of society, no matter how elevated; and, considerable proportion of the children were together with the moral and religious train-maintained from the private funds of the ing they receive in the Orphanage home, they Sisterhood and their friends, without any possess the highest recommendation for direct appeal to the public at large. The respectable domestic service. For this, also, rest, however, were maintained from subtheir personal appearance and bearing, apart scriptions they received, their cost per head from other considerations, are greatly in averaging about £12 per annum. Rememtheir favour. Like most other girls brought bering at the moment that every child in the up in charitable institutions, there is a vast London district pauper schools averaged an difference in their bearing from that of pauper expenditure, including house-rent and estachildren. Kindly as these may be treated blishment charges, of about £28 per annum, in the union workhouse, they wear, when we expressed some surprise at the very they leave it, the unmistakable stamp of the moderate sum which was required for the Poor Law" about them. A sort of cowed maintenance of these orphans; but the expression is peculiar to them, notwithstand- reply we received soon set the difficulty at ing the considerate treatment they, as a rest. In the £12 named was not included rule, receive from the guardians and the either the labour or maintenance of the officials of the workhouse, which takes a long seventeen Sisters themselves, their services time thoroughly to eradicate. The children being perfectly gratuitous; neither did it from Orphanages, especially those under include the value of the work of the the government of Sisterhoods or associa- elder girls in their attendance on those tions of ladies, no matter of what religious who were younger and incapable of work. creed or denomination, wear the appearance Again, some small contribution to the and manners of the offspring of respect- relief of the expenditure was made by able working women, thoroughly modest and taking in washing from some families in the obedient, yet without any unnatural timidity neighbourhood, but hardly to the extent or servility. which the Sisters had hoped for. There were also many other things needed, had they the funds for the purpose, such as the enlargement of the building, so as to receive a greater number of orphans, the erection of a chapel, the present being inconveniently crowded, and other improvements too numerous to mention. The Sisters, however, live in hope, and we have no hesitation in saying that any of our readers who may visit the institution will not only join in that hope, but will very possibly assist in its fulfilment.

On asking the Sister the almost needless question whether she found any difficulty in procuring these girls appointments in respectable families, she answered, "None whatever." The great difficulty and anxiety this Sisterhood experienced was in finding funds for the children's maintenance while under their care, as well as for the cost of their outfit when they left them, which generally averaged from £3 to £5. On going deeper into the question of finance, we were informed that a

SOCIAL PLAGUES.

JABBER.

DESPITE kindly official reminders, I have, not without excuse, long delayed my appendix to the Anatomy of Noise. During the last six months, scribbling England has been interviewing on paper a great man dead; and I have taken refuge in the golden silence about which he, through twenty volumes, magnificently thunders. Let us now return to some inadequately denounced offences of the tongue against the repose of soul and body which everything in this age conspires to "abolish or destroy." Chief of these are talking mischievously, talking too loud, and talking too much. We have

not here to do with famous criminals, venomous Preachers of charity, uproarious Advocates of calm, incontinent Apostles of selfrestraint. Slander, figured among the Greeks. as Argus with the eyes, by Virgil as the lying Fame, immortalised in the days of Elizabeth as the hunt of Sir Caledore, is too dread a monster for our homely prose. "Few and weary," says Macaulay, are they who are in at the death of the Blatant Beast." "None are they," respond the more faithful Spenserians, for, in troth, he never dies, but finds, when chased from court to camp, a last refuge-and here the old poet himself grows

libellous among the clergy. So vast, so various, so well-worn a theme we resign to the epics and master satirists from Homer to Thackeray.

"Tenui musam meditamur avenâ."

Vanish from our thoughts Thersites, Iachimo, Iago, Spartan Ephors, Spanish Inquisitors, Hyperborean priests "writ large," jealousies of ministers or minstrels, or queens with daggers and poisoned fangs-our concern is with the petty pests, the thorns and nettles of life, from which nor stainless orthodoxy, nor Alpine morals, nor the most irreproachable dulness, can set us free.

