It is

all the arrangements of a comfortable middle-class club: the table of the reading room is strewn with newspapers, the shelves of the library are stocked with books; there is a smoking-room; and from an apartment hard by comes the sound of voices singing, and we are told that the "Musical Society" are rehearsing for a concert. unnecessary to inquire from what source flows all this comfort and order, for we may be assured that such institutions owe their direction to a master mind careful and thoughtful to foresee. There is limitless energy in the world waiting only for direction. Persons with brains, who are idle and bored by existence perhaps, do not sufficiently realise that they are meant to be factors in human life, and not only are missed from their place, but miss it themselves. On the whole, brain seems to have worked well in such institutions as we have referred to, and comfortable houses are the majority.

Again here we would insist upon the paramount importance of the personal influence, judiciously exercised, of the chief of the firm. It is not fitting to enter at length into a consideration of how far the position, by birth or rank, of the employer affects the attitude of the men towards him; but there is little doubt that even now men prefer a gentleman employer who is definitely above themselves: those raised from the ranks are not popular. Is this, it may be asked, British snobbery, or real loyalty to worth? And while we have been dwelling throughout upon the cases of private firms, it is worth recording that their workpeople are for the most part better treated than those of a public company. With a dozen men sitting on a Board it is so easy, if the servants complain of bad treatment, or their case is taken up by the press, to shift the

blame on to your colleagues' shoulders and say, "I should be very glad to relieve the poor fellow-but really the opposition, you know," &c.

We propose to go but little further, considering that we have already brought sufficient facts to show that a new order of industrial relationship is being permanently established, which will lead in time to beneficial results as regards both employers and employed. It is not within the scope of the present paper to meddle with economic questions!; least of all to attempt a solution of the final problem of political economy, the pressure of population on the means of subsistence. We deal with the question as one of observation of individual cases, of the attitude of one man towards another. Looking at it in that aspect, whatever may be the case as regards those trades where the coarse expedient of striking settles the rate of wages with mechanical precision for great masses of men, it is certainly the truth that in the domain of educated labour the black-coated army-employers have not pressed their advantages during the recent years of financial straitness. If employers in great cities had combined, and said to the Black Coats with families, "Take 25 or even 50 per cent. less salary or go," they would, as a body, have had to take the reduction, and bear their sufferings until they had set in motion in their favour the machinery of the newspaper press and the tongue of public opinion.

In conclusion, it was recently said in the ears of the writer, by a modern philosopher of more delicate mould than the materialist, that the true relationship of master to man was an "elder brotherhood." The ideality of such a relation is we fear a bar to be only slowly removed; but already we notice

with rejoicing a gradual realisation of the truth of Mill's words, that there can be no healthful state of society in which the only relationship between capital and labour is that of the payment of wages;

and an effort to be true to the fact that a genuine union must be the result of personal qualities, which both sides need to display.

TIGHE HOPKINS.

CHAPTER XVIII.

IN TWELVE HOURS, PARIS.

GUY CARRINGTON stood on the departure platform of the Dover Railway Station, in London. A guard unlocked the door of a carriage. As Guy was about to enter, a tall, slight man pushed before him—not rudely-not at all rudely -but still preceded him into the carriage.

"There is plenty of room," he remarked to Guy, when he was seated with his back to the engine, by way of a sort of semi-apology, but he kept the best seat. "Will you give me my coat ?" he said to the guard. "Thank you; and that small carpet bag. Be good enough to lock us in, and put 'engaged' on the door," and the gentleman drew down the blinds.

Quietly and deliberately he then proceded to make himself comfortable. From the small carpet bag, or rather cloth bag, for it was made of coarse corded fabric, of a dark purple colour, and it opened by a spring, he produced a leathern strap, which he passed round his waist. Then he took out a candle lamp, which he lighted with a lucifer match, and fixed, by a hook attached to it for that purpose, to the lining of the carriage. Then he arranged bis cloak, a great

wrapping garment, lined with bear skin, over his knees. Then he took out a blue book-one of the parliamentary blue books.

"I like to have my little comforts about me," he remarked to Guy, as the station master blew his whistle. The engine-driver responded by a fierce shriek, and the train began slowly to move. Then he began to read.

"I think that Hansard should issue steel cuffs with these heavy books," he remarked after a time to Guy. "Steel cuffs lined with horsehair, or with eider down. It would be a convenient mode of supporting the wrist, at least so it occurs to me. Holding up half a hundred weight of printed paper soon becomes fatiguing. Don't you think so? But till the cuffs are patented"

The gentleman took a knife from his carpet bag, and cut through the back of the report, severing the strings with some neatness. He then removed a few pages, which were thus made conveniently light for the hand, whatever they might have been to the intelligence, and continued reading. After perusing three or four detachments of the volume, he seemed to have read enough. He arranged them with care, doubled the report in two, lengthwise, and secured it by an

elastic strap. Then he produced a cigar. "I have your permission ?” he said to Guy.

He only trifled with his cigar, however. "It is less agreeable than opium. Don't you think so?" said he.

Guy had never smoked opium. "Then you have a great pleasure in store," said the stranger. "The only really enviable things in this life are first sensations. Don't you think so?"

