The rate of hire in the ballot class is fixed at 12 per cent. per annum on the value of the instrument, and the other arrangements are similarly moderate and equitable, so that the charge for the use of the instrument, the cost price of which is £25, would be £3 2s. 6d. a year until the purchase is effected.

Members are admitted to the society at any time, and are not required to make any back payments in respect of shares. Each person is allowed the choice of the particular kind of instrument he is desirous of purchasing, up to the value of £100, upon payment of proportionate subscriptions.

We need hardly add that both for the sake of encouraging the delightful science of music, and the gratification of the individual members, we wish it all the success the plan so eminently deserves.

WATCHWORK versus SLOPWORK.

(From the Standard, April 19th, 1858.)

TO THE EDITOR. SIR,-The great social evil cries to be dealt with. The press has sounded the alarm, and there is scarcely a paper in the country that has not demanded a remedy. A powerful appeal has just been made by some influential gentlemen, who propose to set up an amateur slop shop under the designation of the Anti-Slop-Shop League. Their prospectus says:-"It is well known that a vast number of the unfortunates who crowd our thoroughfares are creatures of necessity, not choice, driven to the alternative of the streets in order to save themselves from actual starvation, unable to live upon the miserably low prices paid for their labour by the slopsellers."

This is too true. Few even of our leading men are aware to how great an extent this is true in the very heart of our wealthy metropolis. The evil is far too serious to be cured by any amateur treatment. These benevolent men should know that their Anti-Slop-Shop League, though started with the best possible intentions, will be utterly futile against the evils they deplore. Any attempt to reduce the pressure of over competition by setting up additional competition can but make bad worse. Amateur manufacturers, with all the benevolence in the world, will be no match for thorough-paced tradesmen, who will contrive to extract a fortune where these well-meaning associates will only succeed in burning their fingers. The science of political economy has been laid down to little purpose if we do not see that whereever we have a pound of work to be done, and a hundred weight of women anxious to do it, the balance can only be adjusted by opening fresh fields of labor, by which we draw off and employ the excess. In this mighty maze of London there are scores of occupations that could be immediately thrown open to female skill but for the obstinate prejudice of both masters and men. In some trades the transition could be easily effected; in others, like that of watchwork-where the method of production is exceedingly complicated, and the custom is piecework at their own homes-we shall succeed in introducing women into the work only by dint of persuasive appeals addressed to the workmen. Such appeals must be reiterated, and come backed by a favorable public opinion, created through the press and the platform. During the last two years I have endeavored to convert the unwilling minds of our English watchworkmen by pointing out the causes why above a million of money is lost annually to our trade alone, the whole of which, by adopting the Swiss system, might be handed over to our London men and women. We are now rapidly losing the production of watches for home consumption, and still more rapidly delivering over to the Swiss the best markets in every corner of the world; whereas, by the better system which I have ventured to advocate, we could find abundant and well-paid employment for many thousand women. By this and similar occupations we should far more effectually diminish the great social evil than by any Anti-Slop-Shop League. Let me assure all who despair of bringing about a consummation so devoutly

to be wished, that my experience has proved that the very men whose opposition is the loudest in denouncing the change, will be found to be among the first to take up their own daughters and wives to help them in their work. There is a virtue in reiteration which is infallible. Let practical men carefully collect the facts of their respective callings, and the press will assuredly be ready to fasten these facts in the minds of those whom it should most concern to be acquainted with them; so, in the end, necessary changes without violence, in manufactures as in politics, will be properly and legitimately effected.

