is not far from three times that of the teacher, while the domestic has her food provided for liberality.  The village schoolmistress in the old days was never well paid; but then she was a private speculator; we never expected to see the specialised product of training and time reckoned at the same value as the old dame’s, who was able to read and knit, but who could do little more.  While we are comparing the wages of teachers and cooks, I may point out that the chef, whose training lasts seven years, earns, as we calculate, one hundred and thirty pounds per year more than the average English schoolmaster.  This is perhaps as it should be, for the value of a good chef is hardly to be reckoned in money; and yet the figures look funny when we first study them.  And now we may turn to the wages of dustmen, who are, it must be admitted, a most estimable class of men and most useful.  I find that the London dustman earns more than an assistant master under the Salford School Board, and, besides his wages, he picks up many trifles.  The dustman may dwell with his family in two rooms at three-and-sixpence per week; his equipment consists of a slop, corduroys, and a sou’-wester hat, which are sufficient to last many a day with little washing.  But the assistant, whose education alone cost the nation one hundred pounds cash down, not to speak of his own private expenditure, must live in a respectable locality, dress neatly, and keep clear of that ugly soul-killing worry which is inflicted by trouble about money.  Decidedly the dustman has the best of the bargain all round, for, to say the least, he does not need to labour very much harder than the professional man.  This instance tends to throw a very sinister and significant flash on the way things are tending.  Again, some of the gangs of Shipping Federation men have full board and lodging, two changes of clothes free, beer and rum in moderate quantities, and thirty shillings per week.  Does anybody in England know a curate who has a salary like that?  I do not think it would be possible to find one on the Clergy List.  No one grudges the labourers their extra food and high wages; I am only taking note of a significant social circumstance.  The curate earns nothing until he is about three-and-twenty; if he goes through one of the older universities, his education costs, up to the time of his going out into the world, something very like two thousand pounds; yet, with all his mental equipment, such as it is, he cannot earn so much as a labourer of his own age.  Certainly the humbler classes had their day of bondage when the middleman bore heavily on them; they got clear by a mighty effort which dislocated commerce, but we hardly expected to find them claiming, and obtaining, payments higher than many made to the most refined products of the universities!  It is the way of the world; we are bound for change, change, and yet more change; and no man may say how the cycles will widen.  Luxury has grown on us since the thousands