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 taken place, though the factory had been closed for some time while undergoing alterations, but now it is in full work, paying the highest wages, and refusing applications for employment. So much for the ingratitude of workmen to their popular champions, and so much for party scandals.

During the past month some unusually fine speeches have been delivered by parliamentary notabilities, of which Mr. Gladstone's on the progress of art, and Sir Bulwer Lytton's on the American war, have been the most splendidly conspicuous. Indeed, the speech of the great novelist at Hitchin has supplied the material for a hundred newspaper leaders in different parts of the country. The country squires have been prosing away in all directions till they have made the very atmosphere of England feel drowsy.

It is curious to note the ill-informed and ill-natured remarks on the civil war in America which are made among the trading classes. If you meet with a manufacturer or a travelling factor in a hotel or railway carriage, he is sure to amuse you with some clumsy and ignorant attempt to ridicule the Americans, and it always turns out that their greatest blunder and greatest crime consists in not