If the pressing need of such associations
were felt thoroughly and widely by the
public, and if it were understood how easily
they may be made to bless at the same time
the rich with dividends and the poor with
cheap and decent homes, there would not be
one or two, but one or two hundred of them
in the country. Their formation is more than
a little hindered by the present laws of
partnership; but that difficulty is one not very
hard to conquer.

Of the existing institutions also, it is to be
said that while they are admirably conducted
and supply a public want, it is not quite the
want on which we find it now so requisite to
dwell that they have hitherto commonly
supplied They save rather those who might
sink, than those who have sunk, to the lowest
depths of sorrow—they are for the poor rather
than for the very poor. The lodgings they
provide get tenants of a class higher than
that which has a right to our profoundest
sympathy, and our most active help, in the
removal of unjust inflictions laid upon them,
not through their own fault, but through our
ignorance, indifference, or culpable neglect.
There is recognition yet due to the fact, that
many thousands of the most wretched homes
in this country consist of single rooms,
horrible to look at or to think about, for which
a price is paid that would yield profitable
return to any association willing to take
thought only for the wants of the most
afflicted classes of the quiet poor. We are
not yet entitled to shut our eyes to the fact,
that these people do, and must for a long
time to come, crowd into single rooms the
homes that happier neighbours can disperse
through two, three, four, or half a dozen.
We could wish that it were not so, but we
know that it is so; and we must feel, too,
that even such a home, if it be decent, is a
holier and wholesomer thing, as well as
cheaper, than even the best regulated common
lodging house. Let us then fairly recognise
the fact that there must be such homes for
families, and furnish them upon the best
conditions. We can raise up, floor over floor,
well constructed buildings planned into
cheerful, well-ventilated, well-drained,
wholesome rooms, supplied freely with water, and
provided at the base with proper storage for
the fruits and other wares of hawkers: for
the trucks, and carts, and donkeys of those
who possess them. Something after the
manner of a provision of this kind is made in
connexion with the baths and wash-houses in
Portpool Lane. Each large block of such
rooms might include a set of public baths
and wash-houses for the use, on the
customary terms, of the inmates of the rooms,
and of the other poor residing in the
neighbourhood. In each block, also, there might
be comprised a little hall for penny or two-
penny concerts, lectures, balls, or other
wholesome entertainments—emphatically,
entertainments—which would yield a modicum
of profit to the main establishment, and
go far to make happier its own little homes,
and the homes of the poor people round about.

For the filthiest accommodation in one room
there must now be paid—and is paid, even by
the very—poor two shillings or half-a-crown
a week. The same rental, with a more than
requisite allowance made to cover loss, would
form an ample basis for the maintenance of
an establishment like that which has been
here roughly suggested.

And still, if all be done that private men
can do, there remains a mountain of ill to be
removed by sanitary legislation. Let us cry
for law, and struggle for it, but not altogether
wait for it; we must in the meantime work on
without it upon the path of justice. Law is
a slow mover, but will, no doubt, get a lift
from somebody and overtake us on the road.
Our attention to the abject poor is due not in
charity alone, but in order that we may pay
a long-neglected debt of justice. It is not
just that the poison of a sewer should be
bricked off from the rich man's mouth, and
left to pour itself unhindered down the
throats of the men who are helpless. The
course of the Serpentine is but a symbol of
a hundred things that all point to the same
conclusion. Farther off still, there is an end
to which they point, when

They who creep and they who fly
Shall end where they began;

nothing remaining but the last settlement of
accounts between the flyers and the creepers.
We all hope to retire some day to our little
boxes at Kensal Green, Norwood, Highgate,
Père la Chaise, where not. But now so
many of us owe so much! and who likes to
retire oppressed by debt?

THE ROVING ENGLISHMAN.

GREEK WATERS.

PERHAPS our invalided soldiers and sailors
would hardly be able to find a place of
recover more convenient and delightful than
the island of Mytilene. Steamers from
Smyrna and Constantinople touch there four
or five times a-week, and it is within pleasant
hail of both those places. Provisions are
usually cheap and abundant; the inhabitant
are hospitable, good-natured, and fond
of foreigners. Within a day's journey of
Castro (the chief town of the island) are all
sorts of interesting places; and really it is
almost worth while being moderately ill to
have an excuse for a holiday visit to them.
There is excellent fishing and pretty good
shooting in the neighbourhood.

But if I may expect, as I certainly do, to
have a few antiquaries among my readers, I
do not know what I have not to say about
Mytilene. With the single exception of Attica,
not one of the states of ancient Greece was
as famous as Lesbos, now Mytilene. Indeed
I am able to pick and choose from an
overwhelming amount of riches, and I shall