whether his sickness stops the earnings of any
other member of the family; whether he has
a bed, and if so, what kind of bed; whether he
has sheets, and if so, how many; whether he has
shirts, and if so, how many; how long he has
been attended, and how much or little he is the
better for attention.; also any observations that
may seem worth adding, and whatever the
visitor himself has to recommend. Upon the
knowledge given by that document the Relief
Commission forms its plan of assistance. A dozen
or more charitable ladies give voluntary help to
the honorary commissioners in the performance
of these duties, and there are fixed days and
hours in which certain administrators agree to
attend at the relief houses. Marriage papers,
certificates of birth, or other necessary
documents, are got for the poor by this agency,
exempt from stamp duty and every other fee.
Vaccination is not only gratuitous, but the poor
are tempted to a duty they but half understand
by vaccination tickets, which secure to the holder
half-a-crown for every child that he or she has had
vaccinated. In the fifth, which is the poorest,
arrondissement a hundred and thirty-two pounds
was a year's cost of such kindly bribery, seven
thousand seven hundred pounds was the year's
cost of the bread given to the needy, and about
two thousand five hundred pounds the cost for
medical attendance. The bureau lends beds
or bedding, gives straw for mattresses twice a
year, distributes wooden shoes, bribes into
marriage poor couples whose union is unblessed
by the priest, and secures for the dead poor
gratuitous burial by the administration of the
Pompes Funèbres. Besides its share of the
revenue for the poor raised by the municipality
in the way of tax on luxuries, there are in each
arrondissement occasional balls and fêtes for the
benefit of its poor, four collections a year in the
churches, and an annual distribution of papers
for the levy of poor-rate by voluntary
contributions. A rich house will sometimes give
in that way as much as forty pounds, the Bank
of France pays twenty pounds.

So much for the bureau. In the dependent
houses of relief the work is done by sisters,
under a sister superior, the sisters getting
lodging, fire, and light, and finding themselves
food and clothing, for a pay of twenty pounds a
year to each. On the top floors are primary
schools for the young children of the poor, who
are provided also with play-rooms. At the
houses of relief the doctors attend to see the
sick, who come and get prescription papers from
an official engaged to attend to that part of the
system. The simpler sort of dispensing is done
by the sisters in a little apothecary's shop of
their own; the more difficult by an authorised
druggist. The sisters also keep ready-made
clothes for the poor, and good flannel waistcoats
for the delicate, delivered to those who produce
orders from the bureau. Orphans live in the
house with them, and the duties are performed
by them with open heart and ready wit and
will.

No doubt the Parisian scheme of poor relief,
which is a substitute not only for our London poor
law system, but for our general poor law system,
and all those systems of private benevolence
with which in London it is largely supplemented,
supplies a very distinct aud truly admirable
example of well-organised voluntary effort for
the direct help of the suffering poor. But Mr.
Blanchard Jerrold overlooks much labour of his
own countrywomen, when he says: "If that
great society for the Relief of Destitution in the
English metropolis, which has its handsome
offices at Charing-Cross, would take the trouble
to send a deputation to the Quai Pelletier, they
might develop from the operations of M.
Husson's subordinates a system of district visiting
in London less contemptible than that which
now flickers, feeble and ridiculous, where the
London poor are massed." At the time when
this was written, the association thus pointed
out was aiding in London eighty-three districts,
including a total population of about a million,
each having a separate staff of voluntary
district visitors. The number of visitors thus
employed was one thousand one hundred and
seventy-eight, of whom nine hundred and twenty-
two were English women personally active in
the distribution of what aid the funds of the
association and the local voluntary contributions
to the poor produced. In round numbers there
was a district visitor for every five pounds of
the money granted by the society, for every ten
pounds of the whole sum forming the district
funds. And this excludes from calculation all
district private care for the poor that is entered
in no book but that of the recording angel.
The number of even fashionable ladies, harried
by the incessant toil of fulfilling valueless
engagements, who in London come into direct
womanly contact with some of their poorer
sisters, is, we suspect, greater in London than
in Paris. In the English provinces, this kind
of voluntary ministration is more general.
Amongst families numbering ladies of even
small fortune, it is the rule—a rule not in every
case followed with discretion, but always as a
duty, and with a benevolent motive. We shall
never in London carry "administration" to the
point attained in Paris, but we are learning
every year more and more how to do good to
many of our poor in the clirectest and yet least
obtrusive way.

The foundlings of Paris, gathered into the
great establishment in the Rue d'Enfer, with
more than five hundred beds aud more than
eighty cradles, are also under the protection of
the "Assistance Publique." Their nursery is
a great hall, in which are four rows of cradles
with carpeted pathways between them. Sisters
in huge caps, and nurses in blue and white, flit
silently about, and a great mattress lies before
the fireplace, where the babies as they come in,
sometimes ten in a day, are unpacked. Each
has been through an official routine, and has its
name, number, and date of admission fastened
by a slip of parchment to its arm. The little
ones are fetched away by the country nurses
among whom they are distributed. Each child