sier, lower-brained, and weaker-jawed than
their elders.

'Why is it, Tregarva?'

'Worse food, worse lodging, worse nursing--and, I'm sore afraid,
worse blood. There was too much filthiness and drunkenness went on
in the old war-times, not to leave a taint behind it, for many a
generation. The prosperity of fools shall destroy them!'

'Oh!' thought Lancelot, 'for some young sturdy Lancashire or Lothian
blood, to put new life into the old frozen South Saxon veins! Even
a drop of the warm enthusiastic Celtic would be better than none.
Perhaps this Irish immigration may do some good, after all.'

Perhaps it may, Lancelot. Let us hope so, since it is pretty nearly
inevitable.

Sadder and sadder, Lancelot tried to listen to the conversation of
the men round him. To his astonishment he hardly understood a word
of it. It was half articulate, nasal, guttural, made up almost
entirely of vowels, like the speech of savages. He had never before
been struck with the significant contrast between the sharp,
clearly-defined articulation, the vivid and varied tones of the
gentleman, or even of the London street-boy when compared with the
coarse, half-formed growls, as of a company of seals, which he heard
round him. That single fact struck him, perhaps, more deeply than
any; it connected itself with many of his physiological fancies; it
was the parent of many thoughts and plans of his after-life. Here
and there he could distinguish a half sentence. An old shrunken man
opposite him was drawing figures in the spilt beer with his pipe-
stem, and discoursing of the glorious times before the great war,
'when there was more food than there were mouths, and more work than
there were hands.' 'Poor human nature!' thought Lancelot, as he
tried to follow one of those unintelligible discussions about the
relative prices of the loaf and the bushel of flour, which ended, as
usual, in more swearing, and more quarrelling, and more beer to make
it up--'Poor human nature! always looking back, as the German sage
says, to some fancied golden age, never looking forward to the real
one which is coming!'

'But I say, vather,' drawled out some one, 'they say there's a sight
more money in England now, than there was afore the war-time.'

'Eees, booy,' said the old man; 'but ITS GOT INTO TOO FEW HANDS.'

'Well,' thought Lancelot, 'there's a glimpse of practical sense, at
least.' And a pedlar who sat next him,