there are Agents-Voyers of "circonscriptions,"
or districts; and, lastly, there are
Supernumerary Agents-Voyers. All these gentlemen
are ready and anxious to receive promotion
which shall transfer them to first-class
roads. Being government officials, they are
distinguished by gold lace in their official cap.

Without any thought of imitating the intense
centralisation which exists in France, some bold
M.P. might surely make an effort to get rid of
turnpikes by concocting a bill for the classification
of our roads as national, county, and
union roads. A ready objection to the justice
of such a system has more plausibility than
reality to back it. In France, although nobody
pays turnpikes, everybody pays for the maintenance
of roads, both by direct and indirect
taxation. That is to say, many people pay for
what they never use. They may neither ride,
nor drive, nor cart merchandise to and fro, nor
even take their walks abroad; yet they
contribute to road making and mending. In
England, those who make use of and travel on roads
pay a special toll for that privilege, which looks
excessively fair and equitable.

But are the people who travel on roads the
only persons who profit by them? Do not the
sedentary shopkeeper and the whole general
population benefit by increased facilities of
transport, as well as the carter, the commercial
traveller, and the tourist? Is no one, besides
the passengers, the better for a railway from
town to town? Are landsmen utterly indifferent
to the goings and comings of steam-packets and
merchant-vessels?

THE BEST HOUSE OF CORRECTION.

THE reader will have the kindness, I hope, to
imagine that he is standing with me in front of
a very dingy and truculent-looking public-house,
in a neighbourhood which I will not specially
indicate, further than by saying that it contains
within its precincts a large barrack capable of
holding a thousand or so of troops.

Now this public is as far removed from being
one of those snugly convivial spots which,
though they boast little grandeur of aspect, are
desperately alluring by reason of their look of
solid comfort and a certain suggestion of
smuggled Hollands which sits pleasantly upon them
—it is as far removed from any kindred with
that kind of tavern as it is from the gilded and
blazing splendour of the regular gin palace.
It is new without being clean, it is rickety
without the excuse of antiquity. It has got
down below the level of the pavement. Its one
window is low and small, and it is screened
more than half way up with a wire-blind which
is frouzy and ornamented with more than one
bulging ragged hole, through which, if you
wished anything so frantic, you might look into
the room within, which the wire-blind is
intended to shut out from the public gaze. The
window is long horizontally, but of little height,
and appears to be much squeezed from above
by the superincumbent weight of the house. In
fact, the goings on in the lower regions of this
establishment seem to have played the deuce
with its constitution, and the upper parts are
propped with timbers that extend to the gutter.
A single gas jet burns in the window, and on
the top of the wire-blind a green and gold
announcement of ginger-beer and another of
lemonade deceive the passenger as to the nature
of the beverages sold within. The bodies of
several flies dead of delirium tremens encumber
the window-sills.

As we push open the door of this blest abode,
we at once, and without warning, plunge down
two or three steps. They are found to be very
useful to the business, as inebriated gentlemen
outside, in a state of indecision as to whether
they will enter or not, are saved the trouble of
arguing out the question by tumbling down
them, while inebriated gentlemen inside find it
so difficult to tumble up them, that they remain
where they are, and naturally call for something
more for the good of the house.

Now, just as it will happen that some
battered, noseless, limbless doll will be the
favourite of a nursery, while the clean gaily-
dressed waxen beauty is neglected and uncared
for, so it is the case, curiously enough, that this
hideous and unattractive public is quite a
popular one, and much more frequented than many
snug and splendid taverns in the same
neighbourhood. The dark cavern-like interior of that
public-house is, indeed, never empty. Bad as
the outside of the edifice is, it is yet far better
than the inside. The bar is an untidy bar, which
is really an unusual thing. It is true that there
are beer-handles in rows as usual, that there are
Abernethy biscuits in a dingy basket, that there
are plenty of pipes, and piles of change in
coppers standing on shelves remote from the
public grasp. These things there are, and there
are beer-barrels, and bottles, and glasses, and
pewter measures in abundance. Still, it is not a
convivial bar. There are no swinging brightly-
painted casks with German-silver taps, and
mysterious hints about spruce inscribed upon
them. If there are bottles of ginger brandy,
or gin and cloves, or appetising bitters on those
shelves, they are plain and unlabelled; the
British brandy does not comfort one by at any
rate saying that it is cognac, and screening itself
behind an ensign showing a purple bunch of
grapes with green leaves, nor is there a word
about Glenlivat or Mountain Dew on the vessel
which holds the Irish whisky. There are no
pork-pies under glass on the counter, and
even the pipes are not sealing-waxed, lest the
"bit of colour" should look too cheery. There
is a door on each side of the bar, one leading to
a " good" damp " skittle-ground," and the other
to the steep staircase which communicates with
the upper regions. Inside the bar is a small
inaccessible room, tenanted by the landlord: a
middle-aged man with a pale face, that tells of
deeds of violence, and of noisome air, and late
hours. There is also an old woman, and there
is a stout morose youth, who works the beer-
handles.