Since the announcement by Turkey in October, 1875, that the interest on the Turkish debt would be reduced, there has been a great fall in foreign stocks. The debt of Turkey--roughly speaking, £200,000,000--has fallen, say, £125,000,000 in value. Egyptian securities, not including the floating debt, approximately estimated at £60,000,000, have fallen some £20,000,000 in value. In smaller stocks the fall has probably been some £20,000,000; and since the breaking out of the Eastern Question, Russian stocks, at an aggregate of about £165,000,000, have fallen 12 per cent., or a sum equal to more than £20,000,000 sterling. Besides these calamities there have been in England, as shown by a recent return, 1,797 commercial failures, representing liabilities of £30,000,000 sterling, and it has been calculated that of the firms and persons occupied in business, 3 per cent. have been unable to meet their engagements. These losses will account for less familiar faces being seen in the Park in the season, for the numerous houses unlet in fashionable quarters, for grouse-moors going almost begging; and, among many other significant facts, Tattersall, who generally has 150 applications for coachmen on his books, has now 150 coachmen applying to him for situations. In our present abundance of money, through dearth of safe investments, many persons have purchased art treasures; which would be wise, but for the pain it always causes to part with things that have once adorned our homes, which makes this not a happy speculation. It would be the part of a screech-owl to cry Woe! woe! and hoot triumphantly over the distresses of our country; but there seems so much of hope and promise in the fact of our meeting reverses of fortune with courage, that we cannot feel that a real disaster has overtaken us. We have in the case of France an example of how a great nation can rise renewed in strength out of overwhelming troubles, and our trial is less severe than that of France. It is not good for any people to sit down to eat and drink and rise up to play, any more than it is good for children to feed upon delicacies in lieu of simple fare. Persons suddenly reduced from affluence to comparative poverty may be glad of a few hints to show them how happiness and refinement are by no means incompatible with a smaller condition of fortune, with a shorter purse; for, after all, the purse is not the pleasure, it only helps us to procure it; our own taste and feeling must teach us what true pleasure is. It may be demurred that some of the household improvements suggested in this book would be expensive to carry out--such, for instance, as the arrangement of the kitchen; and this is true: but looked at as an investment, they would yield large interest, and it might be prudent to invest under one's own eye, in one's own house, some of the capital we cannot afford to sink. If used in economizing wages, it will give us a profitable return.