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LIGHT IN CHAOS.

possess, of forming an opinion of their propriety, and of enforcing their views.

Twenty years or more have passed in serious discussions on sanatory and social reforms. Many of them have been carried; but the work is done slowly, as if it were the privilege of the present generation to discuss measures, and even to undergo experiments, for the benefit of their successors, instead of their own good. More lives are annually destroyed by bad sanatory arrangements in large towns, than in all the great battles of the same period. The loss of life by wretched arrangements of cottages in rural districts is also enormous. These evils will only be removed by members in earnest; and they are not to be expected until the electors are in earnest; and comprehend all, or nearly all, the intelligence and the power of the land; yet the butchery of a great many thousand persons annually, neighbours and friends, or their children, is a serious—a terrible calamity, undergone with great resignation. The political past has effected good, for which we are thankful, and neglected more good, which, if done, would have merited more thanks. The political future needs to be less crotchetty and more determined. Its work has more reference to homely things than many whom it concerns take the trouble of finding out. They regard politics overmuch as the lounge of the idle. The idea was an able and clever dodge; and it has been used down to tatters. Are the idle alone interested in scholastic education? Proba bly they alone are uninterested in the matter. Still, in England and Scotland it has been agitated not for two or three years only, but for more. The Parliament has been unable to supply the deficiency; while alleging the fact they devise

nothing for its removal, or nothing on which a majority agree.

We would not expect the people to do worse for themselves than acknowledge an evil, but leave it unredressed-assert that their children could not read, but find no means of teaching them -confess the need of superior education, but allow the vacancy to remain; and discuss for years the superiority of flour ground by steam, over the old water-wheel process; but refuse to let the people have bread until the discussion were brought to a harmonious conclusion. These anomalies, and all anomalies can only be subdued by allowing more power to the popular will, coming nearer by a substantial step to the practice of popular government, and permitting a fair representation of all classes; and whatever work may come up for the distant future; that should be the work of the immediate future-of the current year.

We advised organisation some months ago, but that advice is not palateable in some quarters. The Middlesex Liberal Association expired in Jermyn-street, London, a few weeks since, from destitution. That body never, probably, comprised a large number, who were in want of any particular privilege. It was, perhaps, like other liberal societies, no more than ministerial, and now that no opposition exists, its occupation resembles Othello's, or that of the old coachman. The case of other liberals is very different, and although associations, to be useful now, should be educational in their way, instructive, and numerous; yet it does not follow that they should-it follows that they should not-seek to win from fear what reason may wrest from reason; for if there be no very active pressure for reform, only passive resistance will be offered to its achievement.

LIGHT IN CHAO S.

De profundis clamavi. My spirit had tasted
What seemed to be joy but all bitterness proved,
And the heart that its wealth of affection had wasted
On phantoms had learned to loathe where it loved.

De profundis clamavi. My tears unavailing
Had moistened a pillow from evening to dawn;
And all the day long woke the voice of my wailing
The slumbering echoes of woodland and lawn.

De profundis clamvvi. Not icy the chillness
That fell on my lone heart, congealing its streams;
No transparence was there-and the source of its stillness
Was langour begotten of horror-fraught dreams!

De profundis clamavi. No black garb were dressed in
The shadows that weighed on my brain and my view
But, like figures that rise when the eye-balls are pressed in,
Fantastic and gloomy-yet nameless their hue.

De profundis clamavi. My tears unavailing
Had moistened a pillow from dawning till eve,
And the echoes aroused by the voice of my wailing
Seemed ghosts in a prison pent never to leave.

De profundis clamavi. A light there came streaming-
Down streaming through fathomless depths of despair,
And my son leapt to life like the patriarch dreaming,
It wrestled, and found that an Augel was there!

Z.

THE WINTER AMUSEMENTS OF LONDON.

THE amusements of the people, like their ballads, form a landmark in their progress, while they help it either " downwards or upwards." Like some other things, they are to one person a cause and to another a consequence. The medieval church converted Christmas into a great festival; or probably gave the name to the mid-winter festivities of nations who had little active work at this season. Not many years have passed away since one half of our seamen came home for the winter. Agricultural operations went lazily onwards at that time. The building trades stayed their movements until spring. Mankind imitated the earth and its vegetables. They were still while the snow was on the ground.

The festivities of the season survive their original cause; for we do not suppose that to have been connected in any way with the name now given. They should not be abridged, for civilisation with its competition has brought many benefits, and charged a handsome price for them. One item in the bill is long hours of labour, making it a drudgery instead of an honest pleasure; and we all require to guard against these inroads.

