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to the fund for Mr. Douglas's District, after the frank announcement that many thousands in each case are being invested for the benefit of posterity, may be surprising, but it proves nothing against any Board of Guardians. It is quite certain, again, that if the magistrates are found willing to distribute crowns and shillings promiscuously, they will have plenty of applicants till their fund is exhausted. That the lowest class of labourers, when thrown out of work, will beg in the streets, if they can get anything by it, is also certain. I have just heard, on good authority, of a large, number of labourers having refused work which was offered to them, preferring the chances of relief in the streets. But the existence of such a degree of want as is implied in these applications does not sustain the attacks which have been made on the Metropolitan Boards of Guardians. These attacks have been singularly reckless and unfounded.

The Times, with its usual breadth, assumes that the parishes and unions in London are quite inoperative as regards the relief of the poor, and that the poorrates are paid for nothing. The Saturday Review believes all London guardians to be a set of niggardly shop keepers, privately employed in scraping together small gains, and dealing in a "barbarous" manner with the poor. It is very different, we are told, in the country and in Manchester, where the Poor-Law works admirably. Now, as regards this contrast between London and the country, it will probably be allowed that no place, unless it be Liverpool, presents so many difficulties to Poor-Law administration as London, as London, with its unsettled colluvies gentium. This being considered, it is probable that an average London Board would not be at all behind any country Board either in intelligence or in humanity.

If we take the parish of St. Marylebone as an illustration, it will not be supposed, by Saturday Reviewers at least, to be too favourable a specimen. I speak with a prejudice in favour of a body of which I am a member; but the

inapplicable to the St. Marylebone Board. In the first place, the members of it are not all shopkeepers. If the reviewer were to attend any ordinary meeting of the Board, he would find there two baronets, who have justly earned the respect and goodwill of their colleagues and fellow-parishioners; the Rector of St. Marylebone, who devotes a main part of at least two days in every week to the workhouse; gentlemen of independent means, and of the military, the legal, and the medical professions, retired men of business, and tradesmen of all degrees,-working together with much zeal and industry. Not one of these would think of taxing any section of the Board with hardness or inhumanity. Nor is the popular or democratic feeling in favour of a harsh parsimony, but decidedly against it. If the Poor-Law Commissioners exercised complete control over the parish, hundreds of pounds would be saved to the rates. The salaries of certain officers would be paid out of national funds, the out-door relief would be contracted, and other reductions secured. But the popular feeling is strongly against the Poor-Law Board, and one reason for it is the belief that, under their rule, there would be less indulgence towards the poor. I may say generally, that no expense is spared which the most humane of the guardians are satisfied would be legal and beneficial.

Every Board of Guardians, moreover, acts under many checks. The reporters know very well that any complaint or scandal makes better reading in their newspapers than the most exemplary freedom from reproach. The Poor-Law Board makes inquiry upon every appeal addressed to it, even from a single poor person. Clergymen and philanthropists are jealously on the watch to protest against any cruel treatment of their neighbours. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the complaints which are brought to the notice of the Board are disposed of by correcting the alleged facts. In any exceptional case, redres‹ is instantly given.

ing the good intentions of the Board, the results of their administration are by no means of a kind that would defy criticism. Not to speak of the insuperable difficulties of a constant weary struggle against vice, and idleness, and fraud, the management of so vast a business as that of the St. Marylebone workhouse requires great administrative capacity and constant vigilance; and a board of thirty perfectly equal members, elected every year, does not promise much efficiency in government. The numbers of in-door poor at this moment (January 18th), amounting to 2,039, would people a small town; whilst there are 3,332 "on the books" receiving out-door relief; and, in addition to these numbers, 2,851 have had casual relief during the last week. The cost of the relief of the poor during the year has been 53,5007. This does not look as if the guardians of the poor in the metropolis were doing nothing. It is inevitable that, in the execution of so enormous a task, we should be too much in the hands of our paid officers, so long as the power and the responsibility are diffused equally through thirty members. If a salaried chairman were appointed, to give his whole time to the business of the workhouse, he would probably soon save his salary by the economies he might introduce, besides guarding the parish from frequent troubles and scandals.

But even if such blots were more numerous and discreditable than they are, it is obvious-and no well informed person could forget it-that the substantial relief of the poor is, and must be, the work of the guardians, and that the better this work is done the less the public hear of it. At the same time, the public have ample opportunities of knowing what is going on at the workhouse, through the meetings, open to ratepayers and reporters, at the workhouse and the vestry, and through the reports in the local newspapers. But the Poor-Law administration does not exterminate distress, nor pretend to do it. No system of relief, however chari

distress. The causes of physical misery, whilst they remain, make that misery inevitable. In those instances of undoubted destitution which have been detailed before the magistrates and elsewhere, we do not know how much is due to drunkenness, that plague and curse of our poor. And how can you keep a drunkard out of want? Another cause of distress is scarcely less difficult to cope with the imbecility and want of energy which infects some persons like a disease. Then there is the downright idleness of not a few, which keeps them from seeking work, and throws them out of occupation when they get it. The destitution which arises from sickness and misfortune-the character of the sufferers having been reasonably good-ought to be relieved humanely by the workhouse, if not more indulgently cared for, as one might surely hope it would be, by the kindness of friends and by Christian charity.

