Scotland to her husband should she die childless; in case the Scotch should resist, assigned to him the possession of it until a million of pieces of eight were repaid him for her education; and declared that these deeds expressed her real mind, whatever she might afterwards publish by desire of Parliament. Though her youth is pleaded in extenuation for this treason to her people, the plea is scarcely consistent with the intelligence she showed in her letters of this period, and it will be remembered that shortly before her death she transferred Scotland to Philip of Spain, unless her son should embrace the Romish faith. She accepted with zeal the creed in which she had been brought up. She was forced by the death of Francis to return to Scotland, a land spoken of, in the language she was accustomed to hear, as a country of savages, although her beauty, according to Brantôme, made the uncouth dress of its inhabitants, worn by her, surpass the French or the Italian mode. Here she found the new doctrines of the Reformation, which she told the Pope she regarded as damnable, making rapid progress. Her conduct towards the Protestants has been represented as an early example of enlightened toleration with as much reason as it has been denied that Knox and the Reformers were intolerant. The fact is that, as she never had it in her power to persecute, the credit of never having done so in such circumstances is not great. That, on the other hand, she was herself persecuted in the exercise of her religion is certain, and this persecution confirmed her in it. It is not, however, to be overlooked that she argued with Knox, despite his rudeness, in such a way as seems to have given him momentary hopes of a conversion, as she afterwards did with the dignitaries of the English Reformed Church; nor, assuming that her marriage with the Protestant Bothwell was against her will, that she was quite willing to marry the Protestant Norfolk. When we read in the letters that she was all the time writing to the Pope, cardinals, and Catholic bishops, of her devotion to the Church, in which she would live and die, of her regret at being unable to send Scotch bishops to Trent, and the like, we are not, indeed, disposed to see in this part of her conduct profound dissimulation, but rather the policy of one who would yield even in religion a good deal, but not all, to gain her ends. To a Protestant it will appear that a creed which admits sacerdotal absolution affords temptations for such a policy; but if he is a fair observer, he must have noted instances of it where such temptations have not existed. If this, then, was her general policy, what light does it throw on the special charges? We think, with the doubtful exception of the Bothwell marriage, and her share in Babington's plot, none whatever. That she was a professed and devoted, though not always a quite consistent Catholic, affords no presumption that she committed adultery or murder. But neither does it prove the reverse. There have been great criminals who have professed this as well as other creeds. The improbability of her submitting to marry a heretic of her own free-will would have been considerable, had it not been that she certainly sought for such an alliance with Norfolk. Historians, therefore, will condemn or praise her policy according as they regard it as a good or a bad thing for mankind that the Reformation in England and Scotland succeeded; but each of the specific charges must be considered on its own merits.

The charge with reference to Riccio rests on evidence which lies in narrow compass. He was beyond doubt raised by Mary above his station, and became her favorite, a character of which the history of absolute monarchs has afforded too many odious examples. This was enough to account for the hatred of the Scotch nobles and the jealousy of Darnley. But when the monarch was a queen on bad terms with her husband, suspicion was certain to arise, as it did, that he was loved as well as favored. Was this suspicion well founded? Darnley believed it, but afterwards disavowed his belief. His weak character renders his belief and his disavowal equally worthless. Ruthven asserted it in the plainest terms in his narrative of the murder, but the obvious motive of shifting the guilt from

himself and his fellow-conspirators makes his te untrustworthy. Bedford and Randolph reporte

Cecil from Berwick three days before the executio plot, but they also were by their own confession the privy to the general design, though not to the ba manner in which it was carried out. De Foix, the ambassador in London, communicated it to his one of the two principal causes of the murder to Queen of England. Mr. Froude, in quoting the of his dispatch printed by Teulet, alters its ter leaves his readers who do not consult the origina lieve that De Foix states this as his own opinion. mode of dealing with authorities cannot be too censured. But De Foix accompanies his report indication of disbelief. The reasoning of M. Peti as the incident which De Foix reports of Ricci found by Darnley in a closet off Mary's bedcha one in the morning, "en chemise couvert seuleme robbe fourée," is said to have occurred only a before the murder, it could not have been the cause of the murder, which had been undoubtedly some time before does not appear to us conclusiv its truth. He derives a better argument from that Knox does not directly charge her with g Knox's references to Riccio are of an incidental el and his declaration that Riccio was justly punish abusing the Commonwealth, and for his own villa we list not to express," is certainly not fairly rep by saying, as Petit does, that he merely call "foolish."

