invented and adopted by the prisoners. Some scratch what they wish to say on the tin dinner-pans; others talk from cell to cell by means of the water-taps; others again will not only call the attention of a comrade in church to what they wish to say, but will communicate it by a series of varied coughs. There are prisoners who will talk without moving their lips. Where a number are assembled, it is the eye, not the ear, that detects the speaker. Some motion of head, or lips, or limbs, reveals who is talking. But so adroit are some of the convicts at Pentonville that they will look a warder full in the face while conversing with a neighbor, and yet the warder detect no sign of any communication going on.

Under the "separate system," on the contrary, the object of the prisoner is to communicate his ideas by other sounds than those of the human voice. I give the following description precisely as it was communicated by an intelligent "Mobsman" at Pentonville. The cypher is this: the letters of the alphabet correspond to numbers of sounds. A, for example, is designated by one tap on the wall; B, by two taps; C, by three; and so through the alphabet. Thus,, &c., &c. A prisoner, wishing to communicate with his neighbor, would rap with his knuckle on the wall, spelling the word with numbers instead of letters. To propose the question, 'How do you get on?' he would knock

HOW D O Y 0 U GET O

N

thus: 15 25 13 21 757 1314; and between each word give three rapid knocks to imply that the word was complete. This system is less tedious than it would appear. Custom would invent abbreviations; peculiar sounds would stand for words; particles in language would be dropped; signs would answer for sentences; and a sort of freemasonry be shortly established. A prisoner, upon a promise of recommendation for ticket-of-leave, told Mr. Burt, the Superintendent at Pentonville, the name, birth-place, age, crime, and sentence of a prisoner in an adjoining cell, of whom he could possibly have had no previous knowledge. Be

sides, the prisoner communicating back was convicted under a false name, which, until then, no officer in the prison knew.

The names of the four classes of thieves already given are generic. The subdivisions of these classes have also their nomenclature. For example, the rampsman" may be a "cracker," who breaks into houses, or a "bludger," who stops passengers on the highway, or a "stick-slinger," who robs in company with low women. The "drummer” may be a "hoeusser," who drugs liquor, a "bug-hunter," who plunders those whom he finds intoxicated, or a “swelltop," who is supposed to be in genteel society, and commits depredations upon the aristocracy. The "mobsmen" again have their species in the "buzzers," who pick gentlemen's pockets, "wires," who pick ladies' pockets, "prop nailers," who wrench off the guard-chains of watches and steal brooches and breastpins, "thumble-screwers," who aim at watches only, and " shoplifters," who purloin goods from warehouses and stores. The "sneaksman" comprises a still broader field. He has two distinct varieties. The one steals goods, the other animals. To the former belong the "drag-sneaks," who make off with goods from carts, carriages, vans, and cabs; " snoozers," who sleep at hotels and crib clothing, trunks, and umbrellas; "sawney-hunters," who are the terror of the cheesemongers; "noisy-rackets," who china and crockery; "snow-gatherers," who haunt the great laundry enclosures; “area-sneaks,” who pretend to beg at kitchen doors, in order to pilfer culinary articles; "bluey-hunters, who rip the lead from roofs; "toshers," who pry off copper from ships in dock; "mudlarks," who supply the marine-store dealers with bits of iron and rope, scuttles of coal and armfuls of wood; and "skinners," women and boys, who strip children of their clothes. On the other hand, to the latter variety of

filch

sneaksmen," or those who steal animals only, there belong "horse-stealers," "wooley-birds," "poachers," "racket-men," who rob poultry yards, and “body-snatchers,”

who confine their depredations to dogs and cats.

There is still another class of plunderers, which though like that which comprises the followers of a marching army, it has no generic name, is too important to be overlooked. It is made up of the breach-of-trust men, either embezzlers among the laundresses, or pawners, who pledge linen they have taken to make up, or house-servants who plunder plate, or porters who rob warehouses, or dock laborers who convey bonded goods away from the vaults.

The annual Constabulary Reports upon crime in London deal only with what appears before the various courts, and are therefore partial and incomplete. Not one thief in ten is detected during a year, not one theft in twenty disclosed. Of those officially known there were in 1867 in London 214 burglars, 220 house-breakers, 72 highway robbers, 1,329 pickpockets, 5,931 sneaks, or common thieves, 21 horse-stealers, 168 dogstealers, 6 forgers, 28 coiners, 519 utterers of base coin, 289 swindlers, or obtainers of goods under false pretences, 691 receivers of stolen goods, and 18,971 prostitutes.

