have removed many doubts and misgivings, and so much publicity has been given to their grievances, that they can not be wholly forgotten.

It is a lamentable reflection upon our present system of administration, however, that these educated young men who had entered the service upon the results of competitive examinations, should have deemed it absolutely necessary to take a step which was designed to bring them at once prominently before the public. The world adjudged their action to be wrong, or at least, ill-advised; and as the result the strike, being unpopular, failed; and their general contention that they were the employés of the Treasury and not of the Postmaster-General dropped to the ground, after the apology their delegates made to Mr. Raikes. The clerks had mistaken the capacity of the public to enter into technicalities-and they were led into faulty policy in consequence, and I offer no excuse for them, for in their case, at all events, the Treasury control of the Post Office was not a real factor.

Yet the connection between the Treasury and St. Martin's-le-Grand is curiously intimate, and it may have been responsible for many causes of dissatisfaction among the employés in other branches of the service.

The Post Office is a great revenue-producing department, which should be worked upon mercantile lines, coming into competition as it has done, since the Parcel Post and Life Assurance system were established, with private and public enterprise. The gross revenue for 1890 was £12,211,614 and the net revenue £3,346,087. Now the Chancellor of the Exchequer does not allow the department to hand over this profit only. The Treasury requires that all the receipts shall be accounted for to it, and in turn it insists upon its sanction being given to every item of expenditure. When it is borne in mind that the wheels of State grind slowly, one can understand how it is that days, weeks, months, and even years, elapse before the Treasury-in other words a host of junior clerks under one head-see their way clear through the interminable correspondence

which arises, and finally approve the stale requisitions of the postal authorities. In the mean time while valuable time is consumed in the City, and at Whitehall, and expensive clerical staffs are kept for the sole purpose of writing on official paper to each other, the practical men who are doing the work are chafing at delay. In ordinary times the friction is pretty constant, but when men become infected with the strike fever and fall a prey to agitators, the hands of the executive chiefs are tied. A boon given quickly might once and for all dispose of the difficulty, but the will and the power do not go together. Reference must be made to the Treasury, and it is not until the men are on strike, or nearly so, that the Treasury casts aside its routine and acts promptly.

Is not the moral of this to the men in

the public service: If you want anything badly, strike! for nothing else will do?" I am afraid that that contention is only too true. To strike against the State is egregious folly, but to penetrate the dull ears of the Treasury a demonstration of the kind has not been without wholesome effect.

Therefore, summarizing my general argument, I would say, in view of the threatened struggles which may convulse the capital and the country: Let the Government first show the way to make labor conflicts impossible, and next let Parliament, if possible, assist in the laying down of rules, and the imposition of penalties in the settlement of trade disputes by representative Boards of Conciliation; and in the mean time let the Unionists on the one hand, and the employers on the other, abstain from organizing purely aggressive forces, while public opinion should refrain from complicating questions by misplaced sympathy with or ignorant condemnation of an issue suddenly brought forward. Finally, I would contend that in a free country no agitator should be permitted to dispute the right of free labor to exist side by side with labor that is under the dominion of the unionism which is the child of Socialism.-Murray's Magazine.

-New Review.

OWING to the increasing amount of attention now being paid by men, women, and children of all classes of intellect and profession to the interesting amusement of writing novels, it is thought that it may not be out of place to offer to the writing public the following little compendium of the principles adopted by our most successful modern authors. The compiler trusts that it may at least contribute to save the beginner from the necessity of a distressingly lengthened survey of their works, the dislike of which ordeal, it is to be feared, not unfrequently drives him to the desperate measure of observing human nature at first hand.

BEAUTY.-Many prefer to make their heroes and heroines" not exactly handsome according to the severe canons of Art, but yet possessing but yet possessing a charm of expression which instantly fascinated all who beheld it." The advantage of this description is that nine out of ten of your readers will think it fits themselves, and will be pleased accordingly.

an

BISHOP. Worthy;" has been athlete; has “ calves," or sometimes " a pair of calves."

CAPTAIN (ARMY).-A dashing, welldressed man in want either of cash or morals, and generally both.

CAPTAIN (NAVAL), not much used."Jolly."

CASTLE.-Always "feudal."

CHARACTERS.-It is usual to have a bad young man and woman, a good young man and woman, two or three unintelligent old persons neither good nor bad, and a few dummies of either sex, who perhaps ought not to be included under the head of Characters.

CHLORAL.-The poison administered to themselves by women intending to commit suicide. (See also "Arsenic.")

CONFESSION. When you have got the story into such a hopeless mess that your

murder cannot by any other possibility be discovered, then naturally your murderer will confess.

CONFIDENCE.—A secret told to a friend and confided by him to others.

COTTAGES.-Are "nestled," not situated," and be careful not to forget the honeysuckle.

COUNTRY HOUSE.-If large, always Elizabethan."

CRIME. An illegal act committed in order that it may be discovered in three volumes. Crimes are of two sorts: 1. the High Life; 2. the Low Life. There are three in the first class, viz., Forgery, Breach of the Seventh Commandment, and Murder. The two latter also appear in the second class, together with Burglary, Assault, Theft, and kindred

offences.

CRITICS.-You know the celebrated definition invented by Théophile Gautier and copied by Disraeli. By the same token, you may be one yourself some day. Therefore, restrain your abuse of them. We never know what we may come to.

CURATE. Is expected to use bad language once in the book.

DAGGER. Only used in exoteric novels and such as deal with low life. Owing to the recent glut of "butcher" literature they have gone somewhat out of fashion. The Venetian glass dagger, of which the handle is snapped off, is the best, since it leaves no wound apparent. But poison is, after all, the nicest.