It is argued that all this is merely the suspicio enemies; but it is suspicion to which her own gave rise. It certainly is not, however, proof of g grave suspicion is all that even hostile writers alle

Her complicity in Darnley's murder, and the a guilty love for Bothwell, have usually been sup hang together. We cannot examine the complic dence upon which these accusations rest in deta external circumstances: her resentment at the a Riccio's assassination, the favor she showed to from that time forward, her evasive letters to Bothwell's pretended trial, her declaration be Court of Session - which Petit by a strange mist the ecclesiastical session of his innocence, b marriage, which she refused to repudiate until he longer serve her, the reluctance of her represent York and Westminster, while making a general enter into a special investigation of the factsstrongly against her, that had it not been for the tion of the Casket Letters and the suspicious dep Paris, there would now have been little doubt of 1 But the proofs, which Mr. Hosack first comple lected, of the way in which this part of the evid tampered with or procured, and of the undoubte in the murder of Darnley as shown by the Cr Bond, and the meeting at Ainslie's supper of most who afterwards accused her, have given room to th ious argument of her defenders, who, without pa regard to these external circumstances, seem to th they have established her innocence when th shown that false evidence was adduced to prove h

The mystery of the Casket Letters has not solved, but it is impossible to accept them in their condition as valid proofs against the Queen. Ha one now does so except Mr. Froude, who wholly the evidence against them. Even if the strange the capture of Dalgleish, Bothwell's servant, small gilt coffer, not fully a foot long, garnished i places with the Roman letter F under a king's cro Morton, on July 20, 1567, and the manner in whi of them were first secretly shown to the Commiss York, and afterwards the whole, with the two doub contracts of marriage with Bothwell, and the sonne produced at Westminster, but never shown to Ma visers, did not raise suspicions as to their authenti contents of the copies which now remain have ne satisfactorily explained on the hypothesis that th

addressed by Mary to Bothwell. M. Petit, following Mr. Hosack, points out the internal evidence against them the differences between the French and Scotch copies, as in the passage in the first letter, where "I am irkit" is translated "Je suis toute nue" (naked); and the fourth letter, where the expression "mak gude watch" is inserted so as to completely change the sense; the anachronism of referring to Huntly as " your brother-in-law that was," in the eighth letter, before the divorce of Bothwell from his sister; the startling verbal agreement between Mary's account of a conversation with Darnley, in the second letter, and Crawford's account of the same conversation in his deposition at Westminster; the extraordinary notanda in the middle and at the end of the same letter, one of which is "of the erle of Bothwell." On the other hand, no conclusive theory of what they really are has been proposed by Mary's i defenders. The most ingenious, certainly, is that of Mr. Hosack, who believes that the first and second letters from Glasgow, and the sixth, seventh, and eighth from Stirling, are forgeries; while the third, fourth, and fifth, of which alone it appears probable that the French originals or direct copies are still extant, were written by Mary, not to Bothwell, but to Darnley. It is strongly in favor of this view that these three letters, with the exception of the interpolation of the words "mak gude watch" in the Scotch version of the fourth, contain nothing damnatory, and are much more like letters to a husband than to a criminal accomplice; the reference to two marriages, a private and a public, in the third letter, agrees with what is ascertained to have been the fact as regards Darnley, who was privately married to Mary at Stirling, before her public marriage in Edinburgh, on July 29, 1565. M. Petit does not appreciate the force of this view, and rests too much on difficulties as to their exact dates, which, as the letters themselves are undated, cannot count for much. Mr. Hosack's hypothesis, however, so far as we know never before stated, is not without its own difficulties. For if some of the letters are genuine, how are we to account for the denial by Lesley of the authenticity of any of them? and how did Mary's accusers procure her letters to Darnley? It may, however, be fairly argued that it is not incumbent on her defenders to show the origin of the fraud, or even its exact nature; it is enough for them if the letters are not worthy of credit, and so much we think they have proved. Nor is it possible to trust the depositions of Paris, which were not published till after his execution, and were taken when his life or death depended on the word of Murray. It is impossible to read these depositions without detecting in them the cowardly assassin ready to tell any story in the vain hope of saving his life. The deposition of Crawford is less suspicious. Even Mr. Hosack appears to credit it, and to suppose the passage in the Casket Letter relating Darnley's conversation with Mary to have been copied from it. M. Petit also uses it as genuine. Neither writer seems to observe that the conclusion of Crawford's deposition plainly incriminates Mary, for Crawford states in it, that having expressed his opinion to Darnley that the Queen took him away more like a prisoner than her husband, Darnley answered

