by so small a variety of works is hardly credible. In some houses a dozen or twenty volumes, which may have cost as many shillings, have actually brought an improved set of customers, whose visits in the course of a few days must have repaid the outlay. Nothing can exceed the avidity with which these books are read; it is quite equal to what may be seen in the salons littéraires in Paris. No man of the least gencral habits of reflection and inference can once witness this thirst after knowledge in the young mechanics, apprentices, shopmen, and clerks frequenting such rooms, without feeling convinced that the time is come to open extensive reading-rooms in the metropolis, especially for these classes. This important opportunity for evening employment can hardly be overrated. The poorest of the class can afford the expense, for a whole evening thus spent will not cost so much as a quarter of an hour spent at the tavern.

Every encouragement ought to be given to the spread of these reading-rooms, whether combined with the coffee-room or not.

At the same time care must be taken by those who, after reading these papers, might be led to frequent a room of this kind, to ascertain its character. There are many small coffee-rooms now, especially about the theatres, which are what they call night houses, being open all night, and these must be shunned by every respectable young man.

DEBATING SOCIETIES have existed from time to time, and there still exist certain societies which have weekly meetings to discuss or debate some given question. These societies afford very amusing and instructive entertainment, but they are seldom constructed upon any regular plan, and, it is grievous to say, are almost invariably held at some tavern or publichouse. The debating societies open to the class affected by the new system of short hours are of course the only ones we refer to. This is another main point to which the attention of this class of our industrious population should be permanently directed. The results to mental improvement by means of a good method of public debates among themselves would be great indeed. Most of the knowledge

that men have now, or may have hereafter, might be brought within the compass of such societies, and distributed by one to another. Public discussion is an exercise abounding with that stimulus which the present age demands, and the diffusion of men's ideas may be effected by it with much less labour even than reading. Because the reader sits down singly to the work, and can only address himself to one subject; whereas the debater is constantly interchanging ideas with men who have each brought his budget to the meeting.

How easy it would be for a body of young men desirous to live economically and prudently, desirous also to withdraw from scenes of bad habits and vicious examples, to found a debating society for these mental exercises. Suppose that one hundred of them, or say even fifty, club together. They take an empty room, in which they place a long table and a few forms. They want nothing at first but a little stationery: books can be bought by subscription, and by degrees, as they are wanted. The payment of ls. entrance-money by each member, and 3d. a week afterwards, would defray every expense.

Try it by all means, young men who wish to save time and money, character and health! The occasion for evening employment, which sometimes presses very hard indeed upon young and unmarried men, will then in a great measure be provided. If you have one or two nights in the week for your debates, you will still have something to occupy you on other evenings, in preparing your arguments and arranging your thoughts. Many of you will feel this preparation tedious and cumbersome at the beginning. But persevere notwithstanding. ever you be, the question to put to your own mind is this: Shall I use this life, or Ishall I abuse it? Shall I make an effort to be a man alert, active, and efficient; or shall I neglect myself as some inferior thing, unfurnished with the common faculties of my species, and court the pity instead of the emulation of my fellowcreatures?

Who

The new time produced by the new system of shor hours must either be used or abused, must be either serviceable or

injurious; must either make a young man better or worse. He cannot stand still. The employment of his time must and will have its effect; and as the number of young people concerned will be very vast, it behoves every thinking man to look to it.

If we compare the opportunities which exist for the employment of this time with each other, the good with the bad, how these latter preponderate! We are startled at the very aspect of things as they now stand; the countless throng of places of resort where vitiating influences prevail; the small and scattered retreats where moral exercises are promoted. The thought will occur to one born in a community like ours, that we are a people almost exclusively laborious; that our labour had been for a long series of years our only amusement; and that requiring no diversion from that labour, the light of fancy had at length burnt down into the socket, and the very name of pastime been extinguished with the image it reflected of yore. And so it was, and must still have been, had not the present contest been engaged in by those brave and hearty spirits, who, feeling the vi tality of their own intellect, and a consequent craving for its proper nutriment, have appealed to public opinion for a reduction in the hours devoted to labour. They felt that an existence exclusively animal, without due recreation and mental employment, was unworthy of an enlightened race. Their arguments have been heard, their opinions have penetrated deeply into the universal mind of this nation; the rest of their fellow-countrymen sympathize with them.

We would address a few words of humble but honest advice to those who are interested in this abridgment of the hours of labour.

EMPLOYERS, under whose authority these industrious men live of whom we have been speaking, much will depend upon you in this new state of things. You stand in the place of parents to them; the influence that you have over them cannot be measured. If you show, as indeed you ought, a sympathy with them in these their hours of recreation, it will enhance their pleasure in the enjoyment, and increase their devotion to your ser

vice. Knowing, as you cannot fail to do, what London is, or any large town where you may chance to be, you will hardly let these useful servants out into the streets like so many heads of cattle upon a common. You will feel bound to use some little caution for their welfare. Some of you will offer them the means of recreation within doors, which is the very best measure. Some of you, conscious of the different characters you employ, will recommend the young and giddy to the more adult and prudent. You do not wish to see the depraved morals of the town brought within your own walls. You would feel it a reflection on your own characters and abilities as masters, if any of your assistants had to stand hereafter at the bar of a criminal court, in consequence of your own disregard to their behaviour. Those among you who will not exert yourselves to maintain the good morals of your servants, are very unfit to have them under your sway.

