Sir Edwin Chadwick showed that the child mind could not profitably be kept learning more than an hour at a time, and recreation must intervene before a second hour can be usefully spent. What a mercy and advantage to thousands of poor children this has been! Even the dreary schoolroom of the last generation is disappearing. A schoolroom should be spacious and bright, and board schools are beginning to be made so now. I have seen a board school in a dismal court in Whitechapel which looked like an alley of hell. All thoughts for pleasant impressions in the child mind, which make learning alluring, were formerly uncared for. Happier now is the lot of poor children than any former generation knew. Within my time no knowledge of public affairs was possible to the people, save in a second-hand way from sixpenny newspapers a month old. Now a workman can read in the morning telegrams from all parts of the world in a halfpenny paper, hours before his employer is out of bed. If a pestilence broke out in the next street to the man's dwelling, the law compelled him to wait a month for the penny paper, the only one he could afford to buy, before he became aware of his danger, and it often happened that some of his family never lived to read of their risk. The sons of working people are now welcomed in the army, and their record there has commanded the admiration of the onlooking world. But they are not flogged as they once were, at the will of any arrogant dandy who had bought his mastership over them. Intelligence has awakened manliness and self-respect in common men, and the recruiting-sergeant has to go about without the lash under his coat. The working man further knows now that there is a better future for his sons in the public service, in army or navy, than ever existed before our time. Even the emigrant ship has regulations for the comfort of steerage passengers, unknown until recent years. People always professed great regard for "Poor Jack," but until Mr. Plimsoll arose, they left him to drown. Until a few years ago millions of home-born Englishmen were kept without votes, like the Uitlanders of South Africa, and no one sent an army into the country to put down the "corrupt oligarchy," as Mr. Chamberlain called those who withheld redress. But it has come, though in a limping, limited way. Carlylean depredators of Parliament decried the value of workmen possessing "a hundred thousandth part in the national palavers." But we no longer hear workmen at election times referred to as the "swinish multitude" who can now send representatives of their own order into the House of Commons. If the claims of labour are not much considered, they are no longer contemned. It is always easier for the rider than the horse. The people are always being ridden, but it is much easier for the horse now than it ever was before.