"he thought little lesse himselfe, and feared him selfe; indede save the confidence he had in her promise onelye, not w standinge he would goe wt her, and put him sellfe in her hands, thoughe she showlde cutte hys throate, and besowght God to be judge unto them bothe."

Unable to accept the Casket Letters and the deposition of Paris as valid evidence, but equally unable to dissociate Mary from the charge of complicity with Bothwell, after, if not before, the assassination, her connection with that "gallant, rash, and hazardous young man appears to us to have been one of policy, and not of love. The attempt of M. Petit and her other vindicators to show that she was a passive instrument in his hands, cannot be maintained consistently with the facts, or with her resolute character at other crises of her life. On the other hand, apart from the Casket Letters, there is nothing to show that passionate

love which her enemies then laid to her charge, and which has been the theme of the later romance of history. It seems fatal to this latter view that, though Bothwell survived till 1575, not a word of communication passed between them after the surrender at Carberry Hill, on June 15, 1567, put an end to her one month's marriage. What seems most probable is that she accepted Bothwell as the only man in Scotland able and willing to play an independent part, and save her from that fierce aristocracy which had determined that, though she might reign, she should

not govern.

The recently discovered papal dispensation which made his marriage with Lady Janet Gordon valid in the eyes of the Church, and consequently that with Mary null, is slightly touched on by M. Petit, as might be expected. It cannot, we think, have been unknown to Mary, who had taken an active interest in the marriage.

