would regard as extravagant, and to approach nearer to the old-country standard of living. We are not able to follow Dr. Young in his researches into the rate of wages and cost of subsistence in the various countries of continental Europe which he visited. None of them approach so near the American standard as Great Britain. In most of them labor is poorly paid and the working classes live meanly according to our notions, yet contrive, withal, to enjoy a degree of comfort, and even happiness, which to us seems hard to understand under the circumstances. [27] _Labor in Europe and America: A Special Report on the Rates of Wages, the Cost of Subsistence, and the Condition of the Working Classes in Great Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, the other Countries of Europe, and in the United States and British America._ By Edward Young, Ph.D., Chief of the United States Bureau of Statistics. 1875. [28] Hallam’s _Middle Ages_, ch. ix. part i. [29] _Id._ ch. ix. part ii. [30] $1 a day for laborers was offered by public advertisement in February of this year, by the superintendent of the Centennial grounds, and men were glad to take it. How strange the spectacle in free America—how fruitless and disheartening the struggle it portends—when legislation is invoked at Albany, in the great State of New York, to keep up a fictitious price of labor! SIR THOMAS MORE. _A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._ FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON. VI. There was a castle in Yorkshire whose tall, majestic towers commanded a view of the country for miles around, rising far above the sombre depths of the ancient forest-trees that covered the hills on which the castle was seated. A silence like the grave reigned within and around this princely habitation. Merry young pages no longer bounded over balustrades and the walks winding from the drawbridge. The Gothic arches no more re-echoed with the noisy clamor of the hounds nor the loud cheering of the young hunters. Rank weeds covered the lofty ramparts and clusters of wild flowers swung between their solitary battlements, as though nature had struggled to conceal the eternal mourning which they seemed for ever condemned to wear. A traveller approached the castle and examined with great attention the arches bearing the arms of the earls of Northumberland. He held by the bridle a beautiful horse, covered with sweat and dust, whose drooping head and trembling limbs attested his extreme fatigue. “This is certainly the place!” he exclaimed, still looking around him. “I recognize the crouching lion of Northumberland!” He knocked loudly and waited a long time.