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the same lines and carried on in the same spirit, it has met with a corresponding amount of success. Young Folks, a paper which issues from the office of the Weekly Budget, is a paper which occupies ground of its own. The leading feature is always an instalment of one of those fairy stories of giants, monsters, gallant knights, and lovely ladies, which possess perennial attraction for the young. Stories of boys' and girls' life, and occasionally short sketches by young readers of the paper, fill up the remainder of the space, room being found occasionally for criticisms on attempts by the young readers to produce essays, poems, and tales. A large amount of space is also given to riddles and puzzles. So far the papers for boys are excellent in tone and in execution. Those which remain to be considered come under a different category. Our Boys' Journal is as unlike anything that a prudent father would care to place in the hands of a boy as can well be imagined. The principal story is one of schoolboy life, and the instalment in the number before me is mainly composed of a sickening description of a fight in a dormitory. A second story has for title "Wild Tom of Cambridge," and is actually occupied with a description of the doings of a body-snatcher, with an illustration of this delectable subject. The Scapegrace of London," the third story of this paper, is as silly and as vulgar as the last-mentioned is improper. The Boys of England, the Boys' Standard, the Boys' World, and the Young Men of Great Britain, are equally distinguished by sensationalism and silliness; the last mentioned, which boasts that it "has with one exception the Largest Circulation of any Boys' Paper in the world," adding to its literary attractions a lottery for watches, pictures, books, parrots, cricket-bats, fishing-rods, boxes of puzzles, a tame monkey, a donkey, and a bicycle.

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These things are bad enough, but there is an even lower depth, and it is an unflattering comment on our boasted civilization that the worst papers have the largest circulation. The Illustrated Police News is to be found in every town and village in England. Its chief contents are reports extracted from the daily papers of proceedings at police courts,

trials and inquests; its illustrations minister to the morbid craving of the uneducated for the horrible and the repulsive, and its advertisements call for the intervention of the police. Lord Campbell's Act was certainly intended to meet such cases as this, and why it is not put in force it is difficult to see. The same remark applies to the filthy rags which are thrust under the eyes of passers by in every crowded thoroughfare in London, which, for gross and stupid indecency, have no rivals in the press. Yet they are permitted to continue unchecked in their career, and to circulate—in the case of one publication at all events -to the extent of about 100,000 a week.

Against the existence of these wretched prints must be set the decadence of the old school of "Penny Dreadfuls"those ill-printed sheets adorned with clumsy and inartistic wood-cuts, which were wont to tell from week to week "The Horrors of the Haunted Cellar ; or, Blood and Crime," and similar grisly stories. A few, however, still exist. A

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Life of Calcraft the Hangman" is now in course of issue in penny numbersnumber two given away with number one." So also is a catchpenny publication bearing the title, "Charles Peace, the Burglar," which affects to give an account of the adventures of that notorious criminal, but which really is merely a dull and stupid hash up of old stories. It would seem, however, that there is a public for this sort of literature, for this romance" has been issued from week to week over a period of more than eighteen months. Their length is, indeed, one of the most striking features of these productions. The Mysteries of London," and the "Mysteries of the Court," which were the representative specimens of this class of publication, extended over several hundreds of numbers. Naturally people who read such romances have ceased to take an interest in them since they found that the penny weeklies gave them three or four times as much matter of the same character for the same price. There are, however, a few survivals: "Joseph Wilmot; or, The Memoirs of a Man Servant," by the late G. W. M. Reynolds; "The Poor Girl," by Pierce Egan, and one or two other romances of the same type, are still in course of reproduction from week

with the more general diffusion of education. So long, however, as education is allowed almost as a matter of course to exclude culture, we shall find foolish people taking pleasure in foolish things. The demand for these frivolous stories naturally creates the supply. Publishers are much the same as other tradesmen

