to the public peace; their language is too foul for even men of the world to endure it, and the whole crew lord it in utter contempt of law and decency.  That is the kind of spectacle to be seen in our central city almost every night.  Consider a story which accidently came out a few weeks ago owing to legal proceedings and kept pleasure-seeking and scandalmongering London laughing for a while, and say whether any revelation ever gave us a picture of a more unspeakable society.  A rich man, A., keeps a prizefighter, B., to “mind” him, as the quaint phrase goes.  Mr. A. is offended by another prizefighter, C., and he offers B. the sum of five hundred pounds if he will give C. a beating in public.  B. goes to C., and says, “I will give you ten pounds if you will let me thrash you, and I won’t hurt you much.”  C. gladly consents, so B. pockets four hundred and ninety pounds for himself, and the noble patron’s revenge is satisfied.  There is a true tale of rogues and a fool—­a tale to make one brood and brood until the sense of fun passes into black melancholy.  Five hundred men worked for sixty hours per week before that money was earned—­and think of the value received for the whole sum when it was spent!  Truly the parasite’s exertions are lucrative to himself!

As for the market-price of book-learning or clerkly skill, it is not worth so much as naming.  The clerk was held to be a wondrous person in times when the “neck-verse” would save a man from the gallows; but “clerk” has far altered its meaning, and the modern being of that name is in sorrowful case.  So contemptibly cheap are his poor services that he in person is not looked upon as a man, but rather as a lump of raw material which is at present on sale in a glutted market.  All the walks of life wherein men proceed as though they belonged to the leisured class are becoming no fit places for self-respecting people.  Gradually the ornamental sort of workers are being displaced; the idle rich are too plentiful, but I question whether even the idle rich have done, so much harm as the genteel poor who are ashamed of labour.  I do not like to see wages going downward, but there are exceptions, and I am almost disposed to feel glad that the searchers after “genteel” employment are now very much like the birds during a long frost.  The enormous lounging class who earn nothing do not offer an agreeable subject for contemplation, and their parasites are horrible—­there is no other word.  Yet we may gather a little consolation when we think that the tendency is to raise the earnings of those who do something or produce something.  It is not good to know that a dustman makes more money than hundreds of hard-worked and well-educated men, for this is a grotesque state of things brought about by imbecile Government officials.  Neither do I quite like to know that a lady whose education occupied nine years of her life is offered less wages than a good housemaid.  But I do assuredly like to hear