Babington's plot is treated by M. Petit in a separate dissertation, but with less care than the earlier part of Mary's history. He scems to think that her long captivity, Eliza beth's dissimulation, and the unfairness of a trial which allowed no proper defence to be made, and in which the evidence against her had been procured by Walsingham's spies, throw an onus of proof upon those who now accuse her which they cannot discharge. This position, however, cannot be conceded. The evidence, such as it is, exists, and must be considered. The point in dispute is narrowed to this whether, besides the general knowledge and approval by Mary of Babington's plot for her own escape and the invasion of England, she was privy to his design against the life of Elizabeth. Her letter of July 17, 1586, exists only in the decipherment of Philips; and M. Petit, following the theory of Prince Labanoff, charges Philips with having interpolated the passage in the letter, as well as added the postscript, which alone refer to the Design of the six gentlemen. The postscript was not found along with the official copy of the letter, but is a separate paper, discovered by Tytler in the State Paper Office in 1842. Mr. Froude urges with force that it is extremely improbable that Philips would have preserved and endorsed a draft of a forgery which he did not afterwards use, for this postscript, unlike the letter itself, does not purport to have been acknowledged by Babington or by Mary's secretaries, Nau and Curle; and he makes the ingenious conjecture that it was an addition to the letter which Curle, in a note to Emilio, the carrier of the letter to Babington, requests him to forbear from using, until he should " put the whole at more leisure in better order." Mr. Froude also answers Prince Labanoff''s argument as to the detention of the letter for eleven days, by showing it was due to Philips' absence from Lichfield, where it was sent to him. Neither of these things is, however, conclusive against the interpolation of the passage in the body of the letter, where certainly it appears not quite consistent with the context. Babington's acknowledgment of the authenticity of the letter is made without any qualification, but too much importance seems to be attached to the more qualified expressions of Nau and Curle. The strength of the case against Mary does not, however, rest on this passage nearly so much as on the fact that Babington had certainly communicated to her the design against Elizabeth's life, and that she gave him a general approval. Had he succeeded, it is scarcely to be doubted that Mary would have rewarded him, as she did Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, the murderer of Murray. M. Petit remarks: "I cannot say if at heart Mary did or did not hate Elizabeth; this much, however, is certain, that she never spoke ill of her, while all her letters breathe gentleness and conciliation." In like manner Mr. Froude has tried to paint Elizabeth struggling as a woman and a queen to save her royal sister, whose death Burleigh and Walsingham felt to be necessary for the security of her throne; but the truth appears to be that, in an age in which dis imulation was deemed necessary to state-craft, both queens were adepts in the art of deception. Mary was, however, the more finished mistress of that art. Sixty different ciphers were found amongst her papers; for twenty years she had been kept prisoner without power

to escape, but with full opportunities for plotting. She plotted without ceasing, conscious that she was watched, and hence developed a wonderful skill in intrigue which has never been surpassed. To describe her, during this period, as a helpless innocent in the cruel grasp of Elizabeth, willing to kiss the hand that was ready to shed her blood, is a complete perversion of history. She was pulling the wires, not in Scotland and England only, but over all Europe, not merely for her own escape, but for the destruction of the Protestant queen and constitution of England. The selfish ends of the great Catholic princes, the feebleness of the Catholic party in England and Scotland, and the skill of Elizabeth's ministers baffled her. At last, in Babington's plot and the prospect of the Spanish invasion, she seemed to secure the realization of her hopes; but the detection of that plot brought her own ruin, and the wreck of the Armada that of the Roman Catholic cause in Britain. Caught in the toils of Walsingham, she played the part of a martyr in a way that has deceived more than half the world. She has still almost all Catholics, most women, and a considerable number of men who are not Catholics, on her side. But the student who reads history to discover truth cannot pronounce her innocence proved either of Darnley's murder or of the attempt on Elizabeth's life.

AN ECONOMIC EXPERIMENT IN GHENT. PRUDENTIAL warnings against thriftlessness and waste have become so trite, and devices for encouraging the habit of saving are now so numerous and multiform, that a little diffidence may well be felt by a writer who ventures to address himself again to this well-worn subject. We have savings-banks, provident societies, benefit clubs, building societies, cooperative factories and shops, beside innumerable blanket, shoe, and clothing clubs. But the extent to which all or any of them actually influence the habits of the operative classes as a whole, is yet comparatively insignificant. The proportion of earnings withdrawn from immediate consumption and reserved as part of the capital of the future is still small; the number of workmen who habitually save is relatively smaller still; and the economic truisms about the sin of improvidence, and the duty of saving, are in practice so insufficiently recognized, that they constantly need fresh illustration and enforcement, from new points of view, and in new forms. One such new illustration is furnished by a remarkable experiment lately tried in connection with the Primary Schools of Ghent, with which I became acquainted during a recent visit to that city.