There is a principle of "practical reason" as momentous as any set forth from Königsberg-that the air by which we breathe and hear is no man's property, but a public heritage; to be used, as the Roman state jugera, or any other park or common," under restrictions, and abused "under penalties." We have no more right to mess it by discordant sounds than to defile it by evil odours; and taking too large a share of it is a usurpation. But the unwritten laws of the air, unlike the written laws of the land and water, are constantly violated with impunity. Incapable of rhetoric on so grave a matter, I cling to logical divisions. Robbery of the atmosphere assumes two forms: the vibrations we make in it may be too rapid, i.e. we may talk too loud, or they may be too continuous, i.e. we may talk too much.

I. Custom-mostly foolish--has drawn a line on the first head, which is theoretically indefensible. No ordinary single man or solitary woman would be allowed to stand, in any public street or square, and roar like a bull, or howl like a dog at the moon, without being summarily consigned to an asylum or a penitentiary. Yet a child may do this, or an adult pretending to sing, and human beings, passing from place to place in troops, may, without a thought of "compensation," make almost any amount of disturbance. Witness a nocturnal gathering of Scotch students in the state and stage at which they ask their "trusty friens" to gie them a han'; or a band of Burschen-be it three or more -illustrated by cuts, coming over the Rhine, and bellowing, with every mark of atrocious hilarity

"Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten

Dass ich so traurig bin;

or half-a-dozen Berlin bagmen, on the ascent of a wood one hundred feet high, imitating the Swiss "jodel," their great hearts inspired by the Panteutonic faith, "über allen Gipfeln ist Bier." Vainly we seek to escape from

these tortures by a practice of what the old English texts, with which we are pelted by "nests of ninnies" called Societies, expressively term "stay-at-homitiveness:" for they besiege our windows and waylay our thresholds; nor in flight, for, like care, they pursue us over land and sea. Adsum qui patior." I am here, during my yearly fruitless summer quest of a month's serenity, in a little "bad" place, called Wittekind, where there are no apparent distractions to study and meditation and the life-work of the analysis of "social plagues; " none without, but the earliest pipe of terribly wide awakened birds, and the morning mutterings of a thirdrate band. I have fled from the neighbouring camp and college, from torch processions, from sang-vereins, from the rushing to and fro of kellners with raw ham and kraut, from the beating of clothes to death, at five P.M. in the hotel garden, and the rumbling in front of interminable waggons over intolerable stones, from the detestable tramp of infantry and the hideous clatter of cavalry, to what seemed a little earthly paradise. I have, and at a reasonable rate, pleasant rooms, neat, clean, looking over trees and greenery, far from the yelp of dog or poultry's scream. The air is good, the table sufficient. What more would I have? On either side of my "himmel-ruhig zimmer," so designated by a most respectable landlord, there are indelicately delicate doors, through which, if I chose to listen, I could hear my neighbours brush their hair. To the right there is comparative peace, for the bachelor invalid on that side gives no supper parties, and only his cough is troublesome; but left-wards, to my undoing, are ensconced a Frau and two Fraüleins, with lung-power such as, in their sex, is only found in this country. The Germans are a great people, and they know it, and they let you know that they know it. I do not gainsay it; have never, with our immaculate Spectator, begrudged the fruit of their victories "after Sedan," and would not take shares in any stock of "revanche" for single-handed France. But they want to be told, from a friendly source, a few home truths-e.g., that they should spend a little less money on their cannon and more on their drains; that they should cease to label red vinegar with the names of the choicest vintages of Bordeaux; that about Shakespeare they have published nonsense enough; and that, to be agreeable, their language requires to be spoken softly. The North Germans do not speak it softly. Lord Byron's somewhat exacting desire never to see women eat would,