London possesses a population probably double that of any other European city; and we have no faith in Asiatic numbers. It looks rather down upon provincial capabilities for rational amusements, although Manchester, Liverpool, or Glasgow, have more abundant means of intellectual enjoyment. The metropolis has not yet a single hall equal to either of the towns named, or to halls in half a dozen more that might be named. The Crystal Palace is not in London, and does not supply the want.

The amusements of the London population at this season are closely connected with eating and drinking, with the exception of those theatrical extravagances devised for the amusement of children from school. The legitimate drama-as it is termed is put aside for grotesque pantomimes; and nobody pretends that any very deep moral is concealed in them. The cries and sights of London are chiefly occupied in providing for the pleasures of the table; and the festival among the middle classes is domestic; amongst a class far beneath the middle it is gin-palaceive. The Smithfield Cattle Show was the most expensive exhibition, and the most attractive of the season. The people went for once to see the animals that they were to eat. And those who could not afford the shilling and the time necessary to visit the great gathering of fatted cattle, were gratified by enterprising fleshers, who exposed to the view of their customers for many days the live animals that were doomed for death and division amongst them. Very marvellous was the number of prize cattle at this season's Smithfield exhibition. Either the beasts were all prizes, or the butchers "wherever we chanced to roam" were the spirited persons

who bought up the prizes at any price. No modest man could be found in the trade, so far as our experience reached, who had not gone and bought some sort of prize. The shops devoted to the abomination of Mr. Simpson, and other zealous vegetarians, were gaily decorated with green leaves and misletoe, to keep the stock in countenance as they descended to their graves. Flesh eaters relished the display, portentous though it seemed of night-mares; yet with their own satisfaction some stray sympathies must have been given to the sorrows of those vegetising friends, whose finer feelings are said to be distressed horribly at the smell of hot joints. It is an odour bespeaking envy to the shillingless-always a numerous class; and now that one branch of Hindooism has converts among this Gothic and Teutonic race, the steam that arises from smoking rounds in those Bishopsgate-street windows, where a man may have a ready-cooked dinner at any hour without any notice, is the incense of sorrow. Well, we can't all be happy. Experience goes clean against the effort. And the leaders of the twenty-second century must necessarily be in bad and savage company in this nineteenth. One of them disposing of the "What's to be done with all the cattle ?" question, which naturally comes up for discussion among those who live on herbs only, intimated that they would be allowed their full enjoyment of life-meaning, we fancy, that they would die of old age after swallowing half a cwt. of Holloway's pills, and a stone weight of the Morrisonian gamboge--and decidedly forgetting that in his condition of the world the greater part of the cattle that might have lived, never would live to enjoy life in any way. Where would be the economy of keeping land in grass when all we needed from grass would be milk and dairy produce, at rates so enhanced that wine, subject even to the scandal of Messrs. Oliveira and MacGregor-the wine duty-would be the cheaper drink. We recollect a half demented physician who held that the value of buttermilk would never be known until it was sold for a crown a quart. If that worthy dispenser of simples were alive, he would rejoice at the coming time when his cherished drug will bring its natural value in the market and be esteemed.

and

Although the vegetarians perceive not that the success of their views is the death of cattle, for our fields must grow brocolis and cauliflowers, potatoes and Swedish turnips-the latter being of a saccharineish and sugarish taste-onions radishes, not to be used as pickles or relishes, but for plain food-when we are confined to the diet of Nebuchadnezzar with the addition of all manner of fruits in their season; and very much at a loss to know what to drink, seeing, of course water, is a bloody sort of draught, it being calculated by scientific personages, that a ploughman swallows

THE VEGETARIANS.

three millions of animalcules daily, while all his life | money paid for them. Still they are not all con

that poor man believes that he drinks the limpid spring; still, even now, we are so disposed to the doctrine, and the idea of animals enjoying lifeand vegetables, too, in their own way-that we protest against lamb and green peas in their season-and veal at any season-as costly extravagances and offensive cuttings up of life's enjoy ments at an improper time.

The propriety of adorning the carcases of slain beasts with garlands or knots of tri-coloured ribbons at this juncture is not apparent. If they are there to denote the satisfaction of their owners at the prospect of a penny per lb. of additional profit, it is a horrible illustration of the line

Self lies hid in all our feelings.

