general good feeling in the mill as a much
better reason for the greater care over the
work.

Left to select, by a committee chosen from
among themselves, the books to be placed in
their library, the men have been found to
prefer those which contained useful
knowledge such as manuals of popular science,
voyages, and histories.

So much being done to promote among
the adults increasing intelligence and good
feeling, there remains the most essential
thing, the corner-stone of the whole system.
It has been the practice of this master to
promote weekly discussion-meetings among the
operatives in his employment. Topics of the
day, opinions of the press, the state of trade,
questions concerning competition, discoveries
on practical science or mechanics, especially
such as affect the cotton-trade; and, lastly,
the conduct and discipline of their own mill,
provide plenty of matter for the free play of
opinion. The master takes every possible
opportunity of being present at these meetings:
and, from what he has heard in them concerning
his own mill, the Preston manufacturer
declares that he has derived substantial
advantage. It will, very often, he says,
happen that the men may fancy themselves
to be suffering under a grievance which does
not really exist, and which a very little
explanation will at once remove. Sometimes,
too, a real grievance may be in existence, which
the employer needs only to be informed
of to remedy. In some mills, this master
adds,—such is the fear of the consequence of
being thought a grumbler,—that the men
will often draw lots to determine who shall
be the bearer of a complaint which may have
been long seeking expression.

With one extract we will sum up the result of
the adoption of this system. "I confess," says
the Preston manufacturer, "that, at the time,
having control of a large establishment, I
cultivated a habit of meeting and discussing
questions with my workmen, both questions
affecting the public concernment, and
questions relating to our business. I confess
that I derived quite as much benefit from
these discussions as they did; and how much
that was, may be inferred from the fact that,
after the institution of that habit, I never
had a dispute with my operatives. And I
will here say that, at those meetings, I have
heard an amount of sound and various
information, expressed with a native strength
and eloquence such as would have surprised
any one not conversant with the Lancashire
population. It was from those meetings that
I derived the settled conviction which I now
entertain, that the operatives do not lack the
power, but only the means, of forming sound
and independent opinions."

We believe that we employ ourselves more
usefully at this juncture in setting forth
general principles like these than in any
attempt, by arbitration as third parties in a
special case, to introduce that which the
Preston manufacturer declares to be only a
fresh element of discord.

THE HALL OF WINES.

IF you mount the Belvedere of the Jardin
des Plantes, at Paris, there is one particular
segment of the panorama which forms a very
complete and singular picture. The right-hand
wing (theatrically speaking) is formed
by Jussieu's famous cedar of Lebanon,
planted by his own hands in seventeen
hundred and thirty-five; that on the left hand
is a clump of yews, firs, and miscellaneous
evergreens. The heights of Montmartre
crown the horizon; the middle distance is
formed by the line of houses that constitute
the quays on the right bank of the Seine,
broken in the midst by the cupolas of St.
Pol, and a little to the left by the barn-like
roof of St. Louis dans I'ÃŽle. But the whole
central space of the landscape is overspread
with what might be a lake of brown mud in
a half-dried and crumpled state, but which,
after a second look, proves a vast expanse of
tiled roofs running in parallel rows, and
slightly diversified by the tops of trees
and by scarcely visible skylights which
break up the gray-brown uniformity. That
petrified mud-lake consists entirely of the
roofs which cover the famous Entrepôt or
Halle-aux-Vins, which Napoleon the First
propounded (by imperial decree) in eight-teen
hundred and eight, on the site of the
Abbey of St. Victor, where Abelard had
listened to the lessons of Guillaume de
Champeaux, and where many good bottles
of ecclesiastical wine had made their
disappearance down monkish throats.

If your curiosity is sufficiently awakened
to pay the Entrepôt a nearer visit, you will
meet with much to interest. Suppose you
walk down Rue Cuvier,—perhaps one of
these days we shall have Owen Street, and
Faraday Street, in London,—you will reach
the Quai Saint Bernard, with the Seine
rushing rapidly to the left and in front.
You will encounter an eddying stream of
pleasure and of business combined, as if
the whole population of Paris were dancing
a grand Sir Roger de Coverly together;
omnibusses flitting backwards and
forwards,—Hirondelles, Favorites, Gazelles,
Parisiennes; holiday parties laden with
eatables, to be washed down, outside the
Barrière, by wine untaxed by octroi duty;
students and savans bent on taking notes on
botany and comparative anatomy; wine,
merchants and their customers with mouths
in tasting trim, bound either for the Halle
itself or for Bercy beyond it; troops of children
with their nurses and grandmothers,
about to spend the afternoon in watching the
monkeys; artisans' cousins from the interior,
with hearts palpitating at the hope of
beholding living lions, tigers and