If the workman does not read, however, he talks.  At present he talks for the most part on the pavement and in public-houses, but there is every indication that we shall see before long a rapid growth of workmen’s clubs—­not the tea-and-coffee make-believes set up by the well-meaning, but honest, independent clubs, in every respect such as those in Pall Mall, managed by the workmen themselves, who are not, and never will become, total abstainers, but have shown themselves, up to the present moment, strangely tolerant of those weaker brethren who can only keep themselves sober by putting on the blue ribbon.  Meantime, there is the public house for a club, and perhaps the workmen spends, night after night, more than he should upon beer.  Let us remember, if he needs excuse, that his employers have found him no better place and no better amusement than to sit in a tavern, drink beer (generally in moderation), and talk and smoke tobacco.  Why not?  A respectable tavern is a very harmless place; the circle which meets there is the society of the workman:  it is his life:  without it he might as well have been a factory hand of the good old time—­such as hands were forty years ago; and then he would have made but two journeys a day—­one from bed to mill, and the other from mill to bed.

Another magnificent gift he has obtained of late years—­the excursion train and the cheap steamboat.  For a small sum he can get far away from the close and smoky town, to the seaside perhaps, but certainly to the fields and country air; he can make of every fine Sunday in the summer a holiday indeed.  Is not the cheap excursion an immense gain?  Again, for those who cannot afford the country excursion, there is now a Park accessible from almost every quarter.  And I seriously recommend to all those who are inclined to take a gloomy view concerning their fellow-creatures, and the mischievous and dangerous tendencies of the lower classes, to pay a visit to Battersea Park on any Sunday evening in the summer.

As regards the working man’s theatrical tastes, they lean, so far as they go, to the melodrama; but as a matter of fact there are great masses of working people who never go to the theatre at all.  If you think of it, there are so few theatres accessible that they cannot go often.  For instance, there are for the accommodation of the West-end and the visitors to London some thirty theatres, and these are nearly always kept running; but for the densely populous districts of Islington, Somers Town, Pentonville, and Clerkenwell, combined, there are only two; for Hoxton and Haggerston, there is only one; for the vast region of Marylebone and Paddington, only one; for Whitechapel, ‘and her daughters,’ two; for Shoreditch and Bethnal Green, one; for Southwark and Blackfriars, one; for the towns of Hampstead, Highgate, Camden Town, Kentish Town, Stratford, Bow, Bromley, Bermondsey, Camberwell, Kensington, or Deptford, not one.  And yet each one of these places, taken