In London, at any rate, strong drink flows like a river. There are 5300 licensed houses in the metropolitan area alone. In Kilburn, a suburb of more or less irreproachable respectability, there are twenty-five churches and chapels and thirty-five public-houses. During late years public-house property has begun to be looked upon in the light of a gilt-edged investment. Turn where one will, one finds the older inns are being swept away, while on their sites are erected flaring gin-palaces, with plate-glass fronts, elaborate mahogany fitments, gorgeous saloon and private bars, painted ceilings, inlaid floors, and electric light throughout. Behind the bar, instead of mine host of a former day and his wife and daughter, there are half a dozen perked-up barmaids with rouged cheeks and Rossetti hair, and a person called the manager, who for L2 a week runs the place for its proprietors--a Limited Company, which owns, perhaps, twenty or thirty other houses. In the conduct of these mammoth drinking-places three great points are kept in view: namely, that a quick-drinking, stand-up trade pays better than any amount of slow regular custom; that the English drinker of the lower class cannot tell the difference between good drink and bad, often preferring, indeed, the bad to the good; and that, as bad liquor is cheaper than good, the sound commercial thing to do is to supply bad liquor. With these admirable axioms continually before it, the English trade has prospered amazingly. More drink and worse drink is sold in England to-day than has ever been sold in England before. Through legislation intended to ensure sound liquor and the proper conduct of licensed houses the proprietors have consistently made a point of driving the usual brewer's dray. "In order to meet the Food and Drugs Adulteration Act, all spirits sold at this establishment, while of the same excellent quality as heretofore, are diluted according to strength." "The same excellent quality as heretofore" is choice, and so is "diluted according to strength." As for the beer, we dilute also the beer according to strength. When we are caught at it, it is a mistake on the part of the cellarman, who has been discharged; and the fine is so small in proportion to the profit on selling water, that we smile at the back of our necks and keep on diluting according to strength. Our whole system, in fact, is designed to make people drink, and to make them drink the worst that we dare put before them.