very discouraging sound. One would think it
indicated an asylum of some kind, or at any
rate a place for instruction and lecturing rather
than recreation and enjoyment. There is a
patronising tone about the word, too, which is
not likely to add to the success of the
undertaking. That patronising tone militates against
half our schemes for benefiting those in a lower
social grade than ourselves. It is too much our
practice to treat the lower classes like children,
and to stand by and spoil the recreation we
provide for them: just as the teacher spoils the fun
of the Sunday-school treat by superintending it
with a desperate philanthropy, which chills the
joy of those towards whom it is exercised, to
freezing-point.

I would call this club, then, by the right
name, and I would let its members alone—as
much as might consist with order—just as we
ourselves are let alone in our own clubs.
Everything should be done to make the men feel at
home, to make them feel that they have a right
to the place, and pay their way, and are
welcome.

And here arises another question of very
great importance—the supply or non-supply
of beer. For my part, I am altogether in
favour of its introduction. Let it be fairly
brought, into competition with the coffee and
tea: not banished as a dangerous rival, whose
fascinations are to be feared. Let it be there;
and many a man who would long for it if
withheld, would, very likely, when he knew he
could get it if he chose, as often take a cup
of tea or coffee as a mug of beer. Banish
restrictions as much as may be—show the men
that you trust them—tell them to keep order
in this club, just as the officers do in theirs.
Treat them in this way, and the experiment
will be a triumphant success; whereas if you load
them with restrictions, and insist on their
enjoying themselves in your way instead of their
way, you will oppose to the Bacchante whom
we are trying to cut out, a lady so demure and
chill, that she will withdraw but few admirers
from her good-for-nothing rival.

THE YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY.

A SONG of the hour, now in course of being
sung and whistled in every street, the other
day reminded the writer of these words—as
he chanced to pass a fag-end of the song for
the twentieth time in a short London walk—
that twenty years ago, a little book on the
United States, entitled American Notes, was
published by " a Young Man from the Country,"
who had just seen and left it.

This Young Man from the Country fell into a
deal of trouble, by reason of having taken the
liberty to believe that he perceived in America
downward popular tendencies for which his
young enthusiasm had been anything but
prepared. It was in vain for the Young Man to
offer in extenuation of his belief that no stranger
could have set foot on those shores with a feeling
of livelier interest in the country, and stronger
faith in it, than he. Those were the days when
the Tories had made their Ashburton Treaty,
and when Whigs and Radicals must have no
theory disturbed. All three parties waylaid and
mauled the Young Man from the Country, and
showed that he knew nothing about the country.

As the Young Man from the Country had
observed in the Preface to his little book, that he
"could bide his time," he took all this in silent
part for eight years. Publishing then, a cheap
edition of his book, he made no stronger protest
than the following:

"My readers have opportunities of judging
for themselves whether the influences and
tendencies which I distrusted in America, have any
existence but in my imagination. They can
examine for themselves whether there has been
anything in the public career of that country
during these past eight years, or whether there
is anything in its present position, at home or
abroad, which suggests that those influences
and tendencies really do exist. As they find
the fact, they will judge me. If they discern
any evidences of wrong-going, in any direction
that I have indicated, they will acknowledge
that I had reason in what I wrote. If they
discern no such thing, they will consider me
altogether mistaken. I have nothing to defend,
or to explain away. The truth is the truth;
and neither childish absurdities, nor
unscrupulous contradictions, can make it otherwise.
The earth would still move round the sun,
though the whole Catholic Church said No."

Twelve more years having since passed away,
it may, now at last, be simply just towards the
Young Man from the Country, to compare what
he originally wrote, witli recent events and their
plain motive powers. Treating of the House of
Representatives at Washington, he wrote thus:

"Did I recognise in this assembly, a body of
men, who, applying themselves in a new world
to correct some of the falsehoods and vices of
the old, purified the avenues to Public Life,
paved the dirty ways to Place and Power, debated
and made laws for the Common Good, and had
no party but their Country?

"I saw in them, the wheels that move the
meanest perversion of virtuous Political
Machinery that the worst tools ever wrought.
Despicable trickery at elections; under-handed
tamperings with public officers; cowardly attacks
upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for
shields, and hired pens for daggers; shameful
trucklings to mercenary knaves, whose claim to
be considered, is, that every day and week they
sow new crops of ruin with their venal types,
which are the dragon's teeth of yore, in
everything but sharpness; aidings and abettings of
every bad inclination in the popular mind, and
artful suppressions of all its good influences:
such things as these, and in a word, Dishonest
Faction in its most depraved and most unblushing
form, stared out from every corner of the
crowded hall.