to week, but the circulation is not large. Occasionally, too, announcements may be seen of some new serial story of the Claude Duval type; and one publisher has a rather unenviable notoriety for the publication of tales of gangs of highwaymen commanded by "boy captains," to which sundry ingenuous youths are indebted for their knowledge of the interior of the City Prison at Holloway. spite of all this, and of the periodical objurgations of the sitting alderman. when some wretched boy, translating the poetry of Grub Street into prose, picks the lock of his master's till to buy a cheap revolver and fancy himself a "dashing highwayman," there is a great falling off in the trade in "Penny Dreadfuls." Whether the many objectionable boys' papers, to which reference has been made, do not effect quite as much harm may be open to question, while there can be little doubt that the weeklies of the London Journal type afford to their readers mental food of nearly as unwholesome a character as that provided by the bygone romance in penny numbers. That there is much vice in any of these papers no one will contend. On the other hand, few will doubt that it is by no means a subject for agreeable reflection that the only reading indulged in by an enormous proportion of the lower middle classes, consists of nothing better than these exceedingly foolish and frivolous stories. Yet it is hard to devise a remedy for such a state of things, and in fact no remedy from without is applicable. It can only be hoped that matters will mend

they sell the goods for which their customers ask. Now and then a firm like that of the brothers Chambers takes a higher view of its calling, and itself creates the demand. It were to be wished that other members of the trade would follow so admirable an example, especially since experience shows that the supply of good literature is by no means unprofitable. The Leisure Hour, for example, is, we believe, the most profitable of all the publications of the Religious Tract Society, and has largely increased in circulation since the admission of a more distinctively secular element. If some enterprising publisher would produce as good a magazine, from which the tract-element should be wholly expunged, he would probably find that it would pay him exceedingly well. But to render it successful it must be dealt with purely as a matter of business. No surer way of missing the object in view could be devised than that of putting such a venture into the forcing-house of a philanthropic society. The common sense and the business instincts of publishers must provide the remedy for present evils, and in time there is reason to believe that they will do so.-Macmillan's Magazine.

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wastes beyond the Vaal River, or the deserts everywhere else; but the people inhabiting them are the same, and the local institutions are alike. At the present time, when the Transvaal Boers are in rebellion against us, it may be interesting to know something more respecting the customs, modes of thought, and ways of living of their race than is to be met with in the guide-books or in the notes of those who have passed a few brief weeks in the show places and the busier centres of our South African colonies. As a contribution towards this knowledge I am about to picture a village-for village it is usually called, although the seat of a magistracy and the capital of a division-which was founded by Boers, is almost entirely inhabited by them, and which has a local self-government of its own. In a population of six hundred there are not a dozen Englishmen, nor a dozen other Europeans of any kind, although the Germans rival the English as to numbers. The place is, therefore, racy of the soil. Scarce thirty years old, greyheaded men among its founders can remember the days when they fought with Bushmen and had adventures with lions. Its annals are brief. Like many of its congeners it had its origin in the spiritual needs of a people who profess but one form of religion-the Presbyterian -and that religion the very leaven of their lives. Similar Church towns," as they are called, are still established ever and anon. The process is a simple one. Weary of living two days' journey from a place of worship, the farmers of a region large as an English county resolve to build one in their midst. They memorialize their presbytery and raise funds. A farm is bought. Now a farm means a tract of ten thousand acres, often of more, with a spring upon it. This forms the site and commonage of the future town. A suitable spot is surveyed and marked out in streets and squares. Lots are sold on some great auction day, after a series of religious services. The bidding is enthusiatic, and fancy prices are realized. With the sum thus raised, in the present instance something over £20,000, a church, parsonage, and school-house are erected, and the foundation of a good endowment fund is started. Each lot or erf is

charged with an annual payment for church purposes; and thus, while European politicians are busy abolishing tithes and endowments, rising communities in South Africa are as busily creating analogous imposts. There is also a rent-charge for water service-an important item in a land so desiccated as the Cape. Some of these lots, intended for building purposes only, are dry and barren, while others have an hour's right to an irrigating stream of water twice weekly, and will soon be fruitful gardens. The purchasers are mostly Boers, who will build town-houses wherein to lodge when they ride in to church, once or twice a month, from their distant farms, with a large posse of servants and children; but some are storekeepersoften German Jews—and some artisans, who buy with a view to future trade. A small army of brickmakers, bricklayers, carpenters, and painters makes its appearance in due time, and retreats again to. some more favored spot a few years later, when the first fervor of building has passed away. A' minister sufficiently young and sufficiently popular receives a call. After due delay, sometimes after delay deemed very undue and unreasonable, government appoints a resident magistrate, who is also civil commissioner, with a suitable staff, including a clerk, a district surgeon, a jailer, and some Kafir constables; and the town thus established pursues an existence at once useful, uneventful, prosy, and dull.

