received such a letter as that, next week,
from every parish in London!

There is the question of school education
again. The public, fast asleep as usual, has
been woke up about that subject, lately, by
the Times. The case has been mentioned of
a gentleman whose bill for the half-year's
schooling and boarding of two little boys
amounted to seventy-five pounds. This
extortion was commented on publicly by
an eminent novelist, was further exposed
by an excellent article in the Times, which
article was applauded with the usual
unnecessary servility by the usual letter-writers who
appear in that journal. What result has
followed ? One impudent letter, so far as
I know, from one impudent schoolmaster.
What other results are to be expected?
Tell me plainly, will the comments of the
eminent novelist, will the excellent article
in the Times, will the fawning approval
of the public letters, lower our school-bills
—say, in a year's time? Judging by past
experience in other matters, and by the
representative letter of the impudent schoolmaster,
I should say not. What, then,
will lower them ? Emptying the expensive
schools next half-year—or, in other
words, a strike of parents. My house would
be dreadfully noisy, my boys would break
the windows and play tricks with gunpowder,
and I should have to suffer the shocking
hardship of teaching them myself, unless I
looked about and hired a tutor for the half-
year. All serious inconveniences, I admit—
but which alternative is the worse ? To be
uncomfortable for six months, or to submit
to be fleeced regularly every half-year until
my boys are grown up?

Here I rest my case; not because I am
getting to the end of my examples, but because
I am getting to the end of my space.
Many readers may differ with my opinions,
and may laugh at my remedy. It is easy to
do so. But it is equally easy to obey the
injunction which heads this paper. We
travel every day in peril of being burnt to
death; we ride in uncomfortable omnibuses;
we sit in theatres with aching necks and
bones, and are fleeced in them by box-opening
harpies after we have paid our admission
money; we pay bi-annually for the teaching
and boarding of two of our small children a
sum which equals a year's income for a clerk
and his family—whose fault is it, really and
truly, that these grievances, and dozens of
others which might be mentioned, are not
speedily and completely redressed? Has it
actually come to this, that the English public
has a capacity of common suffering, and a
capacity of common grumbling, but no capacity
of common action for the promotion of
social reforms? Our system of civilisation
relieves us of the performance of many irksome
duties, by supplying us with deputies whose
business it is to take them off our hands.
This system has many obvious advantages,
which no reasonable man can question. But,
if it be pushed beyond its legitimate purpose
of saving the useless waste of valuably
employed time, then it leads to serious
disadvantages—even, as I am inclined to think,
to serious deterioration of the national
character. Public opinion, in these latter
days, is apathetically satisfied with much
talking and much writing: it shifts all doing
to the shoulders of any chance deputy who
may, or may not, turn up to accept practical
responsibilities. It was not always so in
England. When HAMPDEN's blood rose under
the extortionate tyranny of Charles the First,
he was not satisfied with expressing his
opinion that his taxes were unjust; he struck,
and taught his countrymen to strike; he
buttoned up his pockets like a man, and
said, in plain, fearless words, "I will not pay
the King his unjust demand." What does
Hampden now, when every species of
audacious social imposition is practised on
him ? He pays—and writes to the Times.

UNSUSPECTED NEIGHBOURS.

FROM the street in which we live, there
diverges a lane, leading to nowhere, first, and
afterwards to the open fields. About halfway
between the street and the nowhere, there is
a door in a wall affording entrance to a paradise
which we often visit in search of apricots,
artichokes, peaches, plums, and a long
list of other desirable sundries. The bit of
lane down which we have to pass, is partially
paved in the roughest style, and partially
remains in its primeval state of clay. Several
gutters and kitchen drains from several
houses empty their contents into it, getting
out again as they can, if at all; notwithstanding
which, the lane-floor all summer long is
baked by the sun as hard as a brick. Moreover,
one or two charitable persons take pity
sometimes on the lane's forlorn condition: if
it is unusually muddy after an extra dose
from Saint Swithin's watering-pot, or Saint
John's fire-engine, they scrape away the mire
and make it what they call clean, leaving the
next heavy tempest to finish the work of
street-sweeping. But in autumn and winter
(when it does not freeze) there will still
remain permanent puddles, which render
the crossing and the piloting down this
lane a matter of considerable nicety.
There is a chain of lakes of various
dimensions communicating with each other
through the beds of wheel-ruts. At one
corner, there is an expanse of ornamental
water; and there are picturesque creeks
which lose themselves at the foot of a hedge.

The other day, when returning from the
paradise with some canary-bird's groundsel
and some ambrosial pears, I halted to contemplate
the verdant lagune. "This must be
rich!" I mentally exclaimed. "I will have
a little of this before another five minutes!"
So said, so done. With a beer-glass and an