wards the not-forgotten name; and the mother steals after nightfall into the picture-gallery, where a fine handsome boy is placed with his face to the wall, and covers the canvas with tearful kisses. More ghastly oftimes is the story, where the ruined gambler, reduced to desperation, has sought with his own rash hand to explore the avλious do μòvs, the "mys terious bourne from whence no traveller e'er returns," and presented himself, another victim in the sacrifice to the great goddess Fortune.

tuition; when the delusive advertisement has | per, feels perchance a tenderer touch of pity to been answered with the courage of despair, and the long, cold journey has been travelled, and late at night the long line of lights come gleaming up through the dark, and a light horizon announces that beneath its canopy lies the wondrous mother-city, then what a cold feeling of despair settles down, like lead, into the stranger's heart, a rush of blinding tears, which obscures for a moment the view, while still the memory of happier times seems like the music of faintly-heard chimes, or, like the regretful sound which lingers after the keys have ceased throbbing to the exquisite sonatas of Beethoven! With feelings such as these, then, Ella Grantley approached the delightful, wicked, reckless city of Baden, where still the ball kept rolling, and still the little game was being made, and the croupiers raked in the spoils with impassive faces. The next day, when, hanging on her husband's arm, she ventured out to hear the band play, was a very great ordeal. Obliged to see that her husband nodded to, and seemed on familiar terms with, men from whom she shrank as instinctively as does the sensitive plant from the touch of man, she wondered if they had ever been gentlemen, these swaggering desperadoes, with the ruffling manner and cool impertinent stare, which brought the angry blood surging into her cheeks. Probably they had all been gentlemen at some former period of their existence, and had seen better days-better in the sense that a dishonest action or a mean advantage would have made them blush; indeed, they might have been the pride of any woman, and man's "own ideal knights;" but now they resemble the daring mariner of Horace's ode, for the "Es triplex," the triple brass of shamelessness, has covered their cheeks, and their hearts are as the nether mill-stone, utterly insensible to the warnings of what was once conscience; they have forgotten the old gentlemanly instincts, and the only instincts which they adhere to now are those of the bird of prey-cunning of hand, ruthless of heart, with the utmost unconcern and with the most business-like air; taking the money of the dupes who fall into their traps, and laying as a salve to the battered remains of conscience-which sometimes in the night time, when "poppies and mandragora" have not been able to summons sleep, accuses them-the com

forting assurance that if they did not win the money, somebody else would. And thus they improve the shining hour, these exiles at Baden and Hamburg, sometimes in the height of success, like Midas turning everything to gold, and the while that the golden tide lasts arraying themselves in gorgeous raiment, and giving suppers to dubious company: when the tide turns and fortune frowns, content to take bread and water fare, and accept the loan of a few francs, till, like as Mr. Micawber says, "something turns up," and after a life of mingled poverty and dishonour, they sink into a foreign grave; and the grey-haired old father at home, when he sees the ruined son's death in the pa

Fortunately for the new arrivals, there hap pened to be some people staying at Baden who were not quite lost, and still remained within the charmed circle of respectability-people who had shared Grantley's hospitality at Portman Square; and though it would be but consonant to human nature for them to have given the cool and haughty stare of forgetfulness when they met their hosts in ruin, still these people did not behave fashionably for once. To Ella (frightened and cowering before the enfans perdus of the Kursaal and the roulette-tables) these people seemed as visitants from a better world; and the poor harassed lady took refuge with them, with a weary sigh of satisfaction. These people, too (their name was Charteris), actually went to church at Baden, with strict regularity (a thing singular for the place), and sat under the valuable preaching of a slightly soiled English divine, who had been a fellow of Trinity, had come out with young De Croesus, the millionaire's son, but having assisted the gamblers to considerably lighten the young Oxford man of his golden coins, he was released from the tuition of the youth, and chose to stay on in Baden, addicting himself rather to absinthe and preaching to the English residents, on the chance of an occasional pound to keep body and soul together.

The Charteris people also gave English reunions, kept very select on Tuesday evenings when all the native talent that could be procured in the way of singing was assembled, and as all the Baden world was ringing with the fame of a certain prima donna assoluta whom everybody raved about, and about whom there were strange stories extant, to the effect that she was "under the protection" of a certain Italian who always accompanied her, and sang a decent second.

"I always like to have the woman to my home, my dear," said Mrs. Charteris to Ella; "she sings divinely, and I have seen her do Maritana, at the little opera we have here, in a way that would make some Covent Garden people look small, but I must confess that she frightens me, with her fierce cruel face and terrible eyes. She always seems to be looking far away, and goes through her performance in a painfully mechanical way. I don't quite envy the human being that crossed her path. She is on in "Lucrezia Borgia" on Monday night; and some night we will have her here. The Cotogni (for that's her name) never refuses me, for some reason or other."