I have spoken of the place as peopled by Boers; I should rather have said by Boers and their colored retainers, who, as a matter of fact, outnumber their masters, and form a servile class as utterly separate as tradition or social custom can make them; but who are, from the contact of many generations, imbued with the same ideas, and who flatter the superior race by an imitation that is simply perfect. But between the two there is a gulf which is impassable. The whitest half-caste would not presume to seat himself in the presence of the Boer, nor the poorest Boer demean cimself by marrying the prettiest halfhaste. Neither do they worship together in the same churches; nor are they buried in the same cemeteries. In one case only that I can now recall, that of a Kafir of special and exemplary piety,

did a Boer congregation follow a negro to his grave. This was, however, dug in an open common, and the funeral proceeded from an outhouse.

Of similar ancestry, and often of near kindred to the Boers, but of better education and relatively better birth, are the Africanders who hail from Capetown and the western districts, and who form the professional classes, the leading merchants, and the gentry of the colonial born. Some, descendants of the Huguenots, bear the proudest surnames of old France, and some count early governors and half-forgotten judges among their forefathers. Such men will show you ancient seals engraven with their coats of arms, and tell quaint legends of the Landrost or physician, the major or the chaplain, who owned it in the days when the colony was young. True, every white man born in civilized South Africa claims to be an Africander, but in the more restricted sense of the word it applies especially to the older colonists of the better classes. Some of these are found among the leading spirits of every township, often among leading officials. Dutch is the language spoken in their households and the Boers regard them with an affection and respect which in the very nature of things could scarcely be accorded to the English settler, who comes among them a stranger and a foreigner at best.

Our village lies alone in the wilderness, a long day's journey from its nearest neighbor. A broad fringe of mountains passed, and the whole interior of the colony and the country far beyond its borders forms one great desert of stones and dull red soil, with small hard bushes grey or brown, scattered scantily about it. Here and there rise ugly hills or ugly mountains, black or russet as the case may be. This country is parcelled out into farms larger than English parishes, varying, as they do, from six thousand to twenty thousand acres of land. Each farm has its one spring of water where the homestead lies, and, if the spring be strong enough, a garden and cultivated land which it irrigates. There are rivers so dry that 'no drop of moisture can be found within their beds, and yet so large that the bridging them is expensive to the point of prohibition; so deep and rapid when it rains that no

living creature can cross them. Along these rivers in the warmer low-lying districts stand thousands of mimosa trees; leafy sometimes, when rain falls and the right season has come; but bare otherwise, and with innumerable thorns as long as bodkins and sharp as skewers. Then, again, you come to patches of ground, an acre in size or more, smooth and bald through lack of vegetation, nothing growing in the saline clay; a soil absolutely waterproof, and used for roofs of houses and leaking dams accordingly. The roads are tracks across the country, made by wheels of passing wagons, but patched and improved by the contractors, good, indifferent, or bad-mostly the latter-employed by the divisional councils. As it seldom rains, these roads are very tolerable after all, save where deep rivers have to be crossed or where picturesque scenery has made the engineering difficult. Following a highway like this, we come, say. in the summer, when the leaves are green, upon the village I would speak of. Tired with neutral tints and the perpetual waste, the eye lights gladly upon a gardened hamlet lying four-square on the barren plain. There are many fruit trees, interspersed with willows and an occasional cypress, which half conceal low, one-storied houses, and a steepled church, white and stiff, of meeting-house Gothic and with iron roof. Beyond this line of herbage is the business quarter; red brick houses mostly, and bare earthy reddish streets. And farther off, with sufficient space for wind between it and the town's nobility, a negro location of beehive huts, backed by a quarry on a hillside and a tomb-like structure which forms the powder magazine. The village is flanked by a white-walled graveyard, and the water-furrow leading from the distant river may be noted by a narrow line of verdure. It is overlooked by a well-marked eminence, whose lichened boulders are a rusty brown, and whose top is dominated by a flagstaff.