Ghent is a thriving town of about 121,000 souls, and contains a large operative class. It also contains a Free (i. e., non-clerical) University, with about 500 students. The Primary Schools are said to be very efficient, and are under the supervision of a communal Council. This Council, though it sustains and periodically inspects the schools, does not dispense with voluntary aid; and two important societies, the Société Callier and the Cercle pour l'encouragement de l'instruction primaire, cooperate with the Council, by the offer of prizes in the schools, and by various forms of stimulus and help to the teachers. Some seven years ago it occurred to M. Laurent, the Professor of Civil Law in the University, that much might be done through the agency of the Primary Schools to familiarize the people while young with habits of economy and forethought. Accordingly he called the teachers of the Ghent Public Schools together, explained to them his plans, and having inspired them with some of his own enthusiasm on the subject, proceeded, with their full concurrence, to visit the schools one by one, in order to give simple economic lessons to the children. He went from class to class, and from scholar to scholar, enforcing and illustrating the advantages of saving, and showing how it might be practised. A plan was devised by which the teacher of each class undertook to receive the little savings of the children from day to day, even a single centime at a time. As soon as

the deposits of a pupil amount to one franc he livret d'épargne or savings-bank book, and a d count is opened in his name with the State Savi which gives interest at the rate of 3 per cent. E also opens with the savings-bank its own separat in which all the smaller deposits are placed fr day, the pupil's deposits being transferred und rangement with the bank into his own name as amounts to a franc. Simple books and cards are provided by the administration of the ban children receive duplicates, folded in a strong c carried home from time to time for the info their parents; but generally to be preserved at t The signature of a parent or guardian is requ ever any deposit is withdrawn.

By these simple arrangements the opportuni ing little savings was brought closely within read child in the Ghent schools, and the moral in gentle and kindly persuasion were brought t Professor Laurent and the teachers with singul The response made by the children and their his appeals has been marked during the last si an emphasis and a steady persistence which a serving of attention.

The Public Schools of the city fall into f Those most numerously attended are the Fr Schools, maintained in great part at the expe communal Council. In these there are 4315 3674 girls, or 7989 in all. Then there are payantes, Primary Schools of the same educat acter, but not gratuitous, designed for children social rank. In these there are 1079 schola Écoles Gardiennes or Free Infant Schools, the children; and in the Adult Schools, which are evening or on the Sunday, there are 3285 men under regular instruction. Out of this tota pupils, no less than 13,032 are this year in p accounts in the savings-bank. The uniformity ness with which the system has taken root in may be estimated from these figures.

Thus, the average sum now standing to t each depositor is about thirty-five francs. It v that, relatively to the numbers, the largest been attained in the schools of the first class, in the ordinary juvenile schools being neces amenable to influences of this kind than those ond class, older and more thoughtful than t third, and with habits of extravagance which, at all, are less confirmed than those of the to work has been done without Government a pressure of any kind, but simply through th initiative of one earnest man, aided by the s the teachers and local managers. The reports there is also a steady growth in the interest the parents regard the experiment. At first,

economy was mainly that of the child, who was induced to pit by the halfpence he would otherwise have spent in fruit or sweetmeats. But besides this, children are often entrusted by their parents with small sums expressly for the purpose of being added to the store. And the general result, that in a simple town of moderate size, upwards of 10,000 children have opened separate accounts in the savings-bank, and that nearly £15,000 are deposited in their names, is one which is full of encouragement to the thoughtful philanthropists who devised the plan, and which has already produced a very marked effect on the social and moral life of the working classes in Ghent. The experiment has created great interest throughout Belgium. In Antwerp, in Bruges, and in the rural districts, successful efforts have been made to secure the adoption of the same plan; and last year a new association for the special encouragement of saving has been formed, under distinguished auspices, with its headquarters at Brussels, and designed to operate on all the communal and state schools of the country, in a systematic manner.