Do you not see the efforts which are making in some of our prisons to reclaim those who have erred? And can you see these efforts without being smitten in your consciences, if you neglect to make as much effort to prevent misconduct in those who are pure? A kind word of warning goes so far with young people, and will often live and flourish in their hearts for years like a plant in a garden! Some of you have immense property in hand, and derive therefrom all the very natural pleasure which such independence gives. But there could never have been any fixed and settled property in England without that order and moral influence which has been produced by good men and good laws. Seeing such strong and conspicuous instances of what a little foresight will do when it comes from people of authority, it is to be hoped that you will take a pride in using the advantages of your position and influence to lessen, if not to remove, the dangers which your dependants will have to meet as a consequence to the new system of short hours.

There is a cutler living in***** Street, in the City, whose house deserves the attention of the whole country as an instance of what a wise master may do to promote the welfare of his servants and

A

his own interest at the same time. system adopted several years back by that judicious tradesman, has now been fully tried under his own keen and benevolent eye. He has been a friend, a father, a guide, and an example to them all : he has studied to exercise their minds in doing what was right both during their hours of duty and those of relaxation. He has planted and fostered in them a love of reading, advised them in their choice of books, stimulated their studies, and even shared in them. Every assistant that he has is a man long exercised in good mental employment. His servants all love their duty and love their master. This man has risen in trade along with the advance which his prudent foresight effected in the morals of those about him. He has passed through the several stages of trust, credit, competence, and wealth. The moment you push open those brilliant doors, there is a feeling comes over you that a mind of no common order has been at work. There is a quietude, a calmness about the place; every one is so busy at his duty, every article is so soon forthcoming when demanded. The stamp of the master may be seen everywhere at every moment: he is always with them, they know him so well. Then how neat they all look, how civil without servility. There is not one of them who wears that wolfish look of sordidness so prevalent in other shops, in which they are bent on picking a customer as bare as a fish-bone. This house of business, though it belongs to a tradesman, is in fact a government on a moderate scale, of which the master is the ruling mind.

The large class of INSTRUCTORS whose avocation consists in giving lessons as teachers of certain branches of education, will find ample room for filling up their vacant hours by the proposed reduction. They have been for many years fellowsufferers with this vast body of labourers. As the majority of the teachers were poor and could seldom obtain pupils among the affluent, they were pushed back for employment to the ranks of the industrious. Among these very few could find time for study, and the consequence has been, that the poor teacher has had to live on something little better than water-gruel for very many years.

But now the difficulty will be to attend to the number of students. For one pupil they used to have, they will have twenty. In order to test the truth of this assertion, all they will have to do will be to accommodate their terms to the means of the class. By reducing their charges to half-a-crown or three shillings a month, and teaching, like Monsieur Robertson in Paris, to classes of eighty or one hundred at once, they may realise good livelihoods for their families, and draw thousands of these young men away from the taverns and such places.

SONS OF INDUSTRY, which road will you take, the road to honour or the road to shame ? Will you fortify yourselves by honest discipline and learn to live in this life as men ought to do, or will you live to play the wantons with your time, and deform your characters in the eyes of men? We address you as secondary teachers only. The higher sanctions of religion speak the same counsels.

described in general terms. The villages hold the people together, and in them the first attempts at association on a large scale have been made, and, perhaps, contain the germ of a healthy and useful development.

At all events it behoves all in this age of change and reformation not to pass over the picture presented to us by the Germans, of what a people can

preserve through difficulties, if we do not find in it how far judicious enterprise might be carried.

The

In the German village, to begin with the higher elements, the church is neither the property of the patron nor of the incumbent, nor is it vested in trustees for the benefit of the inhabitants. It belongs to the parish, or "Gemeinde," as the associated householders are called in German. school, in the same manner, and all public institutions or buildings, roads, or watercourses, often mills and industrial establishments, that have been constructed at the expense of, or presented by patrons to the village, are the property of the little community. But it will be said that persons must represent all corporations, to sue and to be sued. The German village is represented by one or more headboroughs, according to its size, who have the honourable charge of protecting the public property, both against official and private aggression. The consequence of this retention of the management of their affairs in the villagers' own hands, has been a remarkable conservation of village property, and every member of a Gemeinde has the satisfaction of thinking that he is not alone herded with others in a county division for the purpose of facilitating taxation or militia returns, but that he is a member of an active association, which has life imparted to it by a sense of its holding property which must be managed and turned to account. It is most interesting to hear the men to whom the direction of these village affairs is intrusted (and the office was long elective, being given only to such as deserved public confidence) on the manifold questions arising from the management of this property. Their circumspection, blended with the quiet manner of expressing themselves which is peculiar to respectable men of all classes in Germany, has often the appearance of slowness; and to those not better acquainted with them, would seem to indicate a good-natured easiness that would lead them to be duped. This notion is soon dispelled when business has to be transacted, and it then becomes evident that the peasant has often best considered his opinion before 'he pronounced it, and others are often glad to come round to it. Within a short

