“We live in a poor neighbourhood, and I have come to know the history of many poor working people lately; and I want to understand so much about it, even more than I used to long to understand the mysterious life of shells and flowers. Why aren’t there public baths, etc., for children as much as public schools? They want washing more than teaching. ‘Hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and bodies washed in pure water,’ is continually sounding in my ears.” (Well—why don’t you go and wash some, then?) “A poor woman, whose father was a West Country carrier,” (very good, but what is she?—the gist of the story depends on that: at present it’s like one of those French twisty Bulimi, with no beginning to it,) “was so delighted the other day to find we knew the ‘West Country;’ and when I was saying something about our intending to take the children down in May to pick cowslips, her face gleamed with delight as she said, ‘Oh, the years since I’ve seen a cowslip!’ We used to make ‘tisties’” (twisties?) “of them, and it sent a thrill of remembrance through me of my own birthday treats, and cowslip-ball days. “But I’m so glad you like the shells. No, there is nothing about vegetables in the word Bulimus; but ‘empty-bellied’ generally is hungry, and hungry generally eats a great deal when opportunity offers. Now these ‘Bulimi’ eat a great deal, (of vegetables, it happens,) so I suppose some one who named them thought they must be very hungry or ‘empty-bellied.’ That’s the way I read the story.” Well, it’s very accommodating and ingenious of you to read it that way; but many snails, thrushes, blackbirds, or old gentlemen of my acquaintance who ‘eat a great deal,’ appear to me more suggestive of the epithet ‘full-’ than ‘empty-’—waist-coated, shall we say? VI. Week’s Diary of a Companion of St. George:— “First day.—Received from Sheffield a dainty ‘well-poised little hammer’ and three sharp-pointed little chisels: felt quite cheerful about porphyry-cutting. “Second day.—Sent to the village in the morning for a slab of freestone; employed man in the afternoon to chisel a hole in it, and to fix the porphyry therein with plaster-of-Paris; drew a straight line, thinking it wiser not to begin with an asterisk; turned the points of two chisels without making the least impression on my line;—the process turned out to be skating, not engraving. Tried the third chisel, and, after diligent efforts, made a cut equal in depth to about two grains of sand. This is the Hamite bondage of art. Felt an increasing desire that the Master should try it, and a respect for the ancient Egyptians. Bore patiently the scoffs of the Amorites.