sacks of haricots, peas, rice, lentils, semolina, &c., all of the best quality, and approved by a testing committee, in whose presence samples are cooked. The indifferent consignments are condemned, and the contractor is bound to replace them by an equivalent of good articles before he can remove the bad from the store. When he fails within a given time, the authorities buy at his expense to the extent of his deficiency. Before he can become a contractor, he must make a money deposit, to cover any risk by his laches. Over the stores of fabrics, and crockery, hardware, &c., are the long galleries of made-up clothing, grouped in squares upon lofty stands, each square being that of a hospital or asylum, or a Bureau. The gallery of children's clothing is that by which the march of the visitor is opened. The place is airy and sweet; and, as the housewife says, "you might eat your dinner off" the polished floors. Packets of layettes for the Bureaux de Bienfaisance are in astonishing numbers. The attendant explains that each complete layette consists of twenty-seven articles. Another bundle (they are neat as confectioners' parcels) is for a child from seven to twelve months of age, and consists of fourteen articles. Then there are trowserings for the orphans who are scattered about the provinces, for growths ranging from one to eighteen years. The "toilette" of an orphan child of one year, of two, of three years;

the "trousseau" of an orphan girl who has reached her eighteenth year,-all are folded in snowy linen of excellent quality.

The hospital linen and clothing fill the principal upper galleries. Here is the Lariboisière group; here that of La Charité; and here, again, the Lourcine. The sheets are of four qualities—namely, one for the Assistance employés; one for the sick, one for the children, and one for the aged. The clothing is cut in the Magasin, and then worked by the poor at home, or by the women of the Salpêtrière-even by the mad patients. So close and complete is the system that not a yard of linen nor a child's pinafore can be lost. The attendant said to me that, if called up in the night, he could walk in the dark and put his hand upon any package from any of the hospital reserves that might be ordered. These hospital stores are the stock each hospital has in excess of its regulated supply. In each hospital, a stack, in the Lingerie, exactly resembling its reserve compartment in the Magasin Central, will be found. The attendant was thoroughly proud of his domain. Pausing before a very bulky reserve, he said: "See the St. Louis stock in reserve; all new sheets-all good, sound linen." And the fine flannels for newly-born infants, the solid grey blankets, the exquisitely white bundles of underlinen, were a striking sight all along the gallery.

Beyond the hospital reserves were piles of hospital iron bedsteads, spring mattresses, and the light warm édredons, under which almost the poorest folk of Paris contrive to sleep in the winter; baths, &c. A separate building flanks the Magasin, between it and the Salpétrière. It is a very long, narrow room, and has been made the great central mending gallery of the hospitals of Paris. The Assistance, in addition, have put up machinery for wool-carding.

The cutting-out department, and the depôt where articles condemned to figure at the quarterly sale are gathered, complete the Magasin Central, in every corner of which is to be seen the moral and pecuniary value of order.

BEGGARS AND VAGRANTS.

TRAVELLING, as I have been, throug of Europe, noting the state and privat it, I have been struck with the radi of view in England and France in reg city and vagrancy. I venture to sul my experiences and observations on the hope that they may be of some social scientific men.

The Depôt de Mendicité was establis very early in the seventeenth centu cessive kings had tried branding wi hanging, and shaving, among other vagabondage. Some of the plans for sion of the tramping and begging wh in almost every part of England, a been recently propounded at various conferences, indicate a savage feeling in which the Parliament of Paris legis

beggars and vagabonds in 1596. By a law passed in that year, all vagabonds-men without work or home—were commanded to quit Paris within fourand-twenty hours, on pain of being hanged without any ceremony or trial. The tramps and beggars were ordered to be shaved, that they might be known everywhere. These strong measures were less humane and less efficacious than the Mendicity Law of François Premier, which ordered all the unemployed to be set to labour on the public works. It was in the seventeenth century, however (in 1627), that the Assembly of Notables decided there should be a commission in each Parliament, to act in concert with the bishop of the diocese, to bring the beggars and vagabonds within the scope of a general system. Workshops were opened in mendicity depôts, and the public works were thrown open to the unemployed. At the same time, the refractory -those who persisted in roaming through the towns, and who would not work-were made liable to be sent to the galleys. Successive laws from the beginning of the seventeenth century dealt with beggary and vagabondage in the same spirit. Work was found for the workless, while those who would not work were put under lock and key. The aged and infirm, and helpless women and children, were gathered to the hospitals (not brilliant institutions in those days, as the terrible histories of the Salpêtrière and Bicêtre attest); but no quarter was