Let any man who doubts the urgent need of a great social reform in London, consider that tens of thousands of full-grown women rise from their wretched beds every morning without the hope of a breakfast until the sixpenny shirt is finished and taken home. It is most fearful to reflect at what a rate this destitution is extending. What with the constant drafts of the most ablebodied for the army, and the crowds of marriageable men who are rushing off to our colonies, when the red coat has no attraction for them, we shall find the next census show probably a million of women in excess. Society will have to determine how this multitude of women shall find a living. The needle is bad enough now, but let it be known that even the needle will soon be utterly worthless as a refuge for the most destitute in many kinds of work. A revolution is rapidly going on, and the needle is doomed to fall before the undeniable superiority of the sewing machine. The construction of this amazing contrivance is imperfect enough yet, but it is assuredly destined to supersede the most nimble and patient needle more swiftly than the power-loom supplanted the old weavers' hand work. Then well may London look to her streets! We are told that "anything that a man hath will he give for his life." The pious may be shocked and cry out for laws of suppression, but nature will assert her superior law of self-preservation. We may insist upon the sternest virtue under all circumstances, but can hardly expect women quietly to starve when access to every honest trade is cruelly closed against them.

No, sir, though we arm our policemen with powers that would have astonished a Draco-though amateur shirtmakers may aim at paying benevolent prices there is no true and lasting remedy but to throw open here, as in America and on the Continent, many of those light occupations for which women's dexterity renders them admirably adapted. The result will be better productions, gain to our home manufacturers, and a great social and moral blessing.-I am, Sir, yours respectfully,

65, Cheapside, April 16.

JOHN BENNETT.

MADAM,-In order that the readers of your 'Magazine' may not suppose the Sister Isle deficient in its efforts of a philantrophic nature, I now offer some information respecting a valuable institution which I have lately visited in company with some friends, and which appears but little known to the public. I refer to the Leamy Free School, for children of all classes and every persuasion, situated in the county of Limerick, Ireland, and endowed by an Irishman born at no great distance from that city, who resided during childhood at Maryport, in the county of Clare, about the year 1760. His father was herdsman and caretaker to the demesne of a gentleman living in that vicinity, to whose son William Leamy was assigned as playmate and companion, and remained in this capacity for some years. With the aspirations common to growing boyhood, he left the scenes of his early life and became servant to an officer then stationed at Limerick, with whom he travelled to Scotland, and to the city of Edinburgh, where he left his service and entered into an engagement with a bookseller in good business in that city. Here young Leamy applied himself zealously to reading and the improvement of his mind, in which he made such advancement from the

facilities afforded to him, that a gentleman going out to India, under civil appointment, took a fancy to the youth, and engaged him to accompany him in his service. In India his family lost all sight of him, bnt it has since been ascertained that by care and attention he put some money together, got into a small business on his own account, extending it gradually, until, after a series of years, he became a merchant trading extensively to China, and the master of immense wealth, thus proving in his own person the benefits of education and self culture.

During all this time his family in Ireland remained in total ignorance of his existence until the year 1807, when a gentleman of this country named Mr. Carroll, being in London, met Mr. Leamy at the house of a friend, he having returned from India a short time before. Finding Mr. Carroll to be a native of the county Clare, Mr. Leamy questioned him respecting his former friends and relatives, and thus his return to England was ascertained. The grandson of the gentleman to whom Mr. Leamy's father had been herdsman visited London in the year 1809, and of course hastened to claim acquaintance with the ci-devant humble companion of his father, but now the wealthy merchant of India; and to him we are indebted for the personal description of this benevolent man, who received him most warmly and with many inquiries for his family and former friends of Maryport. Mr. Leamy then resided in a small house in the neighborhood of Portland Square; he was a man of mild, unobtrusive manners, most agreeable in conversation, and evidently possessed of a cultivated mind; he never talked boastingly of his wealth, and but once referred to it in the presence of this gentleman, on which occasion he received a letter announcing the total loss of one of his ships trading to China, when he merely said "Thank God! I have enough left yet." About the year 1810, Mr. Leamy's health became delicate, and he was ordered to Madeira, where he died unmarried.

In his will he left several large sums of money to his family, which through intemperance and neglect have been all squandered and lost; the residue of his wealth, about thirteen thousand pounds, he bequeathed for the erection of a Free School for all classes of children, to be situated in the city of Limerick.

