almsgiving and visiting have increased, good landlords have taken up cottage improvements. There have been harvest-homes, at which the young squires have danced with cottagers. But now Hodge has taken the matter into his own hands, and it seems not without effect. In a letter which I have seen, a squire says, "Here the people are all contented; we (the employers) have seen the necessity of raising their wages." Conservative journals begin to talk of measures for the compulsory improvement of cottages, for limiting ground game, giving tenant right to farmers, granting the franchise to rural householders. Yes, in consequence, partly, at least of this movement, the dwellings and the general conditions of the English peasantry will be improved, the game laws will be abolished; the farmers pressed upon from below, and in their turn pressing upon those above, will demand and obtain tenant right; and the country, as well as the city householders will be admitted to the franchise, which, under the elective system, is at once the only guarantee for justice to him and for his loyalty to the State. And when the country householder has the suffrage there will soon be an end of those laws of primogeniture and entail, which are deemed so Conservative, but are in fact most revolutionary, since they divorce the nation from its own soil. And then there will be a happier and a more United England in country as well as in town: the poor law, the hateful, degrading, demoralizing poor law will cease to exist; the huge poor- house will no longer darken the rural landscape with its shadow, in hideous contrast with the palace. Suspicion and hatred will no more cower and mutter over the cottage hearth, or round the beer-house fire: the lord of the mansion will no longer be like the man in Tennyson slumbering while a lion is always creeping nearer. Lord Malmesbury is astonished at this disturbance. He always thought the relation between the lord and the pauper peasant was the happiest possible; he cannot conceive what people mean by proposing a change. But then Lord Malmesbury was placed at rather a delusive point of view. If he knew the real state of Hodge's heart he would rejoice in the prospect of a change, not only for Hodge's sake, but, as he is no doubt a good man, for his own. England will be more religious, too, as well as happier and more harmonious, let the clergy be well assured of it. Social injustice especially when backed by the Church, is unfavourable to popular religion.