The custom may, however, be derived from the ancient practice of decorating the beasts offered in sacrificial usages. Somebody may raise a "note and query" upon the subject, and midsummer may pass before it can be fully ventilated. We cannot wait so long out of the green-grocery establishments and their attractions-not of course, in those animal gratifications common to them-but the bower or tabernacle character that they possess, and the gypsy look they give to anybody under their canopies of green leaves and red berries. England must be wide to furnish the evergreens that London needs in the last half of each December. As for the cattle we know that the best come from Scotland, although we don't wish to say so-remembering with not a little confusion and dread that there is a Times, and there once was a Professor Blackie, though we fear that he is extinguished-if not in the manner of the sheep fed by the Earl of Aberdeen, after his expulsion from the premiership of course, which dignified the shop of an Islington butcher a few days since yet butchered intellectually, like a barbarian gladiator in old centuries, whose woes were sung by Byron-butchered to make a London holiday, by the grim priest of ink and ink-craft.

Then these red berries-the pretty bunches of red berries. Where on earth come they all from ? Certainly no single human being ever saw so many growing in a season as anybody may see plucked here in half an hour and half a mile's walk. Their beauty is past all doubt, and they carry back many thousand pairs of care-worn dim eyes, back, far back through merry days and nights-to home and boyhood, and braes and glens, and woods. No such braes and glens, and hedges and woods, exist now, or we see them not-could not see them. Others may, of course-young eyes may-but for half the world they are gone out of the world, and gone for ever.

No more young trees can be planted in England this year. That must be plain. They were all wanted for London last week, and the nurseries must be bare and empty. An ordinary calculation makes something like two hundred thousand young firs for the consumption in Christmas trees by the metropolitans, and fifteen thousand pounds as the

sumed. They will live in little plots of ground in back courts or suburban gardens for years to come, perhaps. The great grandchildren of the little children who have gathered mottoes from their taper-lighted branches, may hang their swings between these same brauches; and wish that the summer holidays were only come, and they were off to the country-the nearest point meriting the name being half way to Brighton, or Birmingham, or Bath, from St. Paul's; and people will then wonder where the Palm House stood in the great market of Kew, while it was a garden, very long ago.

Twenty minutes to twelve on the Saturday night before Christmas week, and not a shop is closed in the long lines of Bishopsgate, Bethnal Green-road, Hackney-road, Hoxton, High-street, and all the satellites, broad and narrow, that cross and re-cross these great thoroughfares. What has come of the short hours' movement, its meetings, and pamhplets, and reports! Here are five or six thousand persons, in one district, chained from early morning to the latest hour of night-to counters, and shelves, and tills-the victims of miserable customs and rivalry. The short hour movement has moved back rather than forward in all parts of London, out of the city, in its municipal and narrow sense, and a few west end streets. Where the customers belong chiefly to the working classes, the shopkeeping world appears to toil for sixteen hours daily. The system produces a middle class, in search of riches at any cost, spending life in acquiring the means of living, and thoughtless of their assistants and their comforts, or even their existence, beyond the passing hour.

A strange race line the London streets with stalls, containing sometimes considerable value, but chiefly in the provision trade. The division of labour is, however, carried to a ridicuously minute extent by some of these dealers. Stationery seems a favourite article, but the vendor of pens has no connexion with papers, and the man with memorandum books transacts no business in envelopes. The social state of this numerous class would form a curious inquiry; but it has nothing to do with amusements, and would yield a result of a character far from amusing.

The gin palaces of that district of the metropolis obviously furnish the greater source of recreation, They were crowded with customers, and more than half of them were women. This feature in London drinking distinguishes it from that of the Scotch towns. Glasgow has many drunken females, but the customers to its licensed houses belong not to the extent of one half to that class. The beer traffic takes many sober females to these places in London, for families want their beer off the wood, but we discount that class of messengers, who are easily known, in saying that one half of the frequenters of gin shops in the lower districts of London belong to the class whose intemperance is hopeless and irremediable ruin.

8

LECTURES, THEATRES, EXHIBITIONS.

A little girl, not over eight years old, at nearly midnight was tempting its mother home, who leant her back to the wall, needed its support, and refused to move on by a single step. The child argued the case, but the beldame argued too, that she was a good mother, a very good mother, and all the neighbours knew that she was a good mother. In a Scotch town she would have been apprehended for drunkenness; but nobody seemed to consider that an offence had been committed in Hoxton; and this remiss dealing with drunkards probably swelled appearances against the North, on Mr. Hume's return, which caused much excitement some years ago. This evil peculiarity may also in some part explain the heavy part of the business in Police Courts, relating to domestic quarrels. It will not excuse the beating of wives by husbands; but it renders such disgraceful occurrences the very natural consequences of a night's amusement.

