It is perhaps of interest to turn from such dry outlines as may be sketched by the aid of almanacs to those more delicate gradations of the social movement, which in their detail are indeterminate and almost fugitive, but which in their mass may be apprehended, and made the subject of record. Pugilism, which ranges between manliness and brutality, and which in the days of my boyhood, in its greatest celebrations, almost monopolized the space of journals of the highest order, is now rare, modest, and unobtrusive. But, if less exacting in the matter of violent physical excitements, the nation attaches not less but more value to corporal education, and for the schoolboy and the man alike athletics are becoming an ordinary incident of life. Under the influence of better conditions of living, and probably of increased self-respect, mendicity, except in seasons of special distress, has nearly disappeared. If our artisans combine (as they well may) partly to uphold their wages, it is also greatly with the noble object of keeping all the members of their enormous class independent of public alms. They have forwarded the cause of self-denial, and manfully defended themselves even against themselves, by promoting restraints upon the traffic in strong liquors. In districts where they are most advanced, they have fortified their position by organized co-operation in supply. Nor are the beneficial changes of the last half-century confined to the masses. Swearing and duelling established until a recent date almost as institutions of the country, have nearly disappeared from the face of society.... At the same time the disposition to lay bare public mischiefs and drag them into the light of day, which, though liable to exaggeration, has perhaps been our best distinction among the nations, has become more resolute than ever.... The sum of the matter seems to be that, upon the whole and in a degree, we who lived fifty, sixty, seventy years back, and are living now, have lived into a gentler time; that the public conscience has grown more tender, as indeed was very needful; and that, in matters of practice, at sight of evils formerly regarded with indifference, or even connivance, it now not only winces, but rebels; that upon the whole the race has been reaping, and not scattering; earning, and not wasting. II. =Source.=--_The Times_, June 21.