The invitation to the opera Ella refused, not

feeling inclined; but accepted the invitation to the evening-party, promising to bring her husband-the husband who at that present moment was gambling with all his might and main, and having a successful run.

sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, or any kind of sweet music.

These characters have been so often described, that my patient reader is probably ready to cry out, "Quousque tandem ?" I am not going to The tide of play is at its height in the gorgeous abuse your patience, as did Catiline that of the room of the Kursaal to-night, and everything famous Roman orator; I will content me with that can allure the eye and gratify the senses is saying that the company assembled at good there. A great blaze of light throws out, in Mons. Benazet's little pandemonium was no strong relief, the magnificent carvings of the better nor worse than do generally congregate pillars and the heavy hangings which are thrown there-dupes and their protectors, hawks with back in order that the evening-breeze may carry the hooked beaks and talons ready to clutch the in the dreamy notes of a delicious German gold, immensely wealthy Russian nobles who waltz which the band is playing. There is very did not require much scraping to show the prolittle sound else, except the monotonous clickverbial Tartar, impassive Englishmen of all

66

of the rolling ball, and the croupier's chaunt of Rouge gagne, et couleur perd. Faites votre jeu. Le jeu est fait."

Truly, Mons. Benazet understood human character when he made the accompaniments of the devil's work so fascinating to the senses. It was the pleasantest of all lounges, this room, when the night grew a little chill and people were tired of sitting under the limes, and awearied of the merry stream of parti-coloured, gay groups, that passed and re-passed, in a species of rhythm, to the pealing strains of the divine "Soldaten-Lieder valze." Then there are refreshments to be had, and the good Rhine wine, with crystal bubbles, that court the lip and make merry the heart; and when one has eaten and drunk, what better amusement can there be than just to place one's little coin on a colour, and if the little coin makes unto itself more little coins by way of company, what more charming than to leave the gambling-room, having broken the bank and left the croupiers to tear their hair, in impotent wrath!

And so the habit grows, till what was only a little amusement-the mere staking of a small coin, as every gentleman should who visits the "Bads"-has degenerated into a terrible passion for play, till the rosy-cheeked portly English. tourist, who entered the room as a mere joke first time, finds himself thither, year after year, with an ever-increasing ardour for the "black and the red," till he has lost all control over the dreadful habit, and the Kursaal has proved to him "the hall of the lost footsteps."

Nothing is commoner at the gaming-table, playing roulette, than an old grey-haired withered woman, in whom the fires of passion have smouldered out into the gray ashes of apathy, whose only token of life is that wild cunning gleam which flashes from her eye when the croupier announces her colour as winning; and the eager way in which she stretches out her withered talon-like hand to gather-in her winnings, and then mumbles and chuckles over the golden pile, in a manner dreadful and sickening to behold. "Auri sacra fames, quid non mortalia cogis pectora." Here was the sanctity of age, the venerable beauty of the crown of silver hairs, the pride of experience, low, low in the dust before the golden idol, which to worship requires not the incitement of

kinds taking their losses quietly and calmly as a hero meets his death, shoddy American gentlemen having just become millionaires by striking ile," rough of demeanour, unutterably gorgeous as to apparel, and demi-monde ladies with wonderful costumes, chignons that sparkled with gold dust, and jewellery that other people besides infidels might adore, and with them the silly fools their victims, who strutted about as though proud of their property, and seeming to say "Voila! Here I am, the fortunate possessor of so much beauty and magnificence, and beating you all to nothing in the fashionable game of immorality."

And thus, from morning to night, amid a wonderful atmosphere of music and laughter, and gaming and dancing and eating, the sun times the crack of a pistol disturbed the player, rose and the sun set upon Baden; and if someand something was carried out covered with a ghastly white cloth, why it was all in the day's work, and the cry rose still louder from the slight interruption, as does the hoarse cry of a maddened crowd stopped by a slight barrier. "Faites votre jeu, Messieurs. Le jeu est fait !"

CHILDHOOD.-Children are but little people, yet they form an important part of society, expend much of our capital, employ a greater portion of our population in their service, and occupy half the literati of our day in labours for their instruction and amusement. They cause more trouble and anxiety than the national debt; the loveliest women in her maturity of charms, breaks not so many slumbers, nor occasions so many sighs, as she did in her cradle; and the handsomest of men, with full-grown mustaches, must not flatter himself that he is half so much admired as he was when in petticoats. Without any reference to their being our future statesmen, philosophers, and magistrates, in miniature disguise, children form, in tial class of beings; and the arrival of a bawling intheir present state of pigmy existence, a most influenfant, who can scarcely open his eyes, and only opens its mouth, like an unfledged bird, for food, will effect the most extraordinary alteration in a whole household; substitute affection for coldness, duty for dissipation, cheerfulness for gravity, bustle for formality, and unite hearts which time has divided.