Attempts are made in some quarters of the great metropolis to establish lectures in half explored regions, for the instruction of the vicinity, illustrated with maps, or magic lanterns, or small panoramic mechanisms, and art; yet the lecturers generally seem to be ashamed of themselves-keep well out of the way in remote corners, dimly lighted, without half the gas and glare of a third rate public house, and far below the appearance even of an ordinary coffee shop. They appreciate their capabilities, perhaps, too low-a most uncommon crime; but the instruction is frequently dreary and dry. Statistics are jumbled into a most forbidding form. Of course, nobody recollects anything respecting them. It is not desirable, perhaps, that anybody should. They refer to subjects for which nobody there cares; of which few have previously heard. A lecture upon the art and mystery of shoemaking might be serviceable. The rise and progress of gutter people might be amusing. England has a thousand chapters in its history that would furnish admirable material for lectures. But they should be full of bold, broad touches-for the pre-Raphaelite style will not do with the multitude, who have heard very little from, or of, the schoolmaster.

The intellectual position of this district may be almost gathered from the tone of its great theatre, of which we once read a favourable notice in a literary journal, and had some desire to see the manner of administering the drama there. Its entrance is between the jaws of a great gin palace. On the Saturday before Christmas it was crowded densely. The audience must have numbered thousands. They were all apprentices, young artisans, labourers, aud females. The roof is villainously low, and the boxes and pit-very little boxing being requisite in the place-run into one. The ventilation of the building was incomparably vicious-being the Black Hole of Calcutta enlarged. The seats rose in tiers, like those of a temporary platform, and it appeared to be a dangerous place for an accident. The admission was threepence to

A

sixpence. The "moral" instruction given to the audience, was, like the accommodation, much out of order. The piece was taught by symbols, hung at the entrance like sign-boards, highly coloured and extremely disagreeable. These abridged scenes represented the details of general murders, and they formed the staple of this intellectual effort. Two gin-drinking women of the town were heroines in the second part, and adroitly practised pocketpicking, to the satisfaction of the audience. trial in a criminal corut occupied some time. The innocent was almost, of course, convicted, upon the evidence of a Peeler," who, also quite of course, gave a false oath, in consequence of a bribe -it being popular iu that quarter to play down the police, and rob them, at least, of any character. In the end, virtue had not its reward assuredly, for the virtuous were nearly all killed, or died, or leapt from London Bridge and were drowned; notwithstanding a clever escape made by one of them from prison; for it is an essential part of the business to provide extremely horrible sensations, strong tragedy, throes of death on the stage, and much bloodshed. We cannot think that anybody's morality was in the slightest degree promoted by this exhibition, which closed at half an hour to twelve; being in that respect superior to a more notorious establishment, of a kindred nature, in the City-road. The multitudes who flock to places of that character would, probably, frequent others of a higher character, if they were found for them; but they do not exist in the east. The magnitude of London may explain the circumstance, but the few concerns that combine amusement with instruction, or afford amusement of an unobjectionable character, are located in the centre, or the west; two hours journey from those who need them more than families who possess within themselves the means of recreation.

The Egyptian Hall, in Piccadilly, possesses the most singular exhibition in Britain. For quite a number of years past, Mr. Albert Smith, with unusually brief recesses, has been ascending Mont Blanc in that very hall, nightly, before admiring audiences. The singularity of his efforts is their continued success. High as is Mont Blanc, and long the Rhine, both might have been, and, except for the genius of the narrator, would have been exhausted by the close of the first or the second season. The audience, indeed, now no longer ascend Mont Blanc. It descends to them in a panoramic form, which does equally well. Instead of going up the mountain, the mountain sinks down into the earth, and we want not a little of the old anecdotal part of the entertainment, arising from struggles among the glaciers. Still, the deficiency is amply supplied. We have more of Baden-a little of Paris-something of Geneva

and the evening may be altogether more varied. Mr. Smith plainly tells his audience that he is not to teach them, and he gives them many excellent lessons, nevertheless. He does not profess to lecture on morality; but young gentlemen who

THE EAST AND THE WEST.

may wish to visit Baden, the centre of European gambling, have permission to draw their own inferences, and they will never be able to ascribe their losses, if they foolishly make any, to the encouragement given in Egyptian Hall. The attractions of the hall are partly artistic. The panoramic scenery is beautifully painted, for anything on so large a scale. Then the stage, if that be the proper term, is a little wilderness of rocks, and pines, and water, full of gold fish, who appear to be quite at home, as part of the audience. The decorative accompaniments have all an air of Swiss horus and hunting. The place is comfortable, and everybody seems to be very happy, and it is a pleasure to see so many people pleased.

ever.

