Though the division of labour is urged to too great an extent for such habits to become general with us, yet there is much in the social economy of those populations who rank below our own in point of civilization which we may stoop to imitate. The Russian organization of arteles might furnish a useful hint to our unemployed labourers, who are determined to find work at any price, and live in an economic manner during the performance of it. The formation of the corps of shoe-blacks in the metropolis is somewhat on this plan, and answers admirably. The recent establishment of the Ragged Factory in Belvederecrescent, in which Mr. Driver employs the vagrants of the City in making boxes for certain manufactories, is another institution of the same character, and does its founder infinite credit. Were the idle adults of our towns in similar corporations to ferret out some work and apply themselves honestly to discharge it, not only much positive good would accrue to society, but much positive evil would disappear. If the workman cannot in these times, like the hero in the Arabian tale, learn seven trades to secure himself against famine, he can become an adept in a variety of little arts calculated to insure him against the worst forms of distress. In Russia and Turkey every serf is his own tailor. Among the Backirs the material of wearing apparel is so strong that one outfit lasts as long as a man's life. We really cannot see why in the West a workman should find his clothes, like his provisions, an article of hebdomadal expense; why, to keep himself square with society, he should be obliged every second quarter to throw away a fifth of his hard earnings upon rascally Jews for the simple article of covering. Surely some fabric might be discovered sufficiently durable to last him a term of years, and his own shears and his wife's needle might do the rest. By this means the indignity of wearing cast-off clothes might be avoided, and those national costumes preserved which contribute so much to the picturesque aspect of a country, and are so intimately bound up with the traditions and self-respect of a people. The State should be careful to encourage institutions for teaching girls sewing, knitting, and other useful domestic arts; for, where such prevail, the population no matter what may be the distress under which they labour, are never reduced to that degree of misery which is manifest where these arts are neglected.

One of the greatest obstacles to the physical comfort of the workman in the West is the prevalence of individualism over social or communal regulations. While England has only advanced to the erection of a few public lavatories, Germany has established communal bakeries, dining salons, workshops, and other establishments, in which any pecuniary diminution of the

labourer's expenses can be effected by economizing fuel, space, and labour. Mr. Twining informs us, in his interesting Letters on the Working Classes of Nassau, that not only the gentry have their table d'hôte, but the peasant, too, sits down to a similar social repast, and enjoys a pleasant meal, with two or three courses, for 12 or 14 kreuzers-that is, for something like fivepence. In England, the common form of charity is to subscribe to a soup-kitchen; on the Continent, benevolence displays itself in the more rational form of founding alimentary societies, which, self-supporting, furnish the artizan with food at cost price. Owing to the improved methods of cooking abroad as compared with our culinary operations at home, food is ordinarily furnished at one-half of the cost which the English labourer has to pay for his rations. In this respect we are far behind the Continent. Even with the additional expense and the smaller quantity, our dishes are more awkwardly prepared. It was a saying of Prince Talleyrand, that England had a hundred religions, but only one sauce, and that was melted butter.

With a view of remedying many of the disadvantages under which the English workman labours in this respect-with a view that he may have his money's value for his money's worth, Mr. Twining has started the idea of economic museums for the working classes, which are intended to combine all the most approved methods and appliances in vogue throughout Europe of administering to the social comfort and physical well-being of the commonalty. In the memoranda which this gentleman has addressed to the Society of Arts, and which he has translated into French and German for continental distribution, he lays his finger, as it were, not only upon each class of articles embraced in the scope of his design, but almost upon everything included under each class, with a speciality that recals to our memory Lord Bacon's prerogative instances. Plans of architecture, specimens of building materials, of fittings, of furniture, of household utensils and ornaments, of clothing, descriptions of food; culinary recipes, medical prescriptions, callisthenics, wheel conveyances, modes of lighting and heating rooms-comprise some of the general heads under which he invites contributions from all who are interested in the undertaking, either by pecuniary motives or through a sincere desire to elevate the condition of the great masses of mankind. Such an institution, if organized

* As Mr. Twining was so fortunate as to secure a room in the late Parisian Exhibition for his design, and the flattering patronage of Napoleon and the Empress Eugène, the undertaking commences well; and we hope that its benevolent founder will live to see the institution, under the patronage of the respective governments, become general throughout Europe.

NO. XLVI.

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upon an extensive basis, would form an admirable accompaniment to such works upon social economics as those of M. le Play, and would go far to remedy much of the misery existing in the cottage of the workman. It would stimulate thought and awaken invention in matters which now depend for their amelioration upon caprice or accident. It would generalize the experience and sagacity of each section of the European community, and make the advantages possessed by one country the property of all. It would bring the manners and social habitudes of every country in face of each other, and enable the artizan, without stirring beyond the circuit of his own town, to enjoy all the advantages which acute observation can reap from foreign travel, and to adopt out of the domestic appliances of other countries whatever tended to improve his own. The lower populations in the social scale would be placed on a level with the higher, and the great anomaly be destroyed of one country clinging to the social forms of the fifteenth century, while another, availing itself of the additional experience of three centuries, finds the present motion of time too slow for its advancement, and anticipates the years which are coming on.

