As to personal impressions of the working of the system, it may be first said that attention having been so fully directed to the provision made for sale of food in these public-houses, this was tested in many with satisfactory results--food cheap, plentiful and wholesome being procurable. The public-houses were found to be generally neat and orderly, but not equal in comfort or appearance to the public-houses in other lands, several of them being underground vaults merely. The company has in Gothenburg twenty-five public-houses now; it leases the right of sale of spirits to eleven eating-houses and clubs; it has seven spirit-shops and thirteen wholesale places of sale; so that it makes ample provision for the satisfying of the thirsty throats of the Swedes. Unquestionably, Gothenburg has still a larger amount of drunkenness than is known in towns of equal size elsewhere, and a few minutes' observation near one of these "model public-houses" shows that there is a very great sale of drink; but it is also evident that much of the sale on market-days is to country-people from districts where there are no public-houses. Finally, the result of some time given to observation and to the consideration of the question on the spot convinced us that the stricter regulation and supervision of the sale of spirits in this method has reduced the proportionate drunkenness so far as it is brought before police notice; that the public-houses are improved in appearance and in order; that the grosser evils are to some extent done away with, and the community pecuniarily benefited; but that the working of this "experiment" has not succeeded in lessening the exceedingly large local demand for spirits. J.W.S. RUSSIAN RECRUITING. It is a common observation in the mouths of men who are estimating Russia's military strength that, although short of money, she has at least a boundless supply of men; but this idea, though plausible at first sight, is utterly erroneous. A few years ago the confidence of the Russian optimists in their "inexhaustible numbers" was rudely shaken by the discovery that in a single year, out of eighty-four thousand conscripts sent up to the various recruiting centres, no fewer than forty-four thousand were rejected as unfitted for service by disease or other physical defects, _not_ inclusive of short stature. The government took the alarm, and gave orders for the immediate formation of a medical commission and the thorough investigation of the sanitary condition of the population at large. This was promptly done, and the result startled all Russia with the announcement that her strength was barely one-half what it had previously been supposed to be.