“It must be evident by this time to the poor people themselves that they may wait and wait for years and years without getting the employment that suits them best. The metropolitan ratepayers are losing temper, and making themselves heard. The colonies are all calling for more men and more women, and more children approaching the age of work. Several members of the Government attended the meeting, either in person or by letter, with promises of money, advice, and aid. There is the encouragement of successful millions, who within our own lifetime have established themselves all over the world. Every cause that operated forty years ago operates now with tenfold force. At that date the only notion of an emigrant was a rough, misanthropical sort of man, who had read _Robinson Crusoe_, and who fancied a struggle for existence in some remote corner, with a patch of land, some small cattle, constant hardships, occasional disasters and discoveries, welcome or otherwise. It was not doubted for a moment that arts and sciences and accomplishments must be left behind. There could be no Muses or Graces in that nether world. The lady, so devoted as to share her husband’s fortune in that self-exile, would have to cook, bake, brew, wash, sew, mend, and darn, if indeed she could spare time from the still more necessary toil of getting something eatable out of the earth, the river, or the sea. That was the prevailing picture of emigrant life; and when missionary tracts and Mr. Burford’s dioramas indicated houses, streets, and public buildings, it was still surmised that these were flattering anticipations of what there was to be, just as one may see rows of semi-detached villas, picturesque drives, shrubberies, miniature lakes, and gothic churches in the window of a land-agent’s office, representing the golden futurity of a site now covered by cattle or corn. Forty years have passed, and where there might be then a few hard settlers, there are now cities, towns, and villages which England might be proud of; railways, and every possible application of art and science on a scale often exceeding our own. Large congregations meet in handsome churches, stocks and shares are bought and sold, machinery rattles and whizzes, ladies walk through show-rooms full of the last Parisian fashions, dinners are given worthy of our clubs, and operas are performed in a style worthy of Covent Garden, in places where, forty, years ago, men were eating each other.” * * * * * THE END. ADVERTISEMENTS Second Edition, price 7s. 6_d._, nearly ready, ROBERTS ON BILLIARDS. BY JOHN ROBERTS, CHAMPION OF ENGLAND. EDITED BY HENRY BUCK,