afforded to the homeless class, called
vagrants. On New Year's Day, in eighteen
hundred and fifty seven, there were a thousand
vagrants housed in English workhouses.
On the same day, in eighteen hundred and
fifty-eight, the number housed was one
thousand five hundred. Of out-of-door relief
to vagrants there was some decrease, but of
outdoor relief to lunatics and idiots a decided
increase. There was in every way a fuller
recognition of the needs of this unhappy class,
which, in the good old times of tough roast
beef, used to wander at will in our streets,
markets, and fairs, scoffed at and worried by
the rabble.

A table of the number of pauper lunatics
and idiots chargeable to the parishes in each
county, tells us that the average proportion
of these unfortunate people to the population
is about one in seven hundred; that the
proportion chargeable is greatest in Gloucestershire,
and, indeed, almost three times greater
there than in Durham, where there is but
one to every twelve or thirteen hundred,
There is also an excessive number chargeable
on Berks, Wilts, Oxfordshire, Leicestershire,
Hereford, Hertford, Salop, and Somerset,
here named in the order of excess; and,
next to Durham, a disproportionately small
number chargeable on Staffordshire, the
West Riding of York, Cheshire, Lancashire,
Cornwall, and Northumberland, here named
in the order of deficiency; whence we may
infer the very well-known fact, that it is not
activity of mind, but torpidity of mind, by which
an increase of idiocy and lunacy is favoured.
Over-work of the brain, against which we
hear so many people cry, and which we hear
so many cosy-looking men deplore very
complacently in their own persons, is not
by a good deal so dangerous as under-work
of the brain, that rare and obscure calamity
from which nobody is supposed ever to
suffer.

The Reverend Onesimus Howl drops his
chin and elevates his eyes, upsets his
digestion with excess of tea and muffin, and
supports upon the doughy face he thus
acquires a reputation for the great strain
on his brains caused by the outpouring
of a weekly puddle of words. His friends
labour to prop up his brain with added piles
of muffin. Paler becomes his face, and more
idiotic his expression, as he lives from
New Year's Day to New Year's Day rattling
about in his empty head the few ideas of
other men he has contrived to borrow, and
tranquilly claims all the sweets of indulgence
on account of the strain put upon his wits.
Doctor Porpice is wheeled about from house
to house in his brougham, prescribes his
cordials and his mild aperients; treats, by help
of what knowledge gathered from a past
generation may happen to have grown into
his habit of practice, all the disease he sees;
now and then turns to a book when he is
puzzled, but more commonly dozes after
dinner. Yet very gladly does the doctor
hear the talk about immense strain on his
mind, large practice, great responsibility, and
the wondering that one poor head can carry
all he knows. He seldom passes a day without
having taken care to confide to somebody
that he is overworked. Once a week, indeed,
if his practice be large, he may be forced into
some effort to use his brains; but that he
does really exercise them once a week, I am
not certain. The lawyer elevates his routine
into a crush of brain work. The author and
the merchant flatter themselves, or account
themselves flattered, by an application to
their labours also of the same complimentary
condolence. The truth is, that hard work of
the brain, taken alone— apart from griefs and
fears, from forced or voluntary stinting of the
body's need of food or sleep, and the mind's
need of social intercourse— does infinitely
more to prolong life and strengthen reason in
the workers than to cut or fray the thread of
either. Men break down under the grind of
want, under the strain of a continuous denial
to the body of its half-a-dozen hours a day of
sleep, its few necessary pounds of wholesome
food, and its occasional exercise of tongue
and legs. If an author spends his whole life
in his study his mind fails under the pressure
of the solitary system. If a great lawyer
refuses himself month after mouth the necessary
fourth part of the day for sleep, he wears
his brain out, not by repletion of study, but
by privation of something else. Under all
ordinary circumstances no man who performs
work for which he is competent is called
upon to deny himself the first necessaries of
life, except during short periods of encroachment
which occur to men in every occupation,
and which seldom are of long duration,
and can almost invariably be followed
by a period of ease, sufficient for recovery.
Healthy men, who have bed and board
assured to them, while they can eat, sleep,
stir, and be merry, will have sound minds,
though they work their brains all day, and
provide them for the other five or six hours
with that light employment which is the
chief toil of Doctor Porpice or the Reverend
Onesimus.

From considerations of disease, ignorance,
and poverty, we pass to the tables on which
are set out the year's supply of crime.

During the three years, eighteen hundred
and fifty-four, five, six, there was a steady
decrease of crime, indicated by decrease in the
number of convictions before the criminal
courts of England and Wales. The decrease
was very marked indeed. Twenty-three thousand
convicts in the first of those years became
twenty thousand in the second, fifteen thousand
in the third. This decrease took place
entirely in the class of offences against
property committed without violence. Crimes
accompanied with violence against the person,
as assaults and burglaries, were increasing;
but, in the number of committals and