period the privilege of electing their headborough has been taken from the villagers of Prussia. The central point of meeting in every village is some favourite inn. At nightfall the men of any standing usually resort to it as a lounge. They meet there the officials of the magistracy, if there be any, the tax-gatherer, and those who, either having no establishment, are boarders with the host, or who seek the spot to exchange opinions with their neighbours. In the early part of the evening the pastor may be seen amongst them, and his presence indicates that propriety is not supposed to be violated by such meetings so long as order is maintained. Whoever is sufficiently master of the language to follow the peculiar tone of the conversation, which is anything but wordy-if he be indurated to tobacco fumes, will carry away with him, from a few sittings, the idea of a people managing their own little interests with full consciousness-with an attention to economy that is most praiseworthy, and with a regard to propriety that must call for admiration. Although a newspaper is to be found in every village, and transatlantic proceedings now interest nearly every German family, yet politics are not much discussed until they assume the tangible form of interfering with village property. The disputed points respecting general or provincial parliaments, freedom of the press, and constitutions granted or subverted, do not, in the present state of things, sufficiently excite the peasant, who is more on his guard against innovators, and against other preponderating influences in the state, than against the growth of the prerogative. We have already attributed to this village system the feeling of a separation of interests which we have observed between the peasants and what are called the higher classes. The tie arising from large landed properties, for the privilege of using which the tenant in England was long considered as indebted to the favour of the landlord, is here not to be found. Every man usually occupies his own land and lives in his own house-not so comfortably as an Englishman often does in a house that is rented - but, certainly, independently. On the other hand, the ill-will that threatens from a pressing de

mand for land for manufacturing purposes in England, need not here be feared, for the minute division of the land, united with the security conferred by the officially registered title, facilitates the necessary transfers. In the small villages the police is left to the management of the headborough, who receives his instructions from the chief town of the circle, and the popular element in this system reconciles the people to the strict registration of the inhabitants, with their occupations, and property in land and cattle, which is insisted upon. This registration is again a source of credit, as mortgages must also be registered to be effective, and titles to land are clear and inexpensive to make out. Transfers of real property are often made in Germany under these official titles; the expense of conveying which in England would more than absorb the purchase money. The village registers are of ancient date in Germany; and since the military surveys have been completed for the re-partition of the land-tax, are accompanied by maps that afford a minute view of the country, such as leaves the most ardent statician nothing to desire. We are only beginning to use the detailed information that can in this way be collected, and the Prussian government has contributed liberally to our stock of knowledge respecting Central Europe. From the constitution of the village government that we have endeavoured to describe, it is evident that the most detailed and authentic information must be at the minister's command.

Out of this state of publicity regarding private affairs a peculiar tone of moral feeling necessarily arises. Every man's proceedings in the village being known, and the state of his property being no secret, there is little room for an affectation of prosperity that does not exist. On the other hand, the poor know and keep each other in countenance by their number. Nor do feelings of false pride in these villages prevent young men and women from going into service in the place where perhaps their parents occupied an independent position. There is a kindly tone prevalent, very different from that which separates the servant from the master in England. One table generally unites the whole family at meals,

The village or common property comprises woodland as well as grazing-land, and, as has been said, frequently includes watercourses, public places and buildings, as well as money invested in the public funds. The revenue derived from all these sources is applied, as far as it goes, in alleviation of parochial and county taxation. From this fund the few poor persons that become chargeable are supported. We have been told of parishes where the members of the village corporation receive a dividend out of the common property. To obtain admittance to the rights of a villager a stranger must pay a certain sum, which is large or small according to the wealth of the corporation. He then enjoys the grazing and fuel rights, and the modification in taxation which the annual revenue procures. In the Rhenish districts the fee on admittance is high when compared with Central Germany. It is, we believe, highest in Rhenish Bavaria, where, in some villages, it amounts to 1500 florins, or 120l.

The various official personages of the village, such as the field-police, the cow, swine, and goose herd, the schoolmaster, the headborough and his officer or bailiff, receive their salaries from this fund, out of which, too, all public expenses, where it suffices, are defrayed. The church has generally its own foundation.

We cannot omit a very important service rendered by the government in the appointment of district physicians, who are bound to go wherever they may be required, and to report on the general state of the public health. The poorest person can demand their assistance without feeing them, but the richer peasants never fail to give some compensation. This excellent institution is completed by the appointment of official druggists in all district capitals, who are bound to keep only the best drugs, and to sell them at a fixed tariff. In no country is medical relief less expensive and more casily accessible than in Germany.

Some of these village arrangements, although savouring of antiquity, are calculated to rouse the inquiry whether the