The total value of property known to have been made away with by these classes, amounted in the same year to £171,968. It was subdivided thus: property to the amount of £10,980 was stolen by burglary; £2,320 by breaking into dwelling-houses; £2,058 by embezzlement; £9,180 by forgery; £2,316 by fraud; £161 by robbery on the highway; £560 by horse-stealing; £490 by dog-stealing; £3,249 by stealing goods exposed for sale; £2,700 by stealing lead from unfurnished houses; £3,481 by stealing from carts and carriages; £590 by stealing linen exposed to dry; £841 by stealing poultry; £3,880 stolen from dwelling houses by means of false keys; £22,930 by lodgers; £28,409 by servants; £22,000 by open doors; £37,410 by pickpockets; £18,270 from the docks; and £11,143 by prostitutes. And all this in those robberies only that became known to the police.

The disposal of this immense amount

of property is a greater marvel than its theft. But London furnishes a market for every article of sale, from the rags gathered by the bone-grubber to the watch filched from the "swell." In Middlesex street, once called Petticoat Lane, all manner of things are purchased, and no questions asked. In the area south of Leadenhall street, where Bevis Marks, Houndsditch, and St. Mary Axe furnish residences for eighteen thousand Jews, is to be found the metropolis of the bas-ton. Through this unfashionable "East End" runs the mart of unlawful commerce. The gutters are gray, slits of blind alleys open on every side, old chairs and tables litter the pavement, Passover biscuits broad as targets hang at the bakery windows, fronts of clothing shops are covered with fustian garments, and fat Hebrew maidens, grubby and tawdry, polish tarnished brass and silvered wares. Jewelry and artificial flowers, old clothes, carpenters' tools, and mariners' instruments, cashmere shawls and plated tea-kettles, oval looking-glasses, Turkey rhubarb, and ormolu table ornaments, are displayed on all sides. Absalom is on the alert behind his counters covered with marine-stores to attend upon his customer, be he buyer or seller, without delay; Moses and Aaron deal exclusively in handkerchiefs, which need their marks extracted before being exposed for sale; Mordecai meets seafaring men burdened with tackle or packages of foreign goods, and conducts them from the open street to his wareroom down the court; and Jacob, whose crucibles are always at melting heat in the little furnace, consigns his rapid purchases of spoons and rings and watches to Ruth and Rachel to be changed at once into bullion. The hurry of the traffic in the long, narrow street bewilders the beholder. Trade goes on in rags, fish, furniture, opium, clothing, utensils, jewelry, spirits, fruits, crockery, and drygoods, with inconceivable rapidity. The people live and trade and grow rich upon the crime of London. And yet, so infrequent are the convictions for stolen goods, that here, in the dismal

courts where no warehouse contains an honestly purchased chattel, there are mercantile firms of more than thirty

years' standing, and men, who will leave to their children no end of money, who have grown old in dealing with thieves.

SOMEHOW or other, whenever one mentions the word conversation, the image of Samuel Taylor Coleridge rises, like a placid ghost before our mind's eye. Coleridge never conversed, it is true; he indulged in a divine monologue, the beautiful words flowing on and on in a stream of such rich and grateful harmony, that the entranced listeners ceased to care whether they understood him or not. His talk became like the serene glide of a train of cars when they are using up the momentum of a departed engine, as Holmes says of the babble of pretty women; the idea has been switched off the track, but the words still flow on. Fancy the consternation of that young gentleman of whom Dr. John Brown tells us, who incautiously asked Coleridge at the tea-table what he thought of Dr. Channing. "Before entering upon that question, sir," said Coleridge, "I must put you in possession of my views, in extenso, on the origin, progress, present condition, future likelihoods, and absolute essence of the Unitarian controversy, and especially the conclusions I have, upon the whole, come to on the great question of what may be termed the philosophy of religious difference!" Lamb says that this divine maunderer was in the habit of catching one by the button, shutting his eyes, and at once sailing off, down the stream of his pellucid eloquence, and that on one occasion Coleridge having grappled him when on his way to an appointment, he dexterously cut off the button and fled. Returning some hours after, he beheld the poet still holding the button in his outstretched fingers, and as far as ever from the termination of his colloquial voyage.

