the room with damp and discomfort, and almost necessarily keeps the husband out of doors. Both man and woman are still young, but they look aged, and the children are thin and delicate. They seldom have enough to eat and never enough to wear, they are rarely healthy, and are never so happy as to thank God for their creation. Hard work will make these children orphans, or bad air, cold, and hunger will make these parents childless. In the case of another family, where the wage is regular--the income is 1_l._ a week--the outlook is not much brighter. Here there is the same crowded room, for which 3_s._ a week is paid, the same weary, half-starved faces, the same want of air and water. Here, too, the parents dare not look forwards, because even if the income remains permanent, it cannot secure necessaries for sickness, it cannot educate or apprentice the children, and it cannot provide for their own old age. No income, however, does remain permanent, and the regular hand is always anxious lest a change in trade, or in his employer’s temper, may send him adrift. In the cases where there is drink, carelessness, or idleness everything of course looks worse. The room is poorer and dirtier, the faces more shrunken, and the clothes thinner. Indignation against sin does not settle the matter. The poverty is manifest, and if the cause be in the weakness of human nature, then the greater and the harder is the duty of effecting its cure. Cases of poverty such as these are common; they who by business, duty, or affection go among the poor know of their existence; but if those who hire a servant, employ workpeople, or buy cheap articles would think about what they talk, they could not longer content themselves with phrases about thrift as almighty for good, and intemperance as almighty for evil. Fourteen pounds a year, if a domestic servant has unfailing health and unbroken work from the age of twenty to fifty-five, will only enable her to save enough for her old age by giving up all pleasure, by neglecting her own family duties, and by impoverishing her life to make a livelihood. Very sad is it to meet in some back-room the living remains of an old servant. Mrs. Smith is sixty-five years old; she has been all her life in service, and saved over 100_l._ She has had but little joy in her youth, and now in her old age she is lonely. Her fear is lest, spending only 7_s._ a week, her savings may not last her life. She could hardly have done more, and what she did was not enough. A wage of 20_s._ or 25_s._ a week is called good wages, yet it leaves the earners unable to buy sufficient food or to procure any means of recreation. The following table[2] represents the necessary weekly expenditure of a family of eight persons, of whom six are children. It allows for each day no cheering luxuries, but only the bare amount of carbonaceous and nitrogenous foods which are absolutely necessary for the maintenance of the body.