bstractions; and I differ most of all from the
feather-brained persons who set up as authorities after they have paid
flying visits in cabs to ugly neighbourhoods. When a specialist like
Miss Octavia Hill speaks, we hear her with respect; but Miss Hill is
not a sentimentalist; she is a keen, cool woman who has put her
emotions aside, and who has gone to work in the dark regions in a kind
of Napoleonic fashion. No fine phrases for her--nothing but fact,
fact, fact. Miss Hill feels quite as keenly as the gushing persons;
but she has regulated her feelings according to the environment in
which her energies had to be exercised, and she has done more good
than all the poetic creatures that ever raked up "cases" or made
pretty phrases. I leave Miss Hill out of my reckoning, and I deal with
the others. My conclusions may seem hard, and even cruel, but they are
based on what I believe to be the best kindness, and they are
supported by a somewhat varied experience. I shall waive the charge of
cruelty in advance, and proceed to plain downright business.

You want to clear away rookeries and erect decent dwellings in their
place? Good and beautiful! I sympathise with the intention, and I wish
that it could be carried into effect instantly. Unhappily reforms of
that sort cannot by any means be arranged on the instant, and
certainly they cannot be arranged so as to suit the case of the
Hopeless Poor. Shall I tell you, dear sentimentalist, that the
Hopeless brigade would not accept your kindness if they could? I shall
stagger many people when I say that the Hopeless division like the
free abominable life of the rookery, and that any kind of restraint
would only send them swarming off to some other centre from which they
would have to be dislodged by degrees according to the means and the
time of the authorities. Hard, is it not? But it is true. Certain
kinds of cultured men like the life which they call "Bohemian." The
Hopeless class like their peculiar Bohemianism, and they like it with
all the gusto and content of their cultured brethren. Suppose you
uproot a circle of rookeries. The inhabitants are scattered here and
there, and they proceed to gain their living by means which may or may
not be lawful. The decent law-abiding citizens who are turned out of
house and home during the progress of reform suffer most. They are not
inclined to become predatory animals; and, although they may have been
used to live according to a very low