That country, like our own, abounds with voluntary associations for ameliorating the condition of the poor in various ways. Many of these societies seek to attain their object by means of rewards and scholarships, designed to encourage children to remain longer at school; others aim at the formation of workmen's clubs and societies for recreation, for historic readings and discussions, for simple theatrical exhibitions and fêtes, and for organized visits to famous factories, museums, and monuments. But in all of them, the plan of explaining and recommending the use of the savings-bank, and bringing that institution close to the pupils in the school or the evening class, is now becoming recognized as one of the chief engines of usefulness. For example, there is an active society in Brussels, specially designed to improve the education of girls and young women; and thiş object is attained to a considerable extent by means of prizes to meritorious pupils, and to those governesses whose efforts to raise the standard of instruction have been most successful. But the prizes and bursaries thus distributed always consist, in whole or in part, of a savings-bank book, inscribed with the pupil's name and crediting her with a small sum of money, which is not to be withdrawn till after a given time.1

It is surely unnecessary to dwell on the significance of these humble but useful efforts in their bearing on our own social and industrial life in England. Our operative classes are better paid than those of most other countries, but they are not richer; they do not, as a rule, economize their resources; and a very small proportion of them make any provision for the future. Increase of wages brings to the British workman shorter hours, fewer days' work in the week, more expensive, though not always more wholesome food, a larger number of immediate gratifications; but it does not make him a wealthier man. It does not necessarily increase the stability of his social position or of his personal character. It is seldom realized or capitalized in the form of better house or furniture, or of clothes or books, a share in a building or coöperative society, an account with the savings-bank, or, indeed, in any of those permanent forms by which the dignity and comfort of his own life and that of his family might be enhanced. But until a man begins to care about some one of these things, he has no motive to put forth his best energies so as to become a first-rate workman; but every temptation to degenerate into an idler or a sensualist. The degree in which he cares about them forms, in fact, the measure of his prosperity and self respect, and the surest guarantee for his future industry and happiness. No doubt the comparative uncertainty of his position, and the habit of receiving his in1 I have lately met vith an instance in England of the adoption of this simple and sensible device. At the Parish School of St. Luke's, London, a small sum was in 1868 rescued from some obsolete charitable endowments, and converted, at the suggestion of Mr. Thomas Hare, into a fund for providing annually three prizes or exhibitions of £5 each, tenable by the best scholars on condition of their remaining a year longer at school. These prizes are not given at once to the boys, but are invested in their names in the savings-bank until they leave the school.

2 See the remarkable chapter in J. S. Mill's Political Economy, on the future of the laboring classes.

come in the form of weekly wages, cause him to live from hand to mouth, and render it difficult for him, even when wages are high, to see much good in laying by those wages for the future. If we look at the home of a clerk, a curate, or a schoolmaster, with £150 a year, we generally find at least a year's income in some realized form-house, clothes, pictures, a library, and a small life-assurance. But if we visit the home of an artisan or a collier, earning the same income in the form of £3 a week, we often find that his entire possessions, if capitalized, would not be equal in value to a month's wages. This evil might, in some degree, be mitigated, if in any department of our industrial system it were found practicable to substitute monthly for weekly savings and payments. But this is obviously impossible in a large number of cases, and we cannot wait for it. Economy and thrift may be more difficult, but they are also more necessary, when the horizon of a man's resources, and of his expenditure, is narrowed by the inevitable circumstances of his life. And a man is enriched and ennobled in just the proportion in which this horizon is enlarged, and in which he learns to see the actions and the sacrifices of to-day in their relation to to-morrow. Dr. Johnson's famous sentence, "Whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings," expresses with characteristic solemnity an indisputable truth. But the difficulty is to convert a truism like this into a practical maxim for the conduct of life.

