modesty, and at first suggests the remedy.
A few weeks, and the character of the
woman hardens ; the ardent spirits which
stopped the tears of shame, and dulled the
sounds of obscenity and blasphemy as they
fell upon her ear, have become necessary to
her daily life; and now, the means must be
obtained wherewith to gain the stimulus,—
and so, from step to step she falls, and we
have not long to wait before, in the drunken,
dissolute, fear-inspiring, and slatternly brawler
of our barrack yard, the result of our training
system becomes too evident. Then, seeing
the soldier's wife what we have made her—our
morality shudders at the sight, we gather our
garments closer round us, and so pass by on
the other side.

Now, what our barrack system has already
made of the women of the line, our camp at
Aldershot will speedily make of the women
of the militia. The curse already begins to
work. Men wearied, as they told me, with
parades and drill, are prevented from necessary
rest, by the cries of a sick or peevish
child. The irritated soldier vents his
disgust in oaths. Quarrels ensue. The father,
goaded by the language of his comrade,
abuses his wife for lack of better management,
and perhaps curses the innocent child
who has been the cause of the disturbance.
The annoyance spreads, recrimination follows
recrimination, abuse thickens on abuse; and,
when the morning dawns, and the gun fires,
the men go forth to duty, weary and excited;
the little children are driven forth to learn
such evil as they may; and their dirty,
weary, heartsick mothers drudge through the
day in misery and hopeless toil.

In each camp at Aldershot there is a chapel.
It is well done. It is right that the British
soldier should be taught that he should
serve his God, that he may the better serve
his country. In every line at Aldershot there
are schools; this also is well done; for, on
the little children assembling there, England
may depend hereafter for the protection of
her liberties, her very faith, her laws, her
peace. But of what avail can either church
or school be, if in every hut a moral canker
grows and spreads; if, back to the cottage
homes of England a stream of moral pollution
is allowed to flow; if woman's virtue and
childhood's innocence are to be alike practically
set at nought by a system that would be
humiliating to a savage nation; if expediency,
pointing at the evil of marriage in the army,
is to endeavour to lessen that evil by a plan of
systematic training in depravity?

The evils of our barrack system have been,
in a great measure, unknown to the British
people. They have learnt from many sources
to mistrust and dread, and to deny honest
employment to the wife of a soldier; but, few
among us have been induced to ask, what
are the influences which seem to have
exercised so powerful an evil on so large a
portion of our social community?

Few persons visit barracks, and thus their
internal economy is seldom known, except to
those intimately connected with their arrangements.
The camp at Aldershot, however, is
the great military attraction of the day. Let
the wives and mothers of every rank of life,
who make a holiday, to visit the camp, enter
the married huts there; let them seek out
those in particular, now the most crowded,
in the levies of the Irish regiments; let them
take those huts as a sample of the universal
barrack-system of Great Britain, and then
judge for themselves. If no other good
arises, mercy will at least be learnt. We
shall have seen the system which has made
the soldier's wife what she is, and the
uplifted stone will drop from the baud of
pity, as we shall at last commiserate rather
than blame; we shall know how to sorrow
over the origin of the evil rather than shrink
from its effect, and we shall see that, in common
with many other items in our social
system, the soldier's wife is the victim of an
unwise and most unmerciful training, over
which she, as an individual, has had no
control.

SOME GERMAN SUNDAYS.

OF how Sunday is really spent by the
labouring classes in some towns in Germany,
I claim, as an English workman who has
worked and played on German ground, some
right to speak. It is possible that I may
relate matters which some do not suspect,
and concerning which others have already
made up their minds; but, as I shall tell
nothing but truths, I trust I may not very
much disconcert the former, nor put the
latter completely out of patience, nor offend
anybody.

To begin with Hamburgh. I spent seven
months in this free, commercial port, earning
six and seven shillings a-week as a
journeyman jeweller; receiving, as is the
custom, my daily food at my employer's
hands; and nestling nightly between two
feather beds in a narrow closet adjoining his
bedroom. I came into Hamburgh on a Sunday
morning; and, although everything was
new and strange to me, and a number of
things passed before my eyes which could
never be seen in decorous London, yet there
were unmistakeable signs of Sunday in them
all—only it was not the Sunday to which
I had been born and bred. The shops were
closed, and there was stillness in the houses,
if not in the streets. I passed by the fore-
courted entrance to a theatre, and its doors
were shut; but one could easily guess by the
bills at the door-posts that it offered histrionic
entertainment for the evening. Wandering
through some beautifully wooded walks which
encircle the city, I met many promenaders,
trim, well-dressed, and chatty; and when I
turned back into the city, was once or twice