separately, is a good large town.  Stratford, for instance, has 60,000 inhabitants, and Deptford 80,000.  Only half a dozen theatres for three millions of people!  It is quite clear, therefore, that there is not yet a craving for dramatic art among our working classes.  Music-halls there are, certainly, and these provide shows more or less dramatic, and, though they are not so numerous as might have been expected, they form a considerable part of the amusements of the people; it is therefore a thousand pities that among the ‘topical’ songs, the break-downs, and the comic songs, room has never been found for part-songs or for music of a quiet and somewhat better kind.  The proprietors doubtless know their audience, but wherever the Kyrle Society have given concerts to working people, they have succeeded in interesting them by music and songs of a kind to which they are not accustomed in their music-halls.

The theatre, the music-hall, the public-house, the Sunday excursion, the parks—­these seem almost to exhaust the list of amusements.  There are, also, however, the suburban gardens, such as North Woolwich and Rosherville, where there are entertainments of all kinds and dancing; there are the tea-gardens all round London; there are such places of resort as Kew and Hampton Court, Bushey, Burnham Beeches, Epping, Hainault and Rye House.  There are also the harmonic meetings, the free-and-easy evenings, and the friendly leads at the public-houses.  Until last year there was one place, in the middle of a very poor district, where dancing went on all the year round.  And there are the various clubs, debating societies, and local parliaments which have been lately springing up all over London.  One may add the pleasure of listening to the stump orator, whether he exhorts to repentance, to temperance, to republicanism, to atheism, or to the return of Sir Roger.  He is everywhere on Sunday in the streets, in the country roads, and in the parks.  The people listen, but with apathy; they are accustomed to the white-heat of oratory; they hear the same thing every Sunday:  their pulses would beat no faster if Peter the Hermit himself or Bernard were to exhort them to assume the Cross.  It is comic, indeed, only to think of the blank stare with which a British workman would receive an invitation to take up arms in order to drive out the accursed Moslem.

As regards the women, I declare that I have never been able to find out anything at all concerning their amusements.  Certainly one can see a few of them any Sunday walking about in the lanes and in the fields of northern London, with their lovers; in the evening they may also be observed having tea in the tea-gardens.  These, however, are the better sort of girls; they are well dressed, and generally quiet in their behaviour.  The domestic servants, for the most part, spend their ‘evening out’ in taking tea with other servants, whose evening is in.  On the same principle, an actor when he has a holiday goes to another theatre;