some naughty ones present—an allusion received with laughter.  He loved them all, male or female, married or single, and advised all the young men present to get married as soon as possible and then hang themselves.  Ballet dancing of the usual character followed, and I came away.

It is said a paper recently sent a special correspondent to describe a London music-hall; the description was refused admission into the paper on the ground of indecency, and I can well believe it.

As to the profit made by the music-halls there can be no doubt.  Take for instance the London Pavilion.  I find the following newspaper paragraph: Sir Henry A. Hunt, C.B., the arbitrator in the case of the London Pavilion Music Hall, has sent in his award.  M. Loibl claimed £147,000 for the freehold and goodwill, the building being required for the new street from Piccadilly to Oxford Street.  The award is £109,300.  The freehold cost M. Loibl £8,000, and his net profits in 1875 were £10,978; in 1876, £12,083; and in 1877, £14,189.  Let me give another illustration.  When the proprietor of Evans’ Supper Rooms was refused his license, his loss was estimated at £10,000 per annum.  It surely evidently is more ready to pay liberally for the gratification of its senses, than for the promotion of its virtues.

IV.—MORE ABOUT MUSIC-HALLS.

The journeyman engineer tells us one day as he was walking along with a mate in the country, he spoke of the beauty of the surrounding scenery and of the magnificent sight which met their eyes.  “Oh, blow the sights of the scenery,” said his companion, “the sight for me is a public-house.”  It is the same everywhere.  I was once travelling in a third-class carriage from Newry to Belfast, when I heard the most atrocious exclamations from a party of young men seated at the other end, all offering to break each other’s heads in the name of the Holy Father.  On my intimating that it was a pity young men should thus get into that state to a respectable farmer by my side, his only reply was, “Sure, what’s the good of a drop of drink if it don’t raise something?”  Once upon a time I spent a Sunday in a little village inn in North Wales.  To my disgust there stumbled into the little parlour a young man, dressed respectably, who had evidently been heavily drinking.  As he lay there with his stertorous snore, all unconscious of the wonder and the beauty of the opening day, it seemed to me that it was a sad misuse of the term to say, as his friends would, that he had been in search of amusement.  As a reverend divine took his seat in a train the other day there stumbled into it a couple of young fellows, one with his face very much bruised and cut about—who soon went off to sleep—while his companion explained to the minister that they had both of them been enjoying themselves.  In the more densely populated and poorer districts of the metropolis there is an immense deal of this kind of enjoyment.

To see the people enjoying themselves, I went the other night down the Whitechapel and Commercial Road district.  As I turned the corner of Brick Lane I asked a tradesman of the better class if he could direct me to a very celebrated music-hall in that neighbourhood.  “It is over that way,” said he with a strong expression of disgust.  “It’s a regular sink of iniquity,” he added.  As I was not aware of that, I merely intimated my regret that it was so largely patronised by working men, and that so much money was thus wasted, which might be applied to a better purpose.  “Well, you see,” said my informant, “they don’t think of that—they know there is the hospital for them when they are ill.”  On my remarking that I was going to Brick Lane prior to visiting the music-hall, he intimated that I had better button up my coat, and when I said that when out on such expeditions as I was then engaged in, I never carried a watch and chain worth stealing, he remarked that if the people did not rob me, at any rate they might knock me down.  However, encouraged by his remarks that the people were not so bad as they were, I went on my way.

Apparently the improvement of which my informant spoke was of a very superficial character.  Coming from the Aldgate Station at the early hour of six, I found every drinking shop crammed, including the gaudy restaurant at the station, and descending to the filthiest gin-palace, there were the men drinking, and if they were not drinking they were loafing about in groups of by no means pleasant aspect.  When at a later hour I returned, the sight was still sadder, as hordes of wild young girls, just emancipated from the workshop, were running up and down the streets, shrieking and howling as if mad.  As most of the shops were then closed, the streets seemed almost entirely given over to these girls and their male friends.  In the quarter to which I bent my steps the naval element was predominating, and there were hundreds of sailors cruising, as it were, up and down, apparently utterly unconscious that their dangers at sea were nothing to those on land.  Men of all creeds and of all nations were to be encountered in search of amusement, while hovered around some of the most degraded women it is possible to imagine—women whose bloated faces and forms were enough to frighten anyone, and to whom poor Jack, in a state of liquor, is sure to become a prey.  To the low public-houses of this district dancing-rooms are attached, and in them, as we may well suppose, vice flourishes and shows an unabashed front.  I must say it was with a feeling of relief that I found a harbour of refuge in the music-hall.  Compared with the streets, I must frankly confess it was an exchange for the better.  On the payment of a shilling I was ushered by a most polite attendant into a very handsome hall, where I had quite a nice little leather arm-chair to sit in, and where at my ease I could listen to the actors and survey the house.  The place was by no means crowded, but there was a good deal of the rough element at the back, to which, in the course of the evening’s amusement, the chairman had more than once to appeal.  From the arrangements made around me, it was evident that there was the same provision which I have remarked elsewhere for the drinking habits of the people.  There was a side bar at which the actors and actresses occasionally appeared on their way to or from the stage, and affably drank with their friends and admirers.  The other day I happened to hear a thief’s confession, and what do you think it was?  That it was his mingling with the singers off the stage that had led to his fall.  He was evidently a smart, clever, young fellow, and had thought it a sign of his being a lad of spirit to stand treat to such people.  Of course he could not afford it, and, of course, he had a fond and foolish mother, who tried to screen him in his downward career.  The result was he embezzled his employer’s money, and, when that was discovered, imprisonment and unavailing remorse were the result.  To the imagination of raw lads there is something wonderfully attractive in the music-hall singer, as, with hat on one side and in costume of the loudest character, and with face as bold as brass, he sings, “Slap, bang! here we are again!” or takes off some popular theatrical performer