honour to have the right to marry. In every year there should be two festivals, one on the first of May, and one at the feast of harvest home in each district, at which festivals their permissions to marry should be given publicly to the maidens and youths who had won them in that half year; and they should be crowned, the maids by the old French title of Rosières, and the youths, perhaps by some name rightly derived from one supposed signification of the word "bachelor" "laurel fruit," and so led in joyful procession, with music and singing, through the city street or village lane, and the day ended with feasting of the poor: but not with feasting theirs, except quietly, at their homes.

And every bachelor and rosière should be entitled to claim, if they needed it, according to their position in life, a fixed income from the State, for seven years from the day of their marriage, for the setting up of their homes; and however rich they might be by inheritance, their income should not be permitted to exceed a given sum, proportioned to their rank, for the seven years following that in which they had obtained their permission to marry, but should accumulate in the trust of the State, until that seventh year, in which they should be put (on certain conditions) finally in possession of their property; and the men, thus necessarily not before their twenty-eighth

nor usually later than their thirty-first year, become el gible to offices of State. So that the rich and poor should not be sharply separated in the beginning of the war of ife; but the one supported against the first stress of it long enough to enable them by proper forethought and economy to secure their footing; and the other trained somewhat in the use of moderate means, before they were permitted to have the command of abundant ones. And of the sources from which these State incomes for the married poor should be supplied, or of the treatment of those of our youth whose conduct rendered it advisable to refuse them permission to marry, I defer what I have to say till we come to the general subjects of taxation and criminal discipline, leaving the proposals made in this letter to bear, for the present, whatever aspect of mere romance and unrealiable vision they probably may, and to most readers, such as they assuredly will. Nor shall I make the slightest effort to redeem them from these imputations; for though there is nothing in all their purport which would not be approved, as in the deepest sense "practical"—by the "Spirit of Paradise”—

Which gives to all the self-same bent,

Whose lives are wise and innocent,

-and though I know that national justice in conduct

and peace in heart, could by no other laws be so swiftly secured, I confess with much dispeace of heart, that both justice and happiness have at this day become, in EngJand, "romantic impossibilities."

Letter 21.

Of the Dignity of the Four Fine Arts; and of the Proper System of Retail Trade.

April 15, 1867.

I RETURN now to the part of the subject at which I was interrupted-the inquiry as to the proper means of finding persons willing to maintain themselves and others by degrading occupations.

That, on the whole, simply manual occupations are degrading, I suppose I may assume you to admit; at all events, the fact is so, and I suppose few general readers will have any doubt of it.*

*Many of my working readers have disputed this statement eagerly, feeling the good effect of work in themselves; but observe, I only say, simply or totally manual work; and that, alone, is degrading, though often in measure refreshing, wholesome, and necessary. So it is highly necessary and wholesome to eat sometimes; but degrading to eat all day, as to labour with the hands all day. But it is not degrading to think all day-if you can. A highly bred court lady, rightly interested in politics and literature, is a much finer type of the human creature than a servant of all work, however clever and honest.

Granting this, it follows as a direct consequence that it is the duty of all persons in higher stations of life, by every means in their power, to diminish their demand for work of such kind, and to live with as little aid from the lower trades as they can possibly

contrive.

I suppose you see that this conclusion is not a little at variance with received notions on political economy? It is popularly supposed that it benefits a nation to invent a want. But the fact is, that the true benefit is in extinguishing a want-in living with as few wants as possible.

I cannot tell you the contempt I feel for the common writers on political economy, in their stupefied missing of this first principle of all human economy-individual or political-to live, namely, with as few wants as possible, and to waste nothing of what is given you to supply them.

This ought to be the first lesson of every rich man's political code. "Sir," his tutor should early say to him, "you are so placed in society-it may be for your misfortune, it must be for your trial-that you are likely to be maintained all your life by the labour of other men. You will have to make shoes for nobody but some one will have to make a great many for you