ighbours.
All grades came to understand each other better, and with increased
knowledge came better feelings and a more friendly spirit.

But another cause has perhaps had a deeper and more lasting effect.
The abolition of the stamp duty upon newspapers, and the consequent
advent of a cheap press, enabling every working man to see his
daily paper, and to know what is going on, has carried into effect,
silently, a revolution, complete and thorough, in English thought and
manners, in relation to political matters. Every man now sees that,
differing as Englishmen do, and always will, upon some matters, they
all agree as to one object. That object is, "the greatest good to
the greatest number" of their fellow countrymen. The pride of all
Englishmen now, is in the glory that their great country has achieved
in peaceful directions. Their ardent desire and prayer is, that the
benefits they have secured for themselves in the last few and fruitful
years of judicious legislation, may descend with ever-widening
beneficent influences to succeeding generations.

GOSSIP ABOUT ROYALTY.

As I sit down to write, on the stormy evening of this twenty-ninth
day of January, 1877, I bethink me that it is fifty-seven years to-day
since death terminated a life and a reign alike unexampled for their
length in the history of English monarchs. King George the Third died
on the 29th of January, 1820.

I remember the day perfectly. I, a child not quite five years old, was
sitting with my parents in a room, the windows of which looked upon
the street of a pleasant town in Kent. Snow was falling fast, and lay
thick upon the ground outside. The weather was intensely cold, and we
crowded round the fire for warmth and comfort. Suddenly there was a
crash: a snowball fell in our midst, and the fragments of a windowpane
were scattered in the room. My father rose in anger to go to catch the
culprit who had thrown. He was unsuccessful; but in his short visit to
the street he had learned some news, for when he returned he told us
that the King was dead.

The King dead? I had heard of "the King" of course, but what _it_ was
I had never thought of. To me it represented strength and omnipotent
protection, but it was an abstraction only; an undefined something of
awful portent; and that _it_ could die was very mysterious, and set me
wondering what we should do now.

My father explained at once, that the King was only a man; that his
sons and daugh