As for the material condition of the people, there cannot be a doubt that it has been amazingly improved within the last fifty years. It is not true, as stated in a very well known work, that the poor have become poorer, though the rich have certainly become richer. The skilled working man is better paid now than then, his work is more steady, his hours are shorter. He is better clad, with always a suit of clothes apart from his working dress; he is better taught; he is better mannered; he has holidays; he has clubs; he is no longer forbidden to combine; he can co-operate; he holds meetings; he has much better newspapers to read; his food is better and cheaper; he has model lodging houses. Not only is he actually better; he is relatively better compared with the richer classes, while for the last ten years these have been growing poorer every day, although still much richer than they were fifty years ago. Moreover, it is becoming more difficult in every line, owing to the upward pressure of labour, to become rich. His amusements no longer have the same brutality which used to characterise them. The Ring was his chief delight, and a well-fought battle between two accomplished bruisers caused his heart to leap with joy. Unhappily the Ring fell, not because the national sentiment concerning pugilism changed, but by its own vices, and because nearly every fight was a fight on the cross; so that betting on your man was no longer possible, and every victory was arranged beforehand. There are now signs of its revival, and if it can be in any way regulated it will be a very good thing for the country. Then there was dog-fighting, which is still carried on in certain parts of the country. Only a few years ago I saw a dozen dog-fights, each with its ring of eager lookers-on, one Sunday morning upon the sands between Redcar and Saltburn. All round London, again, there were ponds, quantities of ponds, all marked in the maps of the period and now all filled up and built over. Some, for instance, were in the fields on the east side of Tottenham Court Road. Hither, on Sundays, came the London working man with ducks, cats, and dogs, and proceeded to enjoy himself with cat-hunts and duck-hunts in these ponds. There were also bull-and-bear-baitings and badger-drawings. As for the fairs, Bartholomew and Greenwich, one is sorry that they had to be abolished, but I suppose that London had long been too big for a fair, which may be crowded but must not be mobbed. A real old fair, with rows of stalls crammed with all kinds of things which looked ever so much prettier under the flaring lamps than in the shops, with Richardson’s Theatre, the Wild Beast Show, the wrestlers and the cudgel-players, the boxers, with or without the gloves, the dwarfs, giants, fat women, bearded women, and monsters, was a truly delightful thing to the rustics in the country; but in London it was incongruous, and even in Arcadia a modern