into the carnival hat so suddenly turned into a subscription bag. Having gone the round, the grisette drew a lace handkerchief from her pocket, folded the money in it, and offered it to the distressed mother who burst into a flood of tears. But this was not all. One of the men, topped with a prodigious feather, snatched the handkerchief back. There was a general cry of indignation. But the thief was not disconcerted. He unfolded the money, drew a bank note for a hundred francs from his pocket, in which he re-folded the collection, and handed it back to the unfortunate mother. To conclude, he gathered the handkerchief in his breast as a remembrance of the sweet-minded grisette who originated this charming episode of the Carnival of 1869.

I take this incident as fairly indicative of the manner in which French people of all degrees approach the poor indeed; the general spirit of kindliness is marked in the public regulation which permits the poor to make a harvest while their fellow-countrymen are rejoicing, and to issue forth upon the highways on festival days to challenge the compassion of the fortunate who are merrymaking. The money pours into the blind man's bag. Gay ladies extravagantly decked add a grace to their toilette by the abandon with which they accost the beggar woman, and pat her babe. People give, not by stealth, sadly and coldly, as in

London Streets,

but warmly and expansively, with words that double the obolus. Such sights as London and Liverpool present to the open day would wring the heart of the French. The aspect of the open space around St. George's Hall, Liverpool, when a fair sun has drawn forth the denuded offspring of the purlieus, can have no parallel in France. You may mark traces of every race, to the Chinese, in the hungry faces of the juvenile crowd. Beggary is here, imported from every clime, and left to increase. No man can doubt the end of this: it would terrify the apprehensive, speculative, and sensitive mind of a Frenchman; it passes under the eyes of an Englishman as a sorrow, a sight for pity, but he takes no heed of the morrow which it promises. Races of beggars there are in France, families whose names have figured on the books of a Bureau de Bienfaisance for generations; but some chance is given to the child, and a rising generation of tramps and vagabonds is not left unheeded, to ripen into future clients of the Assistance Publique. The spectacle of legions of ragged urchins, left to the gutter until ripe for the gaol, is one which is managed in England better than any other country. In France, if the parents are sent to the hospital, or condemned to the galleys, the children are not left in the streets. The law proceeds very much in the spirit of little Manteau Bleu who fed thieves that they might not become murderers. Edmé Champion

is a name to which the Parisian heart warms readily. The Montyon rewards for virtue will move the mocking lip; but the Frenchman never laughs at kindness, or kindly sentiments. He will give a welcome to wit in which chastity and decency are the sacrifice; but he reveres the child, and the old man, and the character of the mother. The mother and the child struck a chord at once in the hearts of the masqueraders.

In the spirit and organization of the Assistance Publique of France there is a kindness, and, at the same time, an order and deep reason, which should recommend a study of the subject to all Englishmen whose duties relate in any way to the treatment of the poor, or the social elements which generate pauperism. The fact which presses upon the mind and fixes itself there is, that people of high social position in their arrondissement are honoured when they are appointed to form part of the council (presided over by the Mayor or his deputy) which governs the local Assistance, and holds the poor within its area under its paternal eye. The gratuitous duty of serving the poor, of visiting them in their homes, of advising them, and watching that the paid Assistance officers do their duty by them, is generously and conscientiously performed by ladies and gentlemen. Indeed, who accepts the trust surely a holy one is bound to give account of his or her performances under it. The

willing service which is afforded by people of education to the poor in France, both under State control and under private organizations, is an essential part of the two systems; and M. Husson's widelybranching administration would be clogged in every department, and leave misery to grow and deepen, and burst into the streets, if he were left suddenly alone with his salaried employés.

But we have to look, not only at the machinery, but also at the material on which it is employed. The character of the French poor must be studied. We must observe that these poor are cast into two separate categories. There are the poor who are openly inscribed on the books of the bureau, and there are the shrinking poor-the pauvres honteux. The importance of maintaining this broad difference is obvious. The shamefaced poor are those who have been unfortunate, and, with timely help, will retrieve an independent position in society. Their scruples are surely worthy of respect, and are certainly valuable to the community as tending to check the increase of professional pauperism. By extending succour to the pauvre honteux many families are snatched from the lists of hereditary pensioners on the bounty of the State.

It is, however, in their treatment of the sick poor, and the young poor, that the French show a tender humanity and far-seeing economy. I have elsewhere remarked that that which is specially

kindly in the treatment of the indigent and sick poor of Paris, comes to them from centuries ago; the harsher lines are drawn by modern hands. When some eight years ago, the Poor Law authorities of Paris, deputed some scientific commissioners to report to them on the hospitals and workhouseinfirmaries of London, the first characteristic of our relief which excited their attention and surprise was, that all our London hospitals and dispensaries were privately supported and separately governed. Their orderly French minds were perplexed by the series of independent conflicting plans and regulations, of so many isolated, irresponsible, private bodies. They were astonished, as astonished they might well be, to see establishments so vast in their proportions, and so important in their relation to the indigent population, left completely beyond the control of the Poor Law Board. Seeing the directness with which the hospital and the poor-housethe Hôpital and the Hospice-the dispensary and the out-door relief, the Maison de Secours and the Bureau de Bienfaisance, the hospital for poor and orphan children, the crêches, and the infant or primary school-act and re-act upon each other; that the proper and thorough care for the sick in the hospital thins the wards of the poor-house: they were naturally astonished to find, that in London so little remedial effect was produced upon the ranks of pauperism with the enormous machinery