is still, in spite of our folly, England's strength and England's
glory. Let us no longer stand by idle, and see moral purity, in
street after street, pent in the same noisome den with moral
corruption, to be involved in one common doom, as the Latin tyrant
of old used to bind together the dead corpse and the living
victim. But let the man who would deserve well of his city, well
of his country, set his heart and brain to the great purpose of
giving the workmen dwellings fit for a virtuous and a civilised
being, and like the priest of old, stand between the living and
the dead, that the plague may be stayed.

Hardly less is the present physical state of our great cities felt
by that numerous class which is, next to the employer, the most
important in a city. I mean the shopmen, clerks, and all the men,
principally young ones, who are employed exclusively in the work
of distribution. I have a great respect, I may say affection, for
this class. In Bristol I know nothing of them; save that, from
what I hear, the clerks ought in general to have a better status
here than in most cities. I am told that it is the practice here
for merchants to take into their houses very young boys, and train
them to their business; that this connection between employer and
employed is hereditary, and that clerkships pass from father to
son in the same family. I rejoice to hear it. It is pleasant to
find anywhere a relic of the old patriarchal bond, the permanent
nexus between master and man, which formed so important and so
healthful an element of the ancient mercantile system. One would
gladly overlook a little favouritism and nepotism, a little
sticking square men into round holes, and of round men into square
holes, for the sake of having a class of young clerks and employes
who felt that their master's business was their business, his