We enter this oasis, whose vegetation is due to constant irrigation, and see lines of well-kept streets, bordered with quince hedges bending beneath a wealth of large yellow fruit, and with water courses on either side. The streams are intermittent, for every drop of water is meted out to the gardens, each plot of

ground having its special hour, day and night, alternately; unalterable as the laws of the Medes and the Persians. In the dry allotments sold for building purposes reside the half dozen Englishmen and the half-dozen Germans who do the business of the place. There are stores, not much to look at, with ploughs and agricultural machinery standing on the stoep, or pavement, outside them, and with everything that Boer humanity can require to be sold within. Great bales of wool are piled up in a shed adjacent, and skins of divers kinds of cattle, salted and stretched, lie drying on the ground. Somewhat ambitiously planned, this portion of the town is but partially built upon, unsightly gaps separate many of the best houses, and some erections stand distant and solitary, dreary sentinels that mark the direction of future improvements. Here is the court-house, one-storied like its neighbors, in whose inner chamber the resident magistrate and his clerk peruse much periodical literature, newspapers included, and dream of higher salaries and less exacting duties. In the audience chamber or court-room, a bare whitewashed basilica indeed, sits, amid piles of newspapers, the chief constable, conjuring up, in his turn, visions of less work and better pay. On the stoep, which is a kind of terrace, paved, but very unpretending, before each house, in policeman's clothing, spic and span, reposes a Kafir constable, tall, stalwart, and handsome in his way, but exercised, so far as his easier philosophy will permit, with speculations anent the less tardy accumulation of the wages he delights in hoarding, and the amelioration of hardships generally. Far be it from me to hint that the even tenor of official life is never varied by stormier passages. Sometimes there are taxes to be collected; sometimes thefts or breaches of the peace to be investigated; now and then a murder; and once a month accounts are made up, and all kinds of salaries paid, when the hapless officials groan beneath the extra work, and, greatly worried, reduce to order a chaos of ledgers, abstracts, vouchers, and reports.

The administration of justice under English rule is much the same in South Africa as it is everywhere else. The thief has a bad time of it, the murderer

stands his chance, and the ruffian comes off scot free, or thereabouts. Fublic business is transacted in the English language, and the sworn translator is a necessary functionary at every sitting of the court. This is one of the events of the week, and, next to services and prayer-meetings, the favorite resort of dilettante Boers, who who sit patiently through long-winded investigations, and find, in the dull but living scenes enacted in this humble forum, a faint reflection, though they know it not, of excitements yielded by the drama. The resi dent magistrate, who is often of Africander and sometimes of Boer descent, is mostly popular and may even share a divided empire with the Predikant of the adjoining church. In the majority of cases the district surgeon is a young Cape doctor or a German, and not unfrequently a Jew. The very frequent transfer of property arising from the old Roman-Dutch law of inheritance, which divides estates among the children at the death of either parent, has given rise to a race of inferior lawyers known as "enrolled agents," whose one and sometimes only qualification is the preliminary payment of ten pounds sterling to the Government. Some of these agents are respectable Africanders of good family and education, but local satirists have made themselves merry at the early struggles and the ultimate success of less eligible pretenders. Conceive our land flooded with quasi solicitors of this description ! Still, as a matter of fact, they do get through their work somehow, live like gentlemen, as the saying is, and often end as moneyed men, or consummate an insolvency which is as good almost as a fortune.

I have said but little of the Boers themselves. Let us visit one of the many homesteads in the gardens. The white-walled house, although but onestoried, is well elevated, and its roof is iron. Outside shutters of a pleasant green flank the two windows, and the door betwen them is green and panelled. There is, indeed, some pretence to architecture, and the whole is well kept and substantial. The stoep is high and approached by steps. The watercourse beneath it is masoned out with solid stone and bridged with the same material. Leafy trees of divers sorts shade

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