Let me add, somewhat abruptly, the following suggestions:

1. It seems to be necessary to revive the old warnings against unguarded and too ambitious almsgiving. Of course, the magistrates who have laboured so generously during the last few days in the summary relief of crowds of applicants, will be compelled to discontinue those unprofitable labours. It is a very inconsiderate benevolence which has imposed so hopeless a task upon them. But there is great fear lest societies, rich in means and eager to help the needy, should be tempted to stimulate mendicancy and vagabondage. No greater harm can be done than this to our labouring population.

2. In dealing directly with distress, the efforts of charitable persons should be based as far as possible upon personal knowledge, and should chiefly aim, I submit, at assisting with judgment and delicacy those whom a temporary gift or a little pension may save from pauperism, and make more comfortable, without encouraging vice or idleness;-not at supplying the wants indiscriminately of the needy or unemployed. Exceptional dis

call for an exceptional effort of private charity; but workhouse relief has advantages for dealing with the lowest strata of poverty which private persons do not possess; and there need be no scruple about leaving apparently destitute applicants for help, when we can know nothing of their character or real circumstances, to the relieving-officer.

3. Gentlemen of leisure and public spirit may do much service by obtaining a knowledge of our public relief-system, by watching its administration, and by offering themselves for election as guardians of the poor.

4. By far the best way of battling with destitution and misery is to labour in those efforts which are likely to better the condition of the poor.

MY DEAR SIR,

Whatever

institutions and practices have a tendency to educate and encourage the poor, and to promote their self-respect, are more useful agencies "for the relief of distress," than those which may hold out a delusive hope to the improvident. A sober and industrious working man, even of the poorest class, ought to be able to stand against a fortnight's loss of work without running a risk of starvation. We may all remember, for the spring and the summer, the importance of sound efforts to encourage hope, and knowledge, and self-reliance amongst our poorer neighbours; and so, when the dangerous and irregular charity-work of this winter is over, we may be labouring beforehand most effectually to mitigate the suf ferings of the next.

LETTER FROM PROFESSOR HENSLOW.

HITCHAM, IPSWICH, January, 1861.

The manner in which my name is noticed in a review of Mr. Darwin's work in your number for December, is liable to lead to a misapprehension of my view of Mr. Darwin's "Theory on the Origin of Species." Though I have always expressed the greatest respect for my friend's opinions, I have told himself that I cannot assent to his speculations without seeing stronger proofs than he has yet produced. I send you an extract from a letter I have received from my brother-in-law the Rev. L. Jenyns, the well-known author of "British Vertebrata," as it very nearly expresses the views I at present entertain, in regard to Mr. Darwin's theory-or rather hypothesis, as I should prefer calling it. I have heard his book styled "the book of the day," on more than one occasion by a most eminent naturalist; who is himself opposed to and has written against its conclusions; but who considers it ought not to be attacked with

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ERRATUM.

By a mistake in the article on "DIAMONDS" in the last number (p. 189), the weight of the

MARCH, 1861.

VICTOR AMADEUS, THE FIRST KING OF SARDINIA.

CHAPTER I.

BY GEORGE WARING.

In the year of grace 1729, on one of those golden days of the late Italian autumn, the court of Sardinia was gathered in the banqueting hall of the palace, waiting till the chapel bell should ring out its summons to mass. The court was gay, after the fashion of that time and that country, with velvets, plumes, and jewels, though the king, Victor Amadeus, who stood in the embrasure of a window conversing with the French envoy, presented in his own person a somewhat contemptuous contrast to his glittering subjects. A little old man, in his unvarying garb of plain brown cloth; his linen coarse, and untrimmed with lace; the hilt of the sword, which had won him his kingdom, was guarded with leather, that it might not fray his coat. There was a parade of simplicity in his bamboo cane, in the tortoiseshell snuff-box, not even inlaid, from which he was offering the count a pinch. Only one piece of an old man's coxcombry showed out of keeping with the severely plain costume, and this was a magnificent peruke, so full-flowing and ostentatiously curled, as to rival, if not to surpass, that of the Grand Monarque himself. Under that wig, brows, knotted with combinations, bent over an eye still vehement and eager; an eye which had never overlooked a weak point in an enemy, nor a vantage ground for its master. The face was fearless, but not frank; the lines of the thin lips secretive and astute. The old man kept his soldier's bearing; neither the weight of