It is not always easy for employers, even when they see the need of frugality and temperance most clearly, to take measures for urging the duty upon their workmen. Such efforts are almost sure to be misunderstood by many, and to be regarded-not unnaturally as dictated by a self ish desire to keep down wages. At Ghent, an association of masters, anxious to improve the material prosperity of their workmen, engaged to take charge of their savings, to invest them in the bank, and to add two per cent. to the interest, so as to yield the depositor five, instead of three per cent. But the experiment did not long succeed, and the deposits were quickly withdrawn. At Mulhouse, in 1860, a society for the encouragement of saving was formed, and special advantages, in the way of a large bonus and otherwise, were offered to all who would forego three per cent. of their wages for the purpose of a provident fund. But only sixteen out of a body of 7000 workmen were found, ten years after, to be availing themselves of the plan. In both these cases suspicion and distrust appear to have been aroused, the motives of the employers were misinterpreted, and their efforts were ineffectual. Nor is much more to be hoped from any direct influence on the part of the churches, than from that of employers as a class. Individual clergymen interest themselves here and there in blanket or coal clubs; but, as a rule, such efforts are more often designed to attach the poor to the church than to encourage selfrespect or independence for its own sake. The inculcation of a general habit of saving as a substantial part of practical morality is, for some unexplained reason, not generally considered by ministers of religion as within their province. It is, after all, in the schools that the work can be most effectually done. School managers and teachers have opportunities of bringing the matter constantly before the attention of the children, and can readily furnish to them simple facilities for carrying out the lessons of economy which are learned in the class. Moreover, their disinterestedness is unquestionable, and they are less likely than any other persons who are brought into frequent contact with the poor to be suspected of selfish motives. Much may be done by judicious lessons, by the use of wise and simple text-books, like Mr. William Ellis's "Outlines of Social Economy," and Archbishop Whately's "Easy Lessons on Money Matters," 3 to illustrate the need of economy and the increased power of usefulness and of enjoy

3 Prof. W. B. Hodgson of Edinburgh, whose efforts in that city and elsewhere to render the principles of economic science interesting and inte.ligible to young peop'e have been remarkably successful, has translated, under the title of "What is seen and What is not Seen, one of the most telling of Frederic Bastiat's brochures on the commoner economic fallacies current among the poor.

ment which it gives to those who have learned it. But it must not be forgotten that thrift is an act - a habit; to be learned like other habits, not mainly by teaching or lecturing, but by actual practice. All experience shows that it is hard to learn it for the first time in adult life, but if it be acquired early in youth it will probably never be lost. And there is as much room for its exercise in the life of a little child at school, as in that of a grown man who is earning wages. To him as well as to his elders there are temptations to waste that might be resisted; there are daily opportunities for little acts of forethought and selfrestraint which ought to be embraced. It may seem a trifle to speak of the halfpence which little children spend on sweetmeats and unwholesome fruit. But economy is essentially a matter of trifles and even of petty details. Relatively to his resources and to his wants, these are the items which make up the extravagance of a child. The little one who is encouraged often to deny himself some immediate gratification, and to prefer to it some future permanent advantage, who has once experienced the delight of seeing the interest begin to accrue on his little savings, and has seen the temporary trouble of the family at a death or an illness relieved by a draft upon his store, has learned a lesson in self-sacrifice which will abide with him for life. Sacrifice, self-conquest, the refusal to want that which we do not need, the deliberate preference of permanent to merely ephemeral good are not these the qualities which lie at the base of moral perfection, and of a temperate, useful, and noble life?

It may seem like special pleading to identify these high qualities too closely with so worldly a matter as the management of money. Yet in truth there is no one problem or duty of life that calls into exercise so many moral attributes, or connects itself in so many subtle ways with the growth of the whole character, as the management of money. He who said that "a right habit of getting, of saving, and of spending money, argued a perfect man," was scarcely guilty of exaggeration. From the very beginning, of responsible life, the inclination to spend the whole of what we receive becomes a potent temptation to spend or to enjoy a little more than we possess. And the records of our law courts and police courts show that impecuniosity and extravagance are the parents not merely of much of the crime in the world, but of shiftiness, of evasion, of falsehood, and of the sins which enfeeble and degrade men most. The best remedy for this evil is to train children very early in the habit of distinguishing between real and unreal wants. "Les besoins factices," of which M. Laurent1 speaks, “qui sont la plaie et la malédiction de la richesse," are not unknown among the poor. Every one who can refuse to satisfy one of these, however slight, or who puts aside any portion, however humble, of the resources of to-day to make part of his supply for future use or enjoyment, is in a sense a capitalist. And in this sense not only every man, but every little child who has the command of a single luxury, should be encouraged to become a capitalist.