For a number of years this money remained in Chancery; but in the year 1846, the handsome edifice, bearing the name of the founder, was completed, and the school organized under the direction and rules of the Lord Chancellor, and subject to a committee of gentleman residing in or near Limerick. There are two masters, a Protestant and a Roman Catholic, who instruct the children of their respective denominations at a given hour every day in their religious duties: in their secular studies, which comprise all the branches of a liberal English education, reading, writing, history, grammar, geography, mensuration, algebra, geometry, and book-keeping, the efforts of the masters are conjointly exercised. The schoolmistress, who has been at the school ever since its opening in 1846, kindly examined for us in history the class of girls with whom she was engaged when we entered the schoolroom, and their prompt replies to her numerous questions exhibited a very satisfactory specimen of the sound practical nature of the instructions they received. We also saw some of their writing copies, which were very neatly executed. The books employed are those published by the National Board of Education.

The average number of boys and girls availing themselves of this free education is about one hundred. The master, Mr. Hosford, resident in the school since its opening, is most polite and obliging in giving all information respecting the school and its workings; there we saw the children of those of the middle and higher classes side by side with those of poorer parents, to whom the advantages of such an institution are truly invaluable, and we trust that many such edifices will ere long enlighten and embellish our native land. MARY HATHAWAY.

XL.-PASSING EVENTS.

FIRST and foremost among home events of the month, the numerous cases which have come before the New Court of Divorce, claim especial notice in these pages of our journal. The Times, of May 11th, reports no less than seven cases in different grades of society; a solicitor, a steel pen manufacturer, a locksmith, and a plumber and glazier, being among the applicants. The case of Mrs. JanetHorn, married to Charles Horn, both members of the musical profession, is a signal instance of the great necessity there was for an alteration in the Divorce law. Married in 1833, they lived happily together until 1847, when the husband deserted his wife, and had never since returned to her. He lived in adulterous connection with an actress until her death in 1854, when he formed a connection with a dancer, by whom he had children and went through the ceremony of a marriage with her at St. Mary, Haggerstone, Middlesex. A letter had been received from him dated Liverpool, 26th of March, 1858, in which he stated that he had no defence to the petition, and he hoped before it came on for hearing to be on his way to America. It appeared from the evidence of the petitioner's sister and other witnesses, that Mrs. Horn had always conducted herself in an irreproachable manner, that there was no cause whatever for his desertion, and that she had since maintained herself by her own industry. Mrs. Horn, under these circumstances, prayed for a dissolution of marriage, on the grounds of desertion without reasonable cause for upwards of two years, coupled with adultery, and of bigamy coupled with adultery. The Court thought that the allegations of adultery and desertion without reasonable cause had been made out, and granted the prayer of the petition.

It should be noticed that the applications in these seven instances were made respectively by men and women, proving the cruel injustice both to husband and wife which has hitherto existed, and which the new law so speedily and surely redresses. Great cause is there, too, for congratulation that private feeling and public decency are in this New Court no longer outraged by the details which have hitherto attended all actions for divorce and crim. con. Without entering into the pros and cons concerning the indissolubility of marriage, no one who has thought much upon the subject, can well avoid seeing that it is begging the question to speak of the dissolution of marriages, which call for the intervention of the law of divorce, as 66 putting asunder what God has joined together." While marriage remains the great prize of life to woman as a means of living, while men acknowledge one code of morality for themselves and another for women, we may cheat ourselves and each other, if we will, by invoking the sacred name of God to such unions, but, it is man not God who joins together, and, as the creator, so is man legitimately the redressor of the evil.

In the Times, of May 12th, we find that Lord Campbell, before the rising of the Court, said "he could not refrain from expressing his satisfaction with the beneficial operation of the new Act. The Court had pronounced sentence of dissolution in eight cases, in all of which the petitioners had proved that they were clearly entitled to the remedy they sought. Although in some of those cases the petitioners would have been able to obtain a divorce under the old system by passing a bill through Parliament, yet in others they would have been debarred from that remedy by their poverty. It was satisfactory to think that rich and poor were now upon an equal footing, and that the same remedy was open to all who could establish their right to it."