The versatility of the owner is, however, the leading attraction. One feels that he is rather hitting us all slyly, with our bad French, or no French whatever, except the Gascon of young Mr. Brown, and then the book; with the assuming airs that some people among us put on in their continental tours, as if they did not know, and they do not know, that the continentalists see far through anything of that kind; and are never farther taken in than suits their bill, by gilding over vulgarity; but we need these lessons, and it is better to take them in Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, than in Baden or Paris, or any other place whatThen our little oddities, male or female, are brought out in a charming manner, and done in no worse spirit than Monsieur himself, whose clothes have always a faint smell of tobacco smoke about them. The sketching young lady, and the poetical young lady, and the plain speaking younger lady, who describes the way in which her sister's frocks are facetiously said to be made down to fit her somewhat larger proportions-to the confusion of her elder sisters; and how as a serious case of garrotting, Fanny was kissed under the mistletoe bough by some much-to be-envied young friend, and has had her head turned ever since, are perfect contrasts to the engineer of the steamer on Lake Geneva, who has met Mr. Smith, on the Mediterranean, at Paris, and at so many more places, that there seems to be fatalism in it; and who tells his stories and his strictures, of and upon the Austrian Lloyds, in such utter confusion of one thing with another, that nothing earthly can be made out of anything, except that he would not deceive Mr. Smith; 'cos why should he deceive Mr. Smith, and also that he had made bold to tell the Austrian Lloyds gentlemen that they never could make Austria England, or England Austria-let them try ever so long and so much-and that Greenwich time is not Venice time, 'cos why should he deceive them, since Greenwich time could never be Venice time; but the engineer is done to a point, and that a mathematical one, while no more can be said for the travelling parties on pleasure. Nobody calling at Mr. Smith's for an evening will deceive himself, or be in any way deceived. But what's the good of it? An hour and a half or two hours hearty laughter is no small good. Hu

9

man beings cannot work always. Proper amusement now and then will lengthen life. And that's not all the good of it. As an addition it makes life move a little more pleasantly on the way. It oils the wheels, and stops much creaking. The want of amusement sends the thousands of the east to their gin-palaces, and the wretched theatres. we have described faintly. These attractions can only be beaten by counter attractions, but they cannot all be composed of useful knowledge. Dash useful knowledge into and through them, but do not always poke it in people's faces as a dose that must be swallowed. The educated and intellectual classes forget that something must be done for many who are neither the one nor the other, and that, moreover, those who belong to both cannot be always in search of knowledge

The principal exhibitions of London cluster together, upon a bad principle for the public, although it must suit the proprietors. The district around Regent-street comprises nearly all of them. at once noted and praiseworthy. The galleries of illustrations, panoramas, paintings, and sculpture, on to geology, the arts and manufactures, are all located in the west. The Polytechnic, one of the most brilliant, is at the top of Regent-street, and the Great Globe, one of the most useful, at its southern extremity. The British Museum is north and west of the centre of the metropolis, and the Crystal Palace is in the country, to the south of London. The distance that must be travelled by visitors from that ill defined and crowded district, the Tower Hamlets, from Finsbury north, and from Southwark to the places of amusement, keeping theatres out of view, puts amusement out of the question, unless at a price which many persons cannot pay.

Churches, schools, mechanics' institutions, public libraries, and newsrooms, are all absolutely necessary, as the first and second-or highly advisable, like the third, fourth and fifth; but leave what a multitude consider a little chink in the timbers. A small leak sinks the ships. For all classes and wants some provision should be made; and gin palaces, perhaps, might be reduced to more manageable numbers, by the competition of equally well fitted, and well lighted coffee shops; while for the young, especially, a cheap reproduction in the east of the wonders of the west would be attended by, perhaps, pecuniary advantages; and, without doubt, by others of a superior character.

In the meantime, although a superiority has been cast upon our Scotch towns, for drunkenness, on these festive seasons, and not without a crushing quantity of evidence, yet we say that the public have returned a rash verdict; without examining parts of the metropolis, hidden from the view of strangers, where drinking seems to form all the amusement, and a great part of the business of life, and where, in female society especially, it has attained dimensions, and a kind of habit and repute position, with which the large Scotch towns, in the darkest quarters, are not yet quite acquainted.

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