To this year belong _Punch's_ tirades against the iniquity of unjust rates. In December he has quite a long article based on the hardships of shopkeepers, small and large. He quotes two cases. The first is that of a small shopkeeper. The street in which he lived had been recently widened. Immediately his landlord raised his rent £30 a year, and his rates were at once raised from £16 to £30. Another victim carrying on business in a principal City thoroughfare paid a rental of £800 a year, his gross profits being £1,500. The street was improved; his rent was increased to £1,000; and £40 a year were added to his rates in consequence of an improvement which had already cost him £200 a year, which the landlord had received without the expenditure of a single shilling. One does not expect to find precise information on rating and rentals in a comic journal, but in the 'eighties at any rate _Punch_ did not shirk such topics. [Sidenote: _Housing and Health_] In the issue of December 8, 1883, _Punch_ ventured to remind his readers that on the 16th of that month, exactly forty years had elapsed since Hood's immortal "Song of the Shirt" appeared in his pages; but it was perhaps an overstatement to say that the "Bitter Cry" was as "loud and heart-rending" then as in the 'forties. The handling of the Housing Commission in 1884 is decidedly irreverent, and the account of its meetings and the speeches of Lord Salisbury, Mr. Lyulph Stanley (now Lord Sheffield), and Mr. Jesse Collings borders on the burlesque. Only towards Cardinal Manning does _Punch_ extend a limited measure of sympathy. There was, however, no alloy in his praise of Sir Edward Guinness's gift in 1880 of £250,000 for the better housing of the poor. When Christ Church Cathedral was restored in Dublin by the liberality of a wealthy distiller, a poor Irishwoman, as she gazed on the building, remarked: "Glory be to God! To think that whisky could do all that!" _Punch_ more discreetly commended "good Edward Guinness" as the "munificent host of 'The Tankard.'" This was the year of the Health Exhibition, the second of that annual series which was a special feature of the 'eighties. On their recreative aspect I speak elsewhere. It may suffice here to say that _Punch_ summed up the conflict of aims which they represented in the phrase "Commerce _v._ Cremorne." His anticipatory notice of the "Healtheries" abounds in burlesque suggestions for hygienic exhibits; in the account of the opening praise is largely tempered with irony; and his "insane-itary guide" shows how largely these Exhibitions depended on _al fresco_ entertainments, illuminations, and bands. The growth of the modern mania for amusement was still in its infancy, but _Punch_ has some instructive remarks on the decline of the many institutions which had begun with the highest instructional aims and aspirations:--