endurable than in Paris, none where it is sweetened with a surer and more efficacious fraternity. Between the classes there is not that intolerable arrogance and impertinence which constitute the blight of British philanthropy. In England I have seen charitable women go into poor men's cottages with the air of tamers entering a menagerie. They ask unendurable questions, fling open windows without consulting their victims, pooh-pooh everything said to them, order this, command that, till I have marvelled at the long-suffering of the poor, and wondered that they restrained themselves from flinging their torturers out of the window. And I have remarked that these busybodies, under the guise of philanthropy, rarely brought the victims of their implacable sense of Christian duty anything but their arid advice. Now, whatever the failings of the French are, I can confidently assert that tactless spiritual arrogance is not among them, still less an impertinent interference in private matters. They will not open their purse as freely as the English do—the French themselves are the first to admit it—and the secretary of the Academy of Medicine, speaking to me of English private charities, and the vaster scale on which they are managed, said, with delightful gaiety of admission, "In England, you know, you always find a benevolent old lady or gentleman, who will give you for a charitable project £20,000, as I