It may be said that it is cruel and unwise to interfere with the joyousness of childhood by prematurely burdening the mind with thoughts of the future. But I do not believe that this objection, however natural on a first view, would long be seriously maintained by any careful thinker. The penurious spirit- the calculating, hard, and grasping habit of mind has doubtless its dangers. But it is not the fault to which Englishmen are very prone, nor against which it is needful to take any elaborate precautions. The tendencies of our modern life are all in the opposite direction; our dangers are of another kind. And, in truth, we are not encouraging a hurtful egoism, and sup pressing generous instincts, when we invite little children to set aside the pence with which they would otherwise buy an apple or a cake. To spend money on a gratifica

1 Se the remarkable pamphlets entitled, Conference sur l'Epargne, and La Caisse d'Epargne dans les Ecoles Communales de Gand, published at Brussels, of which the former bears M. Laurent's name, and both exhibit with great clearness the kind of argument and influence by which the singular success of the savings-bank experiment has been attained in Belgium.

tion for the moment, is in no sense more gener selfish than to reserve it for a future one. Both regarding actions; but the one has elements of and of wisdom in it, the other is an act of mere and shortsighted indulgence. I will not weaken lation the vigorous sentences in which M. Laure cution to the schoolmasters and mistresses deals class of objection.

"On croit," he says, "que les enfants sont tandis qu'ils sont personnels, disons le mot, Voyez cet enfant : ses parents, quoique fort pa donnent deux centimes le dimanche pour ses m sirs: il court s'acheter une friandise quelconqu t-il à en faire part à ses parents? Songe-t-il part à ses camarades? Il se hâte de manger s et ne pense pas même que ses parents se sont re pomme pour que lui en ait une. Ce que l'on menus plaisirs sont un apprentissage d'égoism l'enfant qu'il doit épargner ces quelques centime donc pas lui donner une leçon d'égoïsme, c'es traire lui apprendre à se priver d'une fantaisie poser une privation, n'est-ce pas le commenc sacrifice, de l'abnégation, du dévouement?"

I desire to commend the simple and judici ment now being tried with such signal success in by Professor Laurent and his friends, to the cor and imitation of benevolent persons in Eng especially to members of school boards and managers. Much has already been done in this The clothing clubs, shoe clubs, Christmas clubs, devices to which the squire's or clergyman's many villages devotes so much thought and though open to the objection I have already hin all very useful in their way. But they labor great defect. They encourage economy only fo object, and for a definite time. At a certain pe year the accounts are adjusted, payments are the transaction is at an end. Moreover, all the who for any reason have no need of the particu for which the club is formed, are not encourag at all. What is needed is the regular habit of rather for its own sake, and in view of any of th emergencies of life, than for the sake of some o emergency. And to this end it is necessary t should not be an exceptional act, or one adapte special purpose only, but that facilities for its tice as a part of the regular discipline of lite brought within reach of children.

It may be said that the Post-office savings-ba are daily increasing in number, bring the oppo making savings very near to the doors of the p there is much in the history and statistics of the banks to encourage hope of their still more operation. The last report of the Postmast shows that in 1862 there were 1,732,555 de the old savings-banks; in 1865 the number in the Post-office banks combined had risen to while in 1872 there were 2,867,595 depositors, the population, with an average amount of $ credit of each. This is lower than in Mas where the depositors amount to one fifth of the but higher than in Switzerland, where the prop But in 12, or in Ireland, where it is 1 in 50. velopment of the Post-office savings-bank syst dered by several causes. There are many which no bank has yet been established. The limits each deposit to a minimum of a shilling, forbids the smaller economies; and the fact that closed in the evenings, especially on the Saturd when wages are received, acts unfavorably on and irresolute. All these points were recent before the notice of the late Postmaster-Gene are matters of administrative detail, in whi thropic impulse must needs be controlled by tions of economy and of the efliciency of the vice. But they seldom had a better chance of b ably regarded than at the accession to office of