workhouse into domestic service, between April,
'fifty-six, and May, 'fifty-eight— that is to say,
for the two years preceding his complaint. The
whole number was thirty-four, and the poor-law
inspector finding this reason for not counting
some of the cases, that reason for not
counting others, and another reason for not
counting others again, consents to join issue
only upon sixteen, and then argues that two of
them turned out well, one of the two being returned
to the workhouse only for ill-health. The
others he manipulates and tabulates into degrees
of badness, but it is clear enough that the official
rebutter is a substantial corroboration of
the statement made by the chairman of the
board whose poor were in question, that there
was no fit training of the young girls in the
workhouse. Mr. Weale thinks that much of
the admitted evil might be obviated if the casual
pauper children, some of them demoralised to
an incredible extent, were separated from the
permanent inmates.

Mr. Lambert, an inspector of sixty-one rural
unions— while testifying that the workhouse
schools are unjustly decried, and that the overcrowded
homes of the out-door poor in his district
are of worse influence on the morality
of the young than workhouse training— produces
a return for one week last year, showing
that in the workhouses inspected by him there
are two thousand two hundred and thirty-five
women, of whom he arranges nearly a thousand
as bad, under unpleasant heads that represent
degrees in vice, three hundred and sixty-three
are imbecile, one hundred and fifty are deserted
wives, thirty-one are wives with husbands in
jail, eighty-seven are wives with husbands in
the workhouse, and respectability is confined to
three hundred and sixty-three old women, one
hundred and eighty-nine women and girls incapable
of getting their own living by reason of
bodily defect or infirmity, and— not counting
those crippled by vice— against the nine hundred
who are profligate and able-bodied, there
are only seventy-five women and girls to be set
who are able-bodied and respectable!

Among the witnesses upon this subject, we
have the Rev. J. Armitstead, vicar of Sandbach,
Cheshire, who has been long in his
parish, where he has rebuilt one large church,
built two new churches, and established several
schools. During the whole lifetime of the
new poor-law, this gentleman has been a guardian,
attentive to the needs of the poor in a
well-managed union. But in all his experience
he has never known of a girl passing out of the
workhouse school, to service in a gentleman's
family. The stigma of the workhouse stands in
the girl's way. Mr. Armitstead offered himself
as a witness for the compatibility of the principle
of Charity with the principle of poor-law
administration, for he has seen the misery and
profligacy into which girls with starved undisciplined
affections, fall, after quitting either
the workhouse or the district school, for want
of help from anything that has the aspect of a
home. He is not deluded by the fallacies of
returns that report all well with those who are
out of sight, and lead to pen and ink conclusions
contradicted by the commonest experience
of common life. Mr. Armitstead thinks that in
dealing with destitute children, orphans and
others, towards whom it stands in place of a
parent, the State should make the nearest practicable
approach to the fulfilment of a parent's
duty. For the last nine years, and with the
greatest possible success, the system has been
tried in his own parish of seven thousand people,
of taking pauper orphans by two or three at a
time from the workhouse, and placing them with
respectable dames in their own district: the
dames being under the superintendence of the
clergyman, the guardians, and the relieving officer.
The orphan children are thus placed in
homes, with childless couples and others, who
with small pay for their maintenance are glad of
their service and companionship. Experience has
proved that strong domestic attachments arise
out of such relations. The well-selected household
guardian usually becomes a lasting friend.
The child, dressed in no workhouse clothes, and
its relation to the workhouse almost unknown
to itself, goes to the national school, in due
time goes out to work with a fair chance of getting
good situations, and when out of work, the
orphan girl knows where to find a chimney-corner
where she may look for a welcome. Upon
some such system, Mr. Armitstead believes that
the radical defect in poor-law administration as
applied to the young, may in all country and
some town districts be greatly softened.

Meanwhile, let us, in GOD'S name, increase
the influence and power— let us hope for increase
also in the number— of the few who are labouring
to add from without that element in the
case of the young, the friendless, and the most
helpless poor, which it is so hard and so difficult
to get recognised from behind the official desk!

THE DUCHESS VERONICA.

IN EIGHT CHAPTERS.

CHAPTER IV. THE PORTRAIT.

ON the morning after the interview between
the Contessa Cecilia and Signor Carlini, the
duchess was sitting in her chamber, while two
lady's-maids were assisting her in the various
operations of the toilette. A seat in front of a
mirror is a position conducive to good humour
and a pleasant state of mind in the case of many
a woman. With the Lady Veronica it was
not so. She was about twenty-six years old
at that period, and already time and suffering
had done their defacing work on the never-comely
features. The looking-glass offered no
consoling picture to the unhappy duchess. She
was just then particularly sore at the duke
having joined one of the far-famed companies of
flagellants.

It is an historical fact, that Salviati made himself
a member of one of these bodies, whose place
of meeting was conveniently near Caterina's house,
in the Via dei Pilastri. They were popularly called
"buche"-holes, or dens, that is, and especially