nearly seventy years, nor the burden of growing ill-health, had dragged down the slight sinewy figure, or robbed it of that royal presence which stamps the man who has wrought out great things in his day. At intervals, as the door opened, and some fresh person joined the group in the back-ground, the king would turn and sigh deeply-as who among us has not marked the old sigh when one has thus sought a beloved presence, forgetful for the moment that it has vanished for ever? And, indeed, the monarch had cause for regret. From that assembly he missed the few whom he had ever really loved-the few of whose affections he could feel secure. Jeanne Baptiste of Savoy, the king's mother, had died in 1723, and his queen, the good Anna of Orleans, who had borne the rough humours and inconstancy of her lord with a patience worthy her blood-she was grand-daughter to our ill-fated Charles-had followed her during the past year; but the deepest wound of this man's heart, a wound which time was powerless to close, had been inflicted when his eldest son, the idol and the image of his father, perished in the promise of his brilliant youth. As the king's glance traversed the assembly, it fell on his son Charles Emmanuel, now heir to his throne; but nothing like affection marked the cold steady gaze, before which the prince quailed and shuffled awkwardly back behind his wife, Polyxena, a princess possessing far greater force of character than her husband. Her Victor greeted respectfully, and after a sharp survey of Charles's

paltry person, disfigured by a remarkably short neck, and an approach to a hump on the left shoulder-defects which his splendid attire only served to make more conspicuous-his father turned again to the window, with a gesture of impatient dislike, which he affected to conceal in contemplation of the landscape before him. From that window the eye looked on the palace gardens, and away over a wide sweep of country, till it rested where Lombardy showed on the horizon, sunny and vague as a dream of ambition. The quick Frenchman, by the monarch's side, following the direction of his gaze, fancied that he held the clue to his thought. "Those are the great plains of Lombardy," he said, with significant emphasis. The old war-horse started to the echo of the trumpet; his eye flashed for a moment; but the gleam faded, and, after a pause, the king said gravely, "I know your meaning, but you mistake my desires."

Before Count de Blondel had found a reply, the court proceeded to the chapel, where the great treasure of the reliquary was a fragment of the Holy Windingsheet. Stopping before this relic to give force to his words, the king whispered to his companion, "You all suppose me ambitious; but the world shall soon have a proof that all I desire is quiet and repose." De Blondel bowed low, the bow of mingled deference and humility, with which it behoves a courtier to receive the confidence of a sovereign, saying meanwhile to himself, "So the Fox of Savoy is trying to blind us; he is busy with some great project; he will strike a blow yet for Milan." And the Frenchman thought over the probabilities in a quiet way, while he was upon his knees, rising from them fully determined to be on the qui vive, to note what way the royal designs might tend, and to despatch the very first information he could gain to his own master.

This Count de Blondel was an especial favourite with Victor Amadeus-his confident and counsellor, as far as a man who never told a secret, unless it was one he wished to make public, nor took

have either. With him Victor entered freely into details of his policy, which sound curiously enough in the present day-the means, for instance, by which he contrived to keep up ill-will among his ministers; saying that it was indispensable to a ruler that the servants of the State should not be on good terms among themselves, or they would join in deceiving their master. "If you would avoid being ruined," he added, "get up a quarrel between your cook and your steward." More worthy of a king were some words spoken to the same man on a subsequent occasion. "I began to reign in my raw youth," said the monarch; "I found the resources of my country drained; troubles, and dangers on every side, were my inheritance. Nevertheless, I have done something in my day; I leave an army well-disciplined and faithful, a flourishing treasury, a good name, and a kingdom to my successor." And how far these words were from an idle boast, a glance at the life of the first King of Sardinia, through a reign of fifty years, will show.

Until the close of the previous century, Savoy had been little more than a high-road for the French into Italy. Louis XIV. kept an iron hand over the Duchy, and his Cabinet imposed treaties on its sovereign, which rendered him much more the vassal than the ally of France. These were the relations of Savoy with her powerful neighbour, when, in 1684, Victor Amadeus took the reins of Government at the age of eighteen. The young prince possessed those opposite qualities which mark the man born for success rather than heroism; -an eager ambition restrained by the coldest calculation, an impetuosity which was never suffered to overleap his prudence. Resolving from the first hour of his reign to throw off the tyranny of France, he yet appeared to accept the part of vassal assigned him by her king, and kept his hand upon his sword, determined never to unsheath it till he could strike a decisive blow. This attitude he preserved until 1689, when Louis, menaced by the league of Augs

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