A curious and unintentional satire upon the judicial position of husband and wife occurred in one of our metropolitan police courts a few days ago, during the hearing of a case of assault. The complainant, a delicate-looking woman, whose swollen and lacerated cheek, strapped together, attested the

violence to which she had been subjected, was asked by the magistrate, if the man, a tall powerful specimen of the "navvy class, were her husband. "No, sir," was the reply, "I have been living with him for some time." The woman's life had been in danger from erysipelas, and the magistrate having told the man that if death had ensued he would have had to take his trial for murder, asked him what he had to say in his defence. "Please your worship," replied the fellow, "I can only say I am very sorry; I was in liquor at the time, or I should not have done it. You see, your worship, it was Saturday night, I gave her some money to go to market, and told her to look sharp; well, she was gone more than an hour, so, when she came back,—I was in liquor, your worship."-The magistrate, leaning over his desk, and speaking in an impressive manner, thus put an end to the excuse:- "This woman is not your slave, man; she is not accountable to you for every moment of her time." Here the worthy magistrate paused, but the spectators supplied the hiatus, ergo, "she is not your wife," and a suppressed titter ran through the court. The man then endeavored to excuse himself on the ground of jealousy, but this also was instantly set aside; the unmistakable impression produced on all present being, that the fact of the woman not being his wife, was altogether in her favor. The satire was none the less pungent and telling that common sense and humanity had momentarily led the worthy magistrate upon dangerous and forbidden ground.

In the police reports of May 20th, one Ann Spettigue, in the employ of a Mrs. Parkes, of George-yard, mantle maker to the trade, stands charged with stealing certain trimmings and fringes, belonging to her employer. The prisoner indignantly denied the charge, and the case was finally remanded till further inquiries could be made into her character. In the course of the proceedings it transpired that this poor woman had mantles given her to take home to make, for which she was paid five farthings each, and three half-pence for the best mantles, finding needles and cotton out of that. The prisoner stated that, working day and night, she could earn only 4s. 9d. per week. Mrs. Parkes assured the magistrate that she paid her 2s. 6d. per dozen for making mantles, and that she herself only got 3s. per dozen from the warehouses, leaving a profit of 6d. only for the trouble and loss of time in obtaining the work. The magistrate commented upon the mercilessness of such dealings on the part of the merchants. He might have carried his strictures further, and traced the evil to its root, the overdressing of all ranks of women, which necessitates a supply of cheap and showy goods for those classes that ape the luxury and extravagance of the higher. Little do our peeresses and ladies of rank and fashion dream of one result of the enormous width of skirt now worn, yet we have it on undoubted authority, that the prodigious quantity of material used at present in ladies' dresses renders it necessary among fashionable West-end dressmakers to employ fewer hands, their rooms not being large enough to accommodate work and work-women.

In an article upon "The Law of Divorce," in our last number, we drew attention to a paragraph in the Times, of April 9th, which threw a doubt upon the remedy, provided by Clause XXI, protecting the property of married women deserted by their husbands, in the event "of the husband or any creditor of, or other person claiming under the husband," seizing property so protected. The Stockport magistrates have apparently solved this doubt. In the Weekly Dispatch, of May 23rd, we find :-FIRST CONVICTION FOR FELONY UNDER THE NEW DIVORCE ACT. "On Saturday, before the Stockport borough magistrates, Owen Owens was committed to the Knutsford House of Correction for three months, with hard labour, for stealing nine table knives, the property of his wife, she having previously obtained protection for her property under the New Matrimonial Clauses and Divorce Act."

Spite of all predictions to the contrary, Covent Garden Theatre has risen phoenix-like from its ashes, and---punctual to the day announced as far back