such as obtaining a small promotion in the shop,
beginning or finishing a piece-work job, or
having a child born to him; but the occasions
now are merely those before mentioned. The
footing varies from five shillings to a sovereign;
and if sometimes paid liberally and proudly—as
when a young man ceases to be a boy and
becomes a journeyman, or when he has received
an ovation and "ringing in" from his mates on
his marriage—it is sometimes paid ruefully and
at a sacrifice; a sacrifice which nothing short
of that tremendous power, public opinion, would
enforce.

Another trait of the inner life of the workshop
is the chaffering that goes on about tobacco,
and how, by his dealings in tobacco, and his
readiness to give, or his spiritlessness in begging,
a man's moral calibre can be gauged. "Most
working men are smokers," says the journeyman
engineer, "and some of them very constant
smokers, an ordinary allowance of tobacco for
many of them being an ounce a day; some of
them use considerably more than that, and,
while all smoke more or less, and the rules
of the shop prohibit smoking during working
hours, it is scarcely a matter for surprise that
working men should find out or make curious
holes and corners to which they repair to have a
smoke unseen. And so, though a boy may
regret this state of things, as it necessitates his
being put to keep "nix," and being thrashed if
he should allow the surreptitious smokers to be
discovered, he will hardly consider it strange.
But when he sees men going about day after
day begging tobacco of their shopmates, and
sees a man offering one of his fellow-workmen
his tobacco-box to help himself from, giving
another a bit which he takes from the box himself,
and evidently weighs by eye and hand, and
absolutely denying having any tobacco in his
possession to a third, he may fairly be excused
for wondering what it all means; but it is only
in time and by close observation that he can
thoroughly understand the mysteries of tobacco
cadging, or profit by the lessons they teach."
One man, a Jesuit in nature if not in creed,
used to keep two tobacco-boxes, one called "the
world," the other "providence." When asked for
a pipe of tobacco, he would answer, "I have not
a bit in the world;" then calmly go off to one
of the secret smoking-places, and light his pipe
with a serene conscience. If taxed with falsehood,
or asked how he had got his tobacco,
"I put my trust in Providence," he would
answer; and the prevarication was as good to
him as truth.

The working man looks forward to the golden
system of eight as his millennium—"eight hours'
work, eight hours' play, eight hours' sleep, and
eight shillings pay," pending which the Saturday
half-holiday, the long Sunday morning lie-
in, and the worship of Saint Monday to follow,
make up a little instalment, for which he is
bound to be grateful. The Saturday half-holiday,
the long "lie-in" on Sunday morning, and
the rest or the pleasures to fill up the remainder
of the day, may be all very well; but the worship
of Saint Monday is a mistake, and the sooner the
habit is broken through, the better for all concerned.

Of the amusements of the working classes;
of their liking for "deep" plays—that is, for
tragedy—and of their wonderful ignorance
of the very alphabet of theatrical knowledge,
our author has much to say. When the "city
of Venice" is quietly set down as a "theatrical
cove," and when one more learned than the rest
of his companion gods, after a thoughtful pause,
hesitatingly confesses that he has heard
something of a "theatrical bloke named Shakespeare,"
and believes he wrote Jack Sheppard, but
doesn't know whether he lived in the time of
Alfred the Great or George the Fourth,* the
play-going portion of the working men cannot
be accepted as very reliable authorities on play-
going merits. Still the gods are a theatrical
institution and a somewhat formidable power,
and it is as well to consult their taste, and to
cater for it, by giving them "deep" plays of a
pure kind, and, if sensational, yet also elevating.

*The Conductor of this Journal takes the liberty
of strongly doubting these two statements,
supposing them intended to have a wide application.

But the time is rapidly passing when it will
be necessary to "give" the working man
anything, and when on the contrary his demand
will create the supply. Every year sees an
increase in his value and social influence, and
every year removes him further from the need
of patronage, and brings him nearer to the level
of his patronisers. He has his own future, and
a large share of the political future of the
empire, in his hands; but he, like every one else,
must go with the times, and rise to the average
height of intelligence and education if he would
be a stable or a progressive institution. Else
his power will be merely brute strength, like
that of blind Polyphemus or of sightless Samson,
good for destruction but not for creation—
a power at war with the higher authorities,
through whom the world goes forward. One
great good for both the working man and for
the classes above him consists in the filtering of
gentle blood continually going on through the
workshop. Gentlemen of education and of
refinement roll up their shirt-sleeves and labour
at steel and iron as practical engineers, among
the blackest and roughest of their kind; gentlemen
stick candles in their caps, and dive
down ladders into mines, working very nearly
as hard as the grimy gnomes they superintend;
a few gentlemen—of a scampish sort generally
—find themselves in the ranks among the
privates; but this does not count as either help or
illustration. However, setting this last aside,
there is a constant, if very minute, stream of
high-class education and intelligence mingling
itself with the more turbid flow of the working
world; and, with the modern theory of
the dignity of labour, will come in time
the practice resulting in the improvement
of the labourer and the general elevation of
the working class, when it shows itself strong