In these reminiscences of Coleridge we see what conversation is not, and proceed after the manner of Hood's Irish footman in describing a glacier. "Whin I tell yees I've seen a glazier," he says, "ye'll be thinkin' I mane a foine boy walking about wid putty and glass on his back. But that's just what a glazier isn't like at all, at all. And so now I've described it to yees." The word literally

means a turning to, or with; a pouring of one mind into another, with a suggestion of a reciprocal action. The first requisite for conversation is the first requisite in drawing, freedom. You must feel absolutely at liberty to say any thing you please, without fear and without reproach, or the flow of the social teapot will be speedily checked. And this freedom implies sympathy of thought and feeling, kindliness and courtesy. One man can no more make a conversation than he can make a quarrel. two poles of the battery if you wish a grand display of electricity; therefore, a congenial difference must stimulate the talk. We knew a gentleman who never went to church because he agreed precisely with the minister, and therefore he gained nothing from the sermons; and a soft mush of concession has often smothered a promising conversation just as it began to kindle. In conversation, as in love,

You must have the

"the dearest bond is this,

Not like to like, but like in difference." We have known friends so similar in temperament and intellect that, after their greetings and the news of the day were exchanged, they had absolutely nothing to say to each other, and were forced to take refuge in brilliant flashes of silence.

But this piquant difference, so essential to the sparkle of conversation, is, after all, not so necessary as the freedom of which we have spoken. Try to talk with people to whom you must not mention religion, or politics, or some other grave interest of life, and see what a dance in fetters it becomes. And if there is a skeleton in the closet, how much worse than all! How every one seems possessed to dawdle round that particular closet door, to try the lock, or peep through the keyhole, and how some unwary innocent will inevitably, sooner or later, drag the ugly thing out in all its hideousness!

The salt that keeps conversation sweet is courtesy, the third requisite. The sugar that delights our pampered palates is flattery, and

we like to have it à discretion. But courtesy we must have. Dr. Samuel Johnson said a great many fine things, but he was a brute in the saloon. To bring him into a drawingroom full of ladies was like turning a rhinoceros into a field of daisies. Some people have a savage delight in trampling upon your pet weakness, or defiling the graves of your ancestors, and actually have been known to boast of the outrageous things they have dared to say. They call it independence, whereas it is simply a brutal indifference to the comfort of their fellow-beings. Others there are with a constitutional mental awkwardness which compels them, by some dreadful and recondite attractions, to tumble over every body's corns, and be sure to hit the raw spot, wherever they may happen to touch. They are like a bull in a china-shop. The poor animal is very sorry he got there, probably, and has the very best intentions about getting out again as soon as possible; but, turn which way he will, he can not help breaking the crockery. Every movement is followed by a smash. These unfortunates are much to be pitied, for they are usually fully aware of their mistakes-after they are committed-and suffer such agonies of confusion as are sure to precipitate them into new difficulties. They are destitute of that fine quality which is the fourth requisite in the art of conversation, and which we call tact.

"These persons have a knack, you know, Of saying things mal à propos, And making all the world reflect On what it hates to recollect : They talk to misers of their heir, To women of the times that were, To poets of the wrong review, And to the French of Waterloo." After all, tact is the great thing in all social intercourse. It is the compass that enables us to steer successfully among the shoals and reefs of society, and escape the constant risk of being wrecked upon the rock of a faux-pas. Discretion is the better part of valor, and there is nothing more necessary in the art of saying things than to know what not to say.

We have said nothing about ideas, they are taken for granted, as the possession of a box of colors would be in a treatise on paint

ing. But don't let us have too many of them. We are speaking of conversation as a social, fine art, not of lecturing or preaching, or any other form of instruction. A ship can not sail if it be too heavily loaded, and we shall find it hard work to glide easily down the stream of talk if we have too many solid chunks of wisdom aboard. Let us adorn a tale, but not insist upon pointing a moral. Taine says that the bane of English poets and novelists is their insatiate desire to teach. Do let us then cease to moralize in our own drawing-rooms, and for once be content to please. Happiness is very provocative of goodness, and a man who has enjoyed an hour of brilliant and interesting talk, who has had his intellect quickened, his sympathies aroused, his own petty grievances laid to sleep, his best side brought out, and his weak points considerately ignored, is ten times more likely to do a kind action, and love his neighbor as himself, than if he had been having heavy doses of morality forced down his throat in what is called "an edifying conversation."

