noise, upon which the animal peeped out of a
hole, and, in half a moment, the air-gun brought
down the quarry.

A WORKHOUSE PROBE.

A COAL-CELLAR, without coals; a punishment-
cell for refractory criminals; a dreary black-
hole, with grated windows, and cold damp floor
and walls; a tank with the water let off, and
the oldest fish-inhabitant departed—such is the
Hampshire casual ward we are visiting to-day.
It is very small. Its sole furniture is one
bedstead, without clothes or wraps; and, though
we are assured that a fire is lighted in it
" sometimes," there is no evidence of any such genial
contingency now. Its massive door is plentifully
studded with the heavy iron nails which
adorn the entrances to her Majesty's jails, and
are supposed to strike terror into the hearts of
evil-doers; and it is altogether as cold,
comfortless, and penal a resting-place as the sternest
disciplinarian could wish. If it does not do
duty as village lock-up, the local authorities are
extravagant; for a fitter place in which any
obstreperously convivial Giles or Roger might shake
off the hilarity of a Saturday night's carouse, and
might become penitent, meek, and subdued, it
would be hard to find. You step down into it
direct from the road without intervening hall or
corridor, and the approach to its one door is
graced by a stagnant pool, the fœtid smell
from which offends the least sensitive nose.
"We're not much troubled with tramps here,
gentlemen; they prefer going on to the town,
four miles off," remarks the matron, with a
smile. As we look down shudderingly, this
wet and foggy autumn day, into the damp dark
place, and fancy the key turned and ourselves
locked in till morning, we fully appreciate the
preference shown. Any sensible wayfarer,
however footsore, hungry, and exhausted, would
struggle on for another four miles to avoid spending
the night in a dungeon, compared to which a
police-cell is comfort, and a model prison luxury.

"No admittance to the workhouse, except on
business, by order of the guardians," does not
apply to us. Our open sesame is the inquiry we
have on hand; for "we" are the Lancet
Commission, which your servant, the present writer,
has been permitted to accompany on its errand
of humanity, and admission is cheerfully
accorded, apparently by instinct, certainly without
a question as to our credentials. A snug, cozy
little union of four parishes, managed by a board,
the chairman of which is the squire of the
neighbourhood, with for a vice-chairman the squire's
namesake and near relative; a union in which
the workhouse is rented by the board of managers
from the presiding member of that board (!)
—a union where the clergyman of the parish
is paid an annual sum, not for holding regular
service as chaplain, but for occasionally
visiting the twenty-one paupers now in the
house; a little place where "wards" are
cottage-rooms, and where the master and matron
are collectively chief nurse, governor, superintendent,
labour-master, mistress, and head-cook.
Matters which would be abuses on a large scale
are part of a system here, under which paupers
are, perhaps, better cared for than in many an
establishment, whose pretensions are fourfold.

The "workhouse" consists of twelve little
cottages, forming an enclosed quadrangle, in
which there is practically no classification, and
where some of the sanitary arrangements are
as bad as ignorance and old-fashioned prejudice
can make them. A cesspool which has "not
been cleared out in the twelve years we've
been here," lies under the windows of the
lying-in and infectious wards; and the closets,
which have been "inspected" twice a year,
with great regularity, by the representative of
the Poor Law Board, are as disgustingly unfit
for human use as if they belonged to some
savage kraal, where the commonest laws of
decency and health were unknown. But in many
of the inner domestic details in which kind and
thoughtful interest makes people happy, the
twenty-one men and women were well placed.
You see it in the bright alacrity of the matron,
in the cheerful readiness of her replies, in the
snugness of some of the internal arrangements,
and in the cleanliness and contentment of the
small handful of paupers at home. The entrance
to the master's house—which is simply one
of the cottages furbished up and snugly
furnished—is opposite the door of the dungeon
in which tramps pay the penalty of their calling.
The master is at church, but his wife will show
us over the workhouse with the greatest pleasure.
There is no pause, nor evasion, nor holding
back; and, in two minutes from the time of our
ringing the bell, we have passed through the
private apartments, and are on the female side
of the central yard. Such a little place to
be a union workhouse! After a long experience
of workhouses like towns, of long and
dreary chambers in which a short-sighted
person could easily mistake his own father if
placed at the opposite end to himself, Mr.
Wemmick's Walworth fortress, with its Lilliputian
drawbridge, moat, and guarded postern,
irresistibly occur to us as we are shown
over "wards" not much larger than bathing-
machines, and "refectories " and "day-rooms"
which would be undersized for a family of six.
There is no communication through what we
suppose we must call the house. The cottages
are—save here and there, where two
bedrooms have been thrown into one—almost as
distinct as in the pre-New Poor Law period when
they were built. Hearing with pleasure that the
child-inmates are sent to the ordinary parish
school, and not educated like pariahs apart, we
pass into the first cottage on the women's side.

A little room, with what seemed to be the
car of a balloon in wicker-work standing in one
corner, and one small tin basin—of the size of
the vessels in which "half portions" of soup are
served at a club—filled with soapsuds, is shown
us as the lavatory. On remarking that the latter
article looked, if anything, a trifle small to be