man's Reading-room in another town, which
had been lax in its adherence to that necessary
principle. It is part of a report from the
founder of that other Reading-room, who
says:—" We have been always getting
gradually more aristocratic ever since we started;
and that, I believe, is the constant course of
such institutions. Not that the managers
have ever done anything with that tendency,
but the young men themselves become more
steady in their habits, and then the shabby,
careless ones are ashamed to come; or if they
do join for a week, they feel ill at ease, and
soon quit. Three or four years ago, a great
many might be seen reading or writing in
their working jackets; now I observe nobody
comes till he has been home '' to clean
himself;" and one has almost difficulty in recognising,
under the neat frock-coat and well-
washed face, the man one met a couple of
hours before with a baker's tray on his head,
or all covered with paint or whitewash.
Whether this may be approved or not, it has
come of itself, and I believe could not be
otherwise. There may, too, be a smaller
proportion of mere labourers, and rather more
sons of the little tradesmen of the place,
particularly of those who are working with their
fathers."

So it will always be, unless the workmen
act and govern for themselves, abide within
their jackets, and provide, to the utmost of
their power, for their own wants, full of self-
reliance, although free from self-sufficiency.

MORE FRENCH REVOLUTIONS.

IN Paris it has not been a matter of
very rare occurrence to see certain stray
bubbles of discontent suddenly unite; and,
rising, descend with the fury of a cataract,
overwhelming all before it. In history
the event is a great fact for future ages:
in Paris, a few short weeks pass by, and
the harmless resident who does not
particularly trouble himself with politics, might
almost believe the past to be a fiction.
Apprehension has apparently been removed with the
barricades, and confidence replaced with the
paving stones. As for changes of ministry—
stormy debates—and stray émeutes—such
accidents will happen after the best regulated
revolution, and are of no earthly consequence
to thousands. The new rule is in the main
quietly taken for granted; and Paris dines,
dresses, lounges, and amuses itself just as
usual. At the Opera not a cadence is wanting
in correctness; not a cravat is seen to deviate
from its propriety. At the balls there are no
dancers out of time; at the cafés there are no
drinkers out of temper. The case of the client
who did not know how ill-used he had been
until he heard his cause pleaded by his
counsel, has its analogy in that of many a
good-humoured bourgeois, who is now and
then surprised to learn from the newspapers
what a very glorious fellow he ought to
consider himself.

To a foreigner, who has even less chance
than the good-natured bourgeois of feeling
the effects of the various benefits achieved
by revolutionised France, it is amusing
enough to note the numberless minor changes
—all little revolutions in themselves—that
France (that is to say, Paris) has seen since
'48:—changes significant and insignificant;
changes in persons and things; changes
in thoughts, habits, and formalities; changes
that one runs against at street-corners, and
encounters wherever the miscellaneous mass
of the population meet on common ground.
As for the salons of what is called "society,"
their observances are always essentially
conservative, and are useless as studies.

To begin with the streets. Who can walk
about Paris for a couple of hours—unless he
be a man of business, a lover, or an idiot, or
all three together, which sometimes happens
—without observing a thousand little
revolutions, of a social and perhaps unimportant
character, but which seem to concern him
more than all the great political changes by
which they have been caused? The very
"dead walls " are alive with great facts.
Once upon a time the philosopher who
preferred wasting his time to wetting his boots,
might, while standing under some sheltering
archway, be greeted with no higher subject
for reflection than was contained in the
announcement that he was requested not to
stick bills on the wall opposite. The chances
would be that his tendencies did not lead
him to stick bills, and that he suffered no
more inconvenience by the restriction than
the occupants of very small apartments in
which it is impossible to swing cats.

For the bill-sticker, however, the walls of
Paris are by no means a desert; some he is
allowed to vivify with his wondrous announcements.
Enormous offers of luxurious journeys
("voyages de luxe") to and from the London
Exhibition for an inconsiderable number of
francs, are repeated wherever a few feet of
surface can be safely pasted over. Proprietors
of public gardens lure adventurous Parisians
by means of flaming invitations—red upon
yellow—with gratis chances in lotteries, whose
prizes are "Voyages de Luxe à Londres," &c.

Advertisers, like air, abhor a vacuum.
Unoccupied surfaces not protected by law—
whether they be the roofs of omnibuses, or
those of railway carriages, the floors of public
halls, or the bodies of unemployed workmen—
are converted into agencies for informing the
world at large respecting every possible article
that can be bought for money. In Paris, the
declining drama seeks resuscitation not only
by proclaiming itself upon every post and on
every wall; but, in turn, seeks to profit by
letting out the most conspicuous surfaces
at command, for the purposes of publicity.
This is a decided revolution in the drama.
The act-drops of more than one of the minor