Having considered the underlying structure, we come to the crowning grace, a lively imagination, implying poetic sensibilities, and a keen appreciation of the ridiculous. The Gradgrinds of society, who are always coming down upon us with some horrible and unnecessary piece of fact, take the life out of conversation as surely as an exhausted receiver will put an end to the lightness of a pile of feathers. Such people will take the point off a well-told story, by interrupting you to explain that the incident happened in Canal street, not in Broadway, or insist upon suspending a pun in mid-air, that you may be informed that it was Jones's sister, not his aunt, who made it. Narration to these people is a matter of conscience, and a sober adherence to the dingy fact a necessity of their being. They can not understand the poetic luxuriance of epithet that embroiders a tame narration, the keen delight in a racy adjective that paints the whole thing in a word, the rollicking humor that revels in exaggeration: these are all mysteries to them. Like the toad wedged in a stone, for them existence has final and unchanging boundaries, beyond which they can see nothing.

The sudden demise of so energetic and influential a journalist as the late lamented editor of the N. Y. Times, called forth a remarkable

exhibition of feeling in this community and throughout the country. This has been attributed to the great industry, talents and large

political acquaintance of Mr. Raymond; but it had also a less obvious inspiration. The most appreciative readers of American newspapers are not partisans and politicians, but respectable, busy, honest citizens who turn to the Press to ascertain the facts of the hour and keep themselves au courant with public events and prevalent ideas and phenomena; in other words, their relation to journalism is disin terested; now to this very large class of readers, the personalities and vulgarity which deform and debase our newspaper literature, are simply disgusting; many of them habitually ignore certain journals rather than subject themselves to the annoyance of reading gibes, sneers, and blackguardism; they go to the newspaper first for information, and then for the gratification of their rational instincts and their taste-not to encounter gross, unjust, impudent comments on men and things, such as no decent man would dare to utter in respectable society. Moreover they expect, and justly, to find the well-sustained journal an expositor-not of one man's private grief, personal prejudices, and party disappointments, but of general principles, great interests and ideas of broad and humane significance. Now, we believe that the respect shown to the memory of Mr. Raymond, by the community at large,-a respect acknowledged, on all sides, to be exceptional, -is mainly owing to the fact that he exhibi

ted a rare self-respect and a laudable courtesy in his editorial career. We believe that thousands who care little for politics and rarely read articles on foreign questions, or home economics, chose the Times as their medium for knowledge of what is going on in the world,-because they seldom, if ever, encountered in its columns vulgar abuse of individuals, unjust criticisms or narrow and personal ideas. Mr. Raymond had that degree and kind of intelligence which enabled him to appreciate two grand redeeming principles of modern journalism-the application of social ethics to editorial conduct and the maintenance of a comprehensive spirit; in a word, it was because Mr. Raymond was a courteous publicist, and not a Bohemian blackguard, that so many of the wise and best grieve at his departure and honor his memory. Despite all that is said of the pow er of the Press as an organ of modern civilization, let us not forget that the mere financial ability to establish and circulate a journal is no distinction in itself; neither is mere facility of expression-which in this country, at least, is anything but rare. Editorship is efficient, respectable, useful and honorable, only so far as it is based upon and inspired by extensive knowledge, noble sympathies, probity and that courtesy of heart which distinguishes the Christian gentleman.

OUR daily journals found in this novel celebration of the advent of national peace five years after the close of the Civil War, a welcome source of amusement; and indulged in the wildest satire over what was facetiously deemed a very complacent and somewhat absurd hubbub. Sufficient time has now elapsed to enable us to judge more impartially of the experiment. And, in the first place, we are heartily glad it was tried and that the scene was Boston, where local enthusiasm and civic coöperation are so much more easily secured than in this cosmopolitan city. Musical festivals have long been a delightful popular resource and discipline abroad. Those annually held at Manchester and Birmingham, have elicited the best musical talent and promoted the best musical culture. Those who remember the vivid descriptions thereof in Miss Sheppard's novel of "Charles Auchester," of which Felix Mendelssohn is the ideal hero, and those who have enjoyed like occasions in Ger

many, can readily imagine the vast and benign possibilities of the Musical Festival adequately inaugurated and scientifically arranged. It is a form of popular diversion which we should like to see successfully instituted among us; and the influence and results of the Boston Jubilee should auspiciously tend to this eud. Not that we can award to that experiment, creditable as it was to the enterprise and executive ability of those who originated and accomplished it, the highest musical success; with the exception of Parepa Rosa and Miss Phillips, in their operatic and oratorical solos, little of the music was rendered in a manner to charm those familiar with the best performances; neither were the selections fitted as a whole, to inspire the greatest or most refined pleasure; inevitably the object in view and the methods available, made popular and well-known compositions desirable, and with the little professional aid at hand, it was impossible to achieve memorable tri