THE HEALTH QUESTION.

corrupt body and soul-is to utter only simple, we discover our cellar-dwellers emasculated truth. To assert that its endemic influences by the dank and putrid emanations of their add forty per cent. to our bills of mortality, living tombs. sixty per cent. to our pauperism, seventy per cent. to our local crime, would be but the iteration of truisms. To describe it as a gangrene of the social membrane, as a "goitre (so to speak) upon our community's body, would be but a suggestion of superficial venom and hideousness. For our tenant-house cancer is not merely protrusive; in fact, it does not protrude enough, therefore we lose sight of it; but it is a polypus, secretly and constantly renewing its virus-fatally expansive for mischief, and accretive of all mischievous elements. "It doth make the meat it feeds on."

We do not propose to deal rhetorically with our tenant-house, its incubations, or its progenies. Here it is, in our midst, quite equal to the task of telling its own story eloquently, in mortality-bills, crime-dockets, and the records of pauperism. We are content to marshal facts and array statistics, letting them fight their own battle against prejudice or indifference. Beginning at the social base, we encounter thousands of dwellers in cellars six feet or more underground-cellars that are not simply dark, impure abodes, but clammy, mouldy, obscene abysses, invaded periodically by tide-water, or submerged by drainage of the soil. Life rots in them: seventy per cent. of children born in their gloom perish within five years; many of the residue survive only as victims to future typhoid, rheumatism, hip, or bowel affections. These cellar-born children have pallid skins rickety limbs, watery blood. Hygrometric scrutiny of the holes they inhabit shows a condition of atmosphere actively destructive by night and by day-day, indeed, with its aircurrents and sunshine, is unknown to our city troglodytes. Crawling out of their burrows, into narrow lanes, close-pent by high walls, they may catch occasional glimpses of the blue sky, just as the cretins and cagots of sunless Alpine chasms may get sight of a heaven far above them. Indeed, our cellar-dwellers have much in common with the cretins. They are not afflicted with goitre or elephantiasis; they do not transmit leprosy and idiocy; but they exhibit the incipient effects of the same destitution of sunlight and proper air which engenders cretinism and its revolting monstrosities. Darkness, moisture, and squalor in our subterrene tenements are constantly operative, producing scrofula, rickets, ophthalmia and erysipelas. We need no subtler agent of disease than darkness alone. All foul or loathsome forms of life or decay multiply under its curtain. Where heaven's sunbeams enter not, health cannot survive. Epidemics are sure to fasten, with deadliest gripe, on the inhabitants of dark, close localities. The sunny side of a street has been known to escape a pestilential visitation which decimated the population opposite. As we find the negro and Indian drinking strength from the solar rays which they delight to bask in, so surely may

A traveller visiting Lyons, in France, will notice long lines of stumps bordering on the river; remains of giant trees, which formerly adorned the landscape. Their naked, blasted appearance might indicate the locality of a great conflagration, or the scene of conflict during war. But on inquiry it was found that the fumes of a neighbouring vitriol factory have silently, stealthily, but with deadly influence, destroyed the trees, as effectually as if a cannonade had levelled them to the ground.

Within the limits of our city there exist fac tories of poison more malignant than the fumes of vitriol, and their tendency, nay, their constant effect is to dwarf, stunt, and kill-not trees, but human beings; more actively destructive than the Lyons laboratory, and operating every hour, both of day and night.

In many localities it appears as if no super. vision were ever contemplated. Entire streets seem to be given over to the dominion of dirt. "Fever-nests," where typhoid infection is bred by miasmatic sewers, and "small-pox circles," where loathsome contagion riots on foul house gases and decomposed garbage, horrify the explorer in these quarters. Filth destroys each year its thousands of men, women, and children in our city, as surely as vitriol killed those trees in Lyons. Thirty per cent. of our whole mortality rises from preventible disease. What army, even in an open country and well fed, would not be ravaged by disease under such conditions? But we have numberless aggravations of the packing process. All descriptions of

noxious surroundings besiege our tenant-house population. Slaughter-houses, fat-boiling con cerns, and similar nuisances, are scattered in the vicinity of populous neighbourhoods. Vegeta ble decay, animal putrefaction, quite as deleterious as vitriol exhalations, are heaped in dust-bins through many of our streets and back-areas. There are no vigilant police to remove them: no officer of the day responsible for their extirpation. We have no Sanitary Department in the city at all commensurate with what the name implies.

We are, with good reason, alarmed at the occasional encroachments upon local health and comfort by the erection of chemical works, furnaces, glue-factories, and kindred nuisances near our private dwellings. We feel properly aggrieved when one of the slaughter-houses dis tributed through densely populated neighbour hoods casts forth its noisome stenches "betwixt the wind and our nobility." We can trace a fatal connection between the slow fever which robbed us of a darling child or a dear wife, and that sickening effluvium of which our beloved one had so often complained, as invading the windows. We have a right to complain of the official neglect which allows compost grounds, brickfields, &c., &c., &c., to be permanently located within a few hundred yards of our decent and respectable dwellings. But though