shop at the corner of Old-street, and hear its
proprietor's sad little story— a story, let me
add, which I have verified on unimpeachable
testimony. He is a working carpenter, whose
wife attends to the shop while he goes out by
the day. After many years of patient industry
and undeviating good conduct, he has won so
many friends and customers, that his labour is in
full request, and his time rarely unoccupied. The
mandate which bids him turn out of his house is
the signal of his ruin, for he has tried in vain,
during the two months which have elapsed
since he received it, to find either house or
rooms within miles of his present one. No
one, he insists, will think of sending to Fulham
or Chelsea for a workman to do odd jobs; the
connexion it has taken years to acquire will pass
at once into other hands, and he and the family
he has been supporting in modest comfort, and
educating reputably, become absorbed in a
strange district, where he must begin the world
anew. Tell this man of the comfortable
cottages building in Potter's-fields Swamp Town,
and of the facilities offered by the railway
companies, and he replies, with mournful truth, that
the essence of his business and the secret of his
popularity and success is, that he has been
always within call when wanted, and that the
gentry could send for him speedily, and without
trouble to themselves.

The owner of the boot and shoe shop next door
is in worse plight still. He lias lived in the same
house and has been a ratepayer for forty years,
during which time he has lived on the profits of
his little business. Old and sorely afflicted with
disease, he has looked in vain for another shop
suitable to his trade; and can only envy the luck
or foresight of his next-door neighbour, the
draper, who had a long lease of his premises, and
who has consequently received enough compensation
to enable him to move into the country,
where he will recommence life under less
terrible disadvantages than the rest. Would you
learn the ramifications of disaster springing from
the same cause? The owner of that substantial-
looking cheesemonger's shop will tell you that
his trade has been a ready-money one, and that
the removal of the people you have been
sympathising with will reduce his receipts by at least
twenty pounds a week, and convert profit into
loss. You will learn, too, that when Kensington
Gore was pulled down six years ago, the poor
families turned out, overflowed into Hammersmith
and Chelsea, that rents have risen, and
general misery has ensued. Even at the latter
places, again, the struggle for house-room is so
fierce that industry has scarcely a chance of
success. I have before me well-authenticated cases,
in which hard-working widows have been
influentially supported by those able and willing to
give them work, but who, after vainly appealing
for advice to the parochial authorities to whom
they have paid rates for years, have subsided into
hopeless pauperism, literally through want of a
room in which they might perform their labour,
or a shop from which to vend their goods. Surely
these are social grievances which demand redress
as urgently as any political disability of them
all. If the law does not meet such cases as
are quoted, then the law must be amended.
Mr. Torrens's measure, to which previous
reference has been made,* would do much
towards making the remedy easy and popular;
and it is to oe earnestly hoped that it may
become law without its essential principle being
tampered with. But, beyond this, some
association is needed which shall enforce the rights
of those to whom a powerful railway company,
or a comprehensive scheme of improvement,
lays siege.

A dozen years ago, when the present Emperor
of the French decided on hastening the
remodelling of Paris, the same difficulties arose
as we are contemplating now. But no quibble
as to the weekly or monthly tenancy of the
ejected was allowed to interfere with justice.
The municipality offered a price and the occupier
asked one, and when the views of buyer
and vendor could not be made to agree,
they were referred to an impartial tribunal for
adjudication. This finally pronounced, the money
was paid, and the recipient not unfrequently
provided with one of the temporary huts which
were eventually erected by the government, and
lent gratuitously to such people as would otherwise
have suffered from losing their homes. In
this free country we should have deputies, and
guardians, and boards, and beadles, uniting in a
common cry against State interference if any
such comprehensive proposal for protecting the
evicted were made. Let us, therefore, bestir
ourselves into rousing these respected
functionaries to a true sense of their duty. Let us
make them understand that hustling their poorer
neighbours over the boundary line of a parish
or union is not the true aim of local self-government,
and that neither railway projector nor
improving Attila must have powers given him to
destroy without at the same time being compelled
to create. Speedy transit, wide streets, and lofty
houses are all boons in their way, but they are
dearly purchased when they bring misery and
hardship to thousands, make a fair reward for
honest labour unattainable, and vastly augment
both pauperism and disease.

* See HOME, SWEET HOME, page 303 of the
present volume.

COCKPIT ROYAL.

"Six days of the week they do nothing, and
on Sunday they go to the bull-fight." Such is
the awful charge I have heard brought against
the inhabitants of Madrid. But something,
after all, may be urged in favour of a bull-fight.
It is a national, a royal amusement. Ferdinand
the Seventh established a School of
Tauromachia at Seville. Bull-baiting, too, is one of the
oldest of English sports. Something approaching
it used to take place in the streets of London
every Monday morning, within very recent times,
and until, indeed, the cattle market was removed