated if there chanced to be room. Nor had he many inducements to make the effort, since all his interests were local. As for the wealthy yeoman or the well-todo provincial shopkeeper, he would have been lost in London. Now and then a John Browdie, breaking out in a wedding frolic, took his bride and her bridesmaid on a sight-seeing trip to town. But, though he might talk till his dying day of that memorable enterprise, we suspect he was heartily glad when the "treat" he had stood came to an end. The market boroughs, though frequently more flourishing than they are now, reminded one of rich but mouldy Stiltons, matured by liberal infusions of strong ale, and smacking of ripe age and seclusion. The farmers flocked into the ordinary of a market-day, to discuss the current prices of crops and cattle, and to retail such venerable jests as had shaken the sides of their fathers. The shopkeepers had