a few nooks in which there is a chance of
absolute solace in his last days, to the worn-
out pauper who has starved in honesty
through the mature years of life. And though
there are—not plenty of— schools in which
orphan boys may learn to add two and two,
there is a real use in the charity which
provides places of education that will discover
lurking powers, develop and foster them,
giving a strong help up to the lowly orphan
who deserves and needs it, and distributing
his less able companions in trades by which
they can learn to feed themselves. We think
the country would be better served by thus
giving help to the needy after Alleyn's way,
than by giving money to the rich according
to a main part of the scheme of the Charity
Commissioners. A wise development of the
fine-hearted actor's plan according to the
resources now at the disposal of his representatives,
and the existing wants and feelings
of society, would lead to a proposition differing
in many respects from that which is now
asking for the public approbation. For such
a development we look with confidence, and
trust that it will not exclude the consideration
of a claim to which Alleyn himself never
in all his life was deaf; the plea for a little
cordial help preferred by members of his
own profession. Who else would be so ready
as Ned Alleyn to stretch out a hand to
brethren in distress? His mind made easy
about means of helping by a foresight of the
increase of his funds, what could he have
liked better than to feel that when his profession
became large, and the profits of many
an able, noble member of it sometimes most
precarious, he should become the helper of
his brother's child  in generation after generation,
and a friend to those of his own calling
not in life only, but down to the remotest
day?

POST TO AUSTRALIA.

THE firm that I am connected with does
not believe in letters: their faith is in
personal interviews. They do not write about
business: they transact it. The consequence
is, that I am always at sea: I am always
going between Austinfriars and Australia.
Not being brought up to the sea, it cannot
be expected that I should like this.

I am not a scientific man. I have never
even been to the Polytechnic Institution.
But, not having anything particular to do
at sea besides to be sick, I indulge in
attempts to invent methods of facilitating
the delivery of persons and letters between
St. Martin's-le-Grand, London, and Broad
Street, Melbourne, in spite of the chaplain
of the clipper Presto, in which I have just
arrived; who considers that it is an impiety
to be interfering with Nature's geography.
He says that the world was made round,
and that we ought to go round it in
the regular manner, when we want to go from
one place to another. But I take the
commercial ground; and,—observing that a
general re-arrangement of the world seems
going on: that the Nicaraguan Canal is being
made a short cut across America, and the
Suez Canal is to give the go-by to the Cape of
Good Hope—I don't see why I should not
have my scheme for getting to Australia.

It may startle at first— I admit that it is
bold—but the late Mr. George Stephenson
remarked before a parliamentary committee,
that the making a railway to the moon was
merely a question of expense; and Australia
is not the moon. On the contrary, Australia
is the antipodes. That very phrase suggests my
scheme. Instead of going round to Australia,
why not go down to Australia?  An Artesian
well is merely a matter of cost. If it costs so
much to make an Artesian well two miles
deep, of course it can only cost so much more
to go on making it right through the earth. I
don't mean to say that if you bored straight
down, you would come out precisely at
Melbourne; but you could tunnel in that
direction. You could worm your way down. It
would take time and money; but I suppose
the Appian Way took time and money, and
M. de Montalembert suggests that we are
very like the Romans. We should more than
justify the comparison, if we could drop our
letters and newspapers down a tube to
Australia. To me, personally, it would be a
great convenience to be let down in that way;
for our firm, in establishing branches at
Sydney and Melbourne, will have personal
interviews; and I am the only man, they tell
me, that they can trust.

Something must be done. The more the
colonies develop themselves, the harder it is
to get at them. Our firm says, that it is all the
fault of the Lords of the Treasury. My Lords
cannot, naturally, be expected to take much
interest in commercial questions. But, if the
principle, suggested by the chaplain of the
Presto, that you should be made to go round
the earth, be a Conservative principle, it is a
Liberal principle, I should think, that you may
go across the earth, and that is what the present
Lords of the Treasury in a Liberal government
strictly forbid. They will make you take the
longest way, and resort to the slowest means
of taking the longest way. Consequently, our
firm is not very successful with the branches
at Sydney and Melbourne. Our firm—and
the fact is true also of the whole trade of
England—exports more goods to Australia
than to any other part of the globe, the
United States excepted. Australia is deemed
the best market we now have in the world.
Our firm—and that is also true of the
Bank of England—has been saved from a
commercial crisis this past year's winter by
the gold I and others have brought home
from the Diggings. Our firm has lost, in
the interest on money floated round the
world, in compliance with the views of
my Lords, a sum which would enable the