friends, in "the day-room of a London workhouse," have been lately set
forth by Miss Edith Sellers, in the pages of the _Nineteenth Century_,
with a pathetic incisiveness not less striking than that of the
following passage from the Eighteenth Letter of Crabbe's _Borough_:--

"Who can, when here, the social neighbour meet?
Who learn the story current in the street?
Who to the long-known intimate impart
Facts they have learned, or feelings of the heart?
They talk indeed, but who can choose a friend,
Or seek companions at their journey's end?
Here are not those whom they when infants knew;
Who, with like fortune, up to manhood grew;
Who, with like troubles, at old age arrived;
Who, like themselves, the joy of life survived;
Whom time and custom so familiar made,
That looks the meaning in the mind conveyed:
But here to strangers, words nor looks impart
The various movements of the suffering heart;
Nor will that heart with those alliance own,
To whom its views and hopes are all unknown
What, if no grievous fears their lives annoy,
Is it not worse no prospects to enjoy?
'Tis cheerless living in such bounded view,
With nothing dreadful, but with nothing new;
Nothing to bring them joy, to make them weep;
The day itself is, like the night, asleep."

The essence of workhouse monotony has surely never been better indicated
than here.