DEATH.-Is caused by arsenic, broken heart, chloral, consumption, decline, drowning, duel, fire, hunting, pining away, shooting, suicide, and wounding.

DELIRIUM. (See "Secret.")

DETECTIVE (in English novels) -A professional intended to be outdone in his own line of business by an amateur in the

ELOPEMENT.-Almost obsolete, owing to the telegraphic systein.

FIRE. Only breaks out when girls are desired to appear in deshabille. See therefore that the fire never occurs during the daytime.

FOOT." Dainty " for heroine.

FOREIGNER.--A shady character, of whose antecedents nothing is known, but who nevertheless gains admittance to the most select circles. If wealthy," he wears a fur coat and smokes big cigars and "delicately perfumed cigarettes.

FRENCH. Is the language authors believe themselves to be using when they introduce and italicize words which they know are not English.

GHOSTS. -None except those conforming to the rules, regulations, and by laws of the S.P.R. admitted.

GOVERNESS.-Either spiteful, and mars the heroine; or delightful, and marries the hero.

GUARDS.-Heroes are usually recruited from these, or from some section of the Household Brigade.

HAIR.-May be any color. If false, it denotes bad morals. In the case of a woman, it is either "gathered carelessly into a knot," drawn back from the forehead," or "braided at the back." It is always done "simply," and nothing but a single rose is ever worn in it.

HERO (or HEROINE).--A portrait of yourself as you think you might have been.

HOUSEHOLD BRIGADE. "Guards.")

(See

HUNTING. An opportunity for flirtation and a means of death.

INDIAN NOVEL.-Make your characters decidedly black, and your story rather hot. Learn from troopers, and describe those details of fighting which officers and gentlemen are wont to conceal. Be cynical, be slangy, and the public will swarm to your productions like the flies that July evening in Poonah round the But that is another story.

INGENUE. A useful novelistic fiction. JESUIT. A clever scoundrel who succeeds in the first volume, is baffled in the second, and shown up in the third.

LAW always at fault, and never even moderately equitable unless some wonian can outwit the villain's solicitors.

LOVE.-Four out of the five letters composing "novel" spell "love," and hence

four-fifths is the proportion indicated by the inventors of the English language of love to the whole matter of the book. LOVERS.-The rule is, "Two to each girl, if good; one apiece to the rest; one rejected lover at least to remain single all his life."

MARQUIS.-An old and wicked French gentleman.

MARRIAGE.—In first volume, dismal; in second, doubtful; in third, happy.

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MONTE CARLO.-Describe the scene; introduce the expressions, "Pair," "Impair,' Croupier," "Le jeu est fait, rien ne va plus," and make one person at least break the bank, and have his (or her) winnings stolen the same night.

MORALS. Most modern novels are without morals.

MURDER. A crime committed by an apparently respectable person, the suspicion of which is attached to one who is shown to be innocent only toward the end of the third volume.

NAMES.-Take

a "Peerage," and choose real names from those of wellknown families. It adds piquancy, and if you make anybody wince, why should you care? Your withers are unwrung.

NOSE. Usually described only in the case of women.

NOVELS. If alluded to, speak disparagingly of them. Théophile Gautier says novels have two uses-one, material; and the other, spiritual. The material use is to enrich the author, to adorn the library, increase the profits of paper merchants, provide wages for printers, and so forth. The spiritual use is this-that by inducing sleep, they prevent the reader perusing useful, virtuous, and enlightened journals, and other indigestible literature of the same kind. (See also Indian Novel," "Philosophical," "Railway, "Social," and "Sporting" ditto.)

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"

NURSE.-Avoid young women who nurse male friends with a view to matriinony. This use of illness has been done to death.

OATHS. Many lady novelists still make great use of these.

PHILOSOPHICAL NOVEL.-Describe the mental history of some misty minded individual, who is led by information_derived from a sixpenny Handbook to Philosophy to abandon the faith of his youth in favor of chaotic agnosticism, and then, in later life, is influenced-how and why

you can best explain-to adopt the form of belief professed by yourself.

(N.B. You will not refer specifically to the sixpenny handbook in question, but you must read it. In the actual text it will be sufficient to allude generally to Kant, Hegel, Reid, Berkeley, Hume, Fichte, Hobbes, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Plato, Apollodorus, the Epicurean, Wolff, J. J. Wagner, Spinoza, Zeno the Eleatic, Pherecydes of Syros, and, of course, men like Metrodorus of Lampsacus, R. Lambruschini, François de la Mothe le Vayer, with others of like importance.)

PLAGIARISM. It is generally conceded that this is impossible, therefore copy freely.

Sneerwell. Haven't I heard that line before?

Puff. No, I fancy not. Where,

?

pray Dangle. Yes, I think there is something like it in “ Othello.

Puff. Gad! now you put me in mind on't, I believe there is. But that's of no consequence; all that can be said is, that two people happened to hit upon the same thought, and Shakespeare made use of it first, that's all. The Critic, Act III., Sc. 3.

Formerly plagiarism was considered to be as possible as squaring the circle was impossible. Now the reverse is the case. An author gains admittance to a (not very) particular literary circle, and, by conforming to certain well-understood rules, finds it possible to square it; after which he can cause it to be demonstrated by any member of the circle that plagiarism is a chimera, and originality a necessary virtue.

PLOT. It is still usual to have one; some prefer two. If the latter, then remember Puff's dictum, "The grand point in managing them is only to let your under-plot have as little connection with your main plot as possible." (The Critic, Act II., Sc. 3.)

POISON. (See "Arsenic," "Chlo-
When a

ral.")

PRINCE.-Always Russian. girl is in love with one, she addresses him as Mon Prince.'

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PUBLISHER. A necessary middleman standing between you and the reading public.