The scope of M. le Play's work professes to embrace the moral and intellectual as well as the physical state of the working classes; but the mental features of the European artizan are only considered in relation to his material condition, which in reality forms the exclusive topic of this writer's labours. Indeed, to obtain a correct idea of the principles most adapted to elevate the commonalty in the intellectual sphere, recourse must be had to distant times; phenomena must be dug up and institutions studied which bear no analogy to any existing at present, and generations interrogated who, were they to awake now, would hardly recognise their posterity, or the land of their birth. For, notwithstanding the complete cycle of physical states which the present age presents to us, it must be admitted that the prevalence of communal institutions in Rome and Athens, and the lavish manner in which the arts were patronized at certain periods by the respective governments of both countries, imparted a degree of refinement to the commonalty and developed in them an æsthetic taste, to which no period of modern civilization can furnish a parallel. It must also be as unhesitatingly admitted that the resuscitation of letters in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries injected such a literary mania into the society of those countries on which the light first dawned, that the commonalty did not escape its influence, but exhibited a passion for letters, and acquired an intellectual development such as the earth, before or since, has not witnessed. To consider how far the present generation of

Intellectual Elevation.

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workmen, under the altered circumstances of society, are capable of similar refinement, and what laws and institutions are most adapted to stimulate such a development, would lead us far beyond the circuit of M. le Play's researches. Yet it must be confessed that, unaccompanied with intellectual elevation, the most successful result of such labours can only tend to make man a sleeker and fatter animal than he was before. Without professing to inculcate any settled opinions upon the promotion of intellectual culture among the masses, this much we may venture to glean from the past, that little advance can be made in this direction by any organization working men may form among themselves; and that, without governments, with the large resources at their command, patronize art in a more liberal spirit, and revive institutions analogous to the communal halls, artistic gardens, and public festivities of Greece and Rome, the labourer, instead of being an ornament to creation, will still continue to be a blotch on its surface. Mechanics' institutes, to a great extent, have failed, on account of the scantiness of their resources, their inability to combine instruction with amusement, or to offer workmen any advantages which cannot be provided for out of their united contributions. But, notwithstanding our past experience, if the British Government would emulate the liberal spirit of antiquity, and economize the public treasure with the view of founding institutions designed to refine the taste of the masses, we see no reason why, after the lapse of one generation, the industrial classes of England, who are certainly at present inferior to those of the Continent in intellectual culture, should not become as pre-eminent for social refinement as they are for political freedom,-why they should not rival in æsthetic taste the Athenian population of the age of Pericles, and in literary distinction the Italian population of the age of Bembo. But, for this purpose, greater public spirit must be manifested by those who exercise the legislative functions of the country, a more zealous watchfulness over the disbursements of the treasury, that, instead of a national debt, a constant accumulation of riches may distinguish the financial operations of the Exchequer. We must hear no more of our competency to carry on expensive wars without seeking some kind of indemnification for our expenditure; for, by increasing the permanent taxation of the country, we deteriorate the condition of the workmen, and render the duties of patronage on the part of masters more difficult to be performed. Those who talk in that fashion are grossly ignorant of the subjects upon which they so coolly venture to instruct their neighbours. For nothing is so costly as that which is purchased at the sacrifice of the social interests of the majority of the com

munity; and every shilling extracted from the public purse to be wasted upon unremunerative warfare, is so much withdrawn from the moral and intellectual progress of the labouring classes— is so much withdrawn from that fund on the good application of which depend the advance of civilization and the social welfare of mankind.

(Church History of the Present Time.') By DR. Remains, by DR. C. R. London: Williams and

ART. VI.—(1.) Internal History of German Protestantism since the Middle of last Century. By Dr. C. F. A. KAHNIS, Professor of Theology in the University of Leipzig. Translated by REV. THEODORE MEYER, Hebrew Tutor in New College, Edinburgh. 12mo. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. 2.) Kirchengeschichte der Neuesten Zeit. most Recent Period; from 1814 to the J. C. L. GIESELER. Edited from his REDEPENNING. 8vo. Bonn: Marcus. Norgate. 1855. (3.) Die Zeichen der Zeit. ('The Signs of the Times. Letters to Friends on Freedom of Conscience and the Rights of the Christian Congregation.') By C. J. BUNSEN, Privy Councillor to H. M. the King of Prussia, Doctor of Philosophy and Theology. Post Svo. Leipzig: Brockhaus. London: Williams and Norgate. 1855. (4.) Allgemeine Kirchliche Chronik. (Universal Chronicle of the Church.') By Pastor KARL MATTHES. First and Second Issues, 1854 and 1855. Square 12mo. Leipzig: Löschke. London: Williams and Norgate. (5.) Protestantische Monatsblätter für innere Zeitgeschichte. (Protestant Monthly Magazine, for the Internal History of the Time. Designed to illustrate the Labours and Problems of the Christian Present.') Edited by PROFESSOR GELZER, of Berlin, with the assistance of Dorner, Hagenbach, W. Hoffmann, Hundeshagen, Nitzsch, Cl. Perthes, Ullmann, W. Wackernagel. Wichern, Wiese, &c. Vols. 1.—VI, 1853–1855. Gotha: Perthes. London: Williams and Norgate.

IN the summer of the past year the chiefs of the Romish hierarchy in Germany assembled with vast multitudes of the laity to honour with all possible pomp and splendour a religious festival which the oldest greybeard in the great congregation had never beheld before, and which the youngest catechumen will never witness again. The allusion is not to a papal jubilee; for to this plagiarism of the old LUDI SECULARES the touching words in