"Some are," said Guy.

"I am inclined to think that all are," said the stranger. "I never tried the bite of a mad dog. I like to keep that in store for some time when the inventive faculty shows signs of decrepitude. But I have tried that of a pet dog. That was novel. It gave me much pleasure. I rather think, though, that the principal part of the pleasure was derived from the simultaneous study of the physiognomy of the owner of the dog. She was an old lady-old that is to me-no doubt evergreen in her own eyes. The horror which she expressed was scenic. She was what many people would consider a very handsome old lady, but her face assumed an appearance that was quite gorgonesque. It is so very improving to watch elderly females under the influence of alarm. Don't you think so?

"I think you were more of & philosopher, than I should have been under the circumstances," said Guy, who by no means felt himself beginning to sympathise with his fellow traveller.

"Possibly," said the other. "Do you know it did not strike me in that light before. You are going through?"

Guy was.

"It is more soothing to the mind to feel that one will be undisturbed," said the tall gentleman. "One can arrange one's thoughts

better, if the little trip is managed properly. We alight at Dover, and merely walk straight out to the steamer. Then you smoke. Arrived off Calais, one tumbler of cold gin-and-water-no sugar, of course. Then you walk along the pier, which is refreshing, and induces a disposition to sleep. The passport man knows you at once. Then you walk into the refreshment room. And when the officials come to drive you like wild beasts into a pen, you advance with serene composure, and naturally arrive first at the carriages, because everyone else has something to look after."

"Have you nothing then ?" said Guy.

no

"Of course not," said the other, "otherwise experience were more experience. Of that description of the virtue which makes fools wise, I confess my absolute ignorance, but I cultivate the humbler species."

"But one must take luggage," said Guy.

"Je n'en vois pas la necessité," replied the philosopher. "I find it best to send my heavy baggage independently. Then, for those little comforts which one cannot relinquish without loss of selfrespect, my arrangements

are

simple, as you will see, if you will do me the honour to watch me to accompany me, I would say—if you were not under the bondage of the portmanteau. But I will keep a seat for you in the train from Calais."

The simple arrangement which the experience of the philosophic traveller had taught him to form was this. When the train slackened in approaching the terminus, he closed his carpet bag, passed through two leather rings, which seemed to have been attached for that purpose, the strap which he had round his waist, buckled it

firmly; put on his bearskin burnouse, and, the train stopping at that moment, walked quietly out of the carriage. The large garment had a hood hanging at the back, and descended so as almost to touch the ground. The sleeves covered his hands. He glided over the platform like a shadow, and no protuberance in the thick and hanging garment betrayed the presence of the carpet bag.

"You see how much unnecessary trouble careful study enables one to avoid," he remarked to Guy, when he had re-established their, tête-à-tête, in the French carriage.

It has been mentioned that the stranger was a tall, slight man. He might have been considered eminently handsome, but for a somewhat disproportionate fulness in the outer part of the orbit of the eye, and an expression which must be described as sinister. The effect was perhaps produced, at all events it was heightened, by his practice of casting downward and aside his eyes when anyone sought his glance. The movement was compensated by a steadfast fixity of gaze at other times, that is to say, when you were not looking at him.

Guy's enjoyment of a novel route was almost entirely destroyed by the fact of its being pursued by night. Even the brief and hurried glimpses of scenery which the speed of a railway train seems to tear out of the eyes before they have fairly impressed their image on the retina are impossible by night. A jar, a rumble, and an annoying series of apparently useless stoppages, form the journey to Dover. Then you are chilled by draught through the station, sharply pained just behind the shoulder during your stumble through the lamplit or moonlit streets, nearly precipitated into the sea from the slippery woodwork

of the landing stage, and more or less baptised with sludge and sea water before you find your way on board. Then when you have secured your seat somewhere on deck, scorning to turn in for a two hours' passage, you are struck by the sudden terror that you are on board the wrong steamer. Reassured on this point, you are deafened and aggravated by the sudden and unnecessary vehemence of the bell. Then you discover that a limpid sheet of glass, such as you have persuaded yourself that the Channel was on that occasion, can give a very perceptible motion to the vessel-an increasing motion a motion that must be eminently unsafe. Then you wish that you had slept at Dover, to cross at daylight. Then you wish you were across. Then you cease to wish anythingto think anything-you only feeland the feeling is unpleasant. If this comes to a crisis it is the best thing for you; yet the crisis is what you most dread. It is the dread, however, that brings it on. The point is settled by the intervention, at the very unfittest part of the whole voyage, of the heartless steward, who demands your ticket. Then there is the sense of heavenly relief, the gentle moisture, the gradual restoration of the steamer to obedience to the aws of gravity; the lighthouse neared-passed-the shouts in a strange tongue, the climb up the long steps, and the blessed, blessed terra firma under foot again; which almost reconciles you to a long walk over a wind-swept and spraybesprinkled pier to the distant station.

How vast its illumined glass gables appear. How strange the smell of the Continent is in your English nostrils. You look round at your late fellow sufferers, marked by different degrees of pallor, and