Section 4 of his Act does indeed enable the magistrates to grant new licenses and to make their own conditions as to the payments to be made by the licensee, the tenure of the license, and any other matters "as they think proper in the interests of the public." Under this section if there were a licensing bench containing a working majority of friends of the people, men who had no social or political interest whatever either in breweries or teetotallers, it would seem that almost any experiment in model public houses could be made under any regulations that the bench chose to impose on the licensee. Mr. Balfour was perfectly right in telling us that "love of temperance is the polite name for hatred of the publican"; but what is the right name for love of the brewer? The fact is that with these two warring political factions in the field the ideal public house is not for this generation. No use will ever be made of Section 4 under present conditions, because whoever applied for a license, and however noble and beautiful the licensed premises were to be, however ideal the provision of food, entertainment and drink, and whatever the guarantees of good management, the combined opposition of the puritans and the brewers would always strive to defeat or destroy any effort to give the poorer classes pure beer in pure surroundings. The first step you have to take is to convince the unenlightened puritan that the Alehouse is, or ought to be, as worthy a public house as the church or the school. This might be done by means of thoughtfully prepared text books of English literature. There is no great English book from the Bible downwards that has not incidental good and holy things to tell you of "The Inn." What an appetising volume could be written of the inns and innkeepers of Charles Dickens. How he revelled in their outward appearance and the inward soul of welcome which he found there. How he rejoiced in his sane English way over "The Maypole," "with its overhanging stories, drowsy little panes of glass and front bulging out and projecting over the pathway," and honest John Willet, the burly, large-headed man with a fat face, intended by providence and nature for licensed victualling. Could we have met Mrs. Lupin anywhere else than beneath the sign of that "certain Dragon who swung and creaked complainingly before the village alehouse door"? Could Mark Tapley have acquired his saintly outlook on life anywhere but at "The Blue Dragon," and are we not full of joy to find him returning there to live happily ever afterwards under the "wery new, conwivial, and expressive" sign of "The Jolly Tapley"? How pleasant it is to assist Crummles and Nicholas over their bowl of punch and the beefsteak-pudding in the inn on the Portsmouth Road. Pickwick is a cyclopaedia of inns, each with its own human character, good, bad and indifferent. Who has not stayed at a "Peacock" with a "mantelshelf ornamented with a wooden inkstand, containing one stump of a pen and half