remarked, is a spirit that will not forth even by prayer and fasting-on the part of the readers. The cacoethes loquendi is worse. Readers can fast. What is it to me that every hour emits a slushy sermon, tract, or speech; that every day brings forth a lady novelist with the same old plot, sentimental passion, and stale morality, and every week another neo-Oxford poet with a new meaningless jingle of equally jaded and often happily incredible immoralities? I know that everything worth saying, permitted to be said in English, has been said a hundred times; and, save for information, am resolved to read no more. But when my friend calls I cannot always be "from home." If I am dining, or bathing, or merely "out," he will wait till I am ready, or return; he "wants to have a talk," i.e. he is resolved for three stricken hours to make me listen to him, and sucI ceeds in destroying my whole day's work. fidget on my chair; he is glued to his, he has actually scooped it out. I pace the room like a hyena, he follows me up and down. I assent to every platitude or paradox, profess my ignorance of politics and art, my utter indifference to the "welfare of the people." 'Tis idle; he will inform me. I have a headache-a talk will do me good. I am busy-he affects to move, but returns from the doorway, hat in hand, to renew his tale.

in these parts, have been defensible; he might have added a wish never to hear them talk. We must, of course, believe in all the poets say. I never question the self-abnegation of Goethe or the realism of Schiller, and have always fought for Heinrich Heine as the purest of lyrists and the truest of friends. Undoubtedly, Gretchen is still somewhere warbling at her wheel, and Ottilie paddling in her lake, and Amalia lingering in her grove, and the Fischermädchen bringing her boat to land. But a malign influence has stood between me and those "creatures of the element," my unhappy experience having more often suggested the virago of the Niebelungen Lied, who, when her bridegroom threatened to be refractory, swung him up, in a manner to satisfy Miss Becker herself, on a peg on the wall. My left-ward friends have voices neither "low nor sweet," more like the rattle of needle-guns around Metz than "winds in summer sighing." At table they use their knives for forks, and their toothpicks lavishly; but I am thought a brute for saying they shriek like wood cats, yelp like spoilt poodles, and laugh like demented apes. They begin soon, and end late. I do not rise with the lark; they do. | I have no objection to lie down with the lamb; they have; and for the last three days my favourite sleep is away in the "Ewigkeit." It is broken, at six, by the clatter of spoons, "ach gott,' "ach so," "natür- Of much speaking there are, of course, lich," "schön," dazu," "unglaublich," "aber many sorts: serious, silly, pedantic, vacuous, nein," &c., &c., and a constant crescendo, on a hobby or acrobatic. The least fathrough every false note of the gamut, of tiguing of incessant speakers are perhaps ja, ja, JA. 'Tis the ugliest word in Europe, those who talk mere nonsense, for you can and I cannot conceive any circumstance abstract your thoughts from their babble, and, under which it can be seductive. "Then in the last extremity, they can without loss lay your hand in mine, dear, and gently be somewhat rudely dismissed. To this whisper JA!" When their conversation-class belong Jacks of all trades; poetasters; which I am compelled to pronounce deficient in substantial variety-ags, they take to reading aloud their national literature, from some German Hannah More, hitting the final abs as with a fist, or exploding them as from a revolver. In the Curhaus there is a notice, "Children who cannot play are forbidden to play on these pianos." Why should people who cannot read aloud be allowed to do it? I have tried to stifle them by reciting the most objectionable verses of Heine's "Deutschland." They don't understand it. I shall be driven to try the adventures of Herr Schnabelwopski. The German women may be the most virtuous in the world, but they are the noisiest, and I am scarce in love with them.

II. The cacoethes scribendi, it has been

people who scamp their work, quit their posts and run screeching over the country; privileged buffoons at more than with whom? audiences laugh. Persons of this description do not wait for invitations. They invite themselves. If you are a timid man, leave the house; if you have heart, for future peace, say, pointblank, you won't have them. Hobbyriders have been such frequent butts that they require few words. Most of them are amusing, sometimes instructive, for a day, intolerable for a year. The sub-species are various; ranging from metaphysicians, grammarians, men of science, and specialists who have made one author "the study of their lives," down to Philanthropists, among whom advocates of "The Higher Education of Women," sanitary reformers, and teetotalers