than ten and less than twenty years; and only 1,254, or 47.3 per
cent., for less than ten years.

It would be instructive to compare this record with the records of the
most important industrial establishments in England and America during
the past thirty years, and I should be glad to see this done by some of
the people who talk so glibly in England and America of the inherent
fickleness and instability of the French character, as offering an
adequate explanation of the political catastrophes which have so often
recurred in France during the past century.

One of the most curious features of the establishment at St.-Gobain is a
subterranean lake. The fine forests around St.-Gobain and La
Fere--forests of oak, beech, elm, ash, birch, maple, yoke-elm, aspen,
wild cherry, linden, elder, and willow--flourish upon a tertiary
formation. The surface of clay keeps the soil marshy and damp, but this
checks the infiltration of the rainwater and therefore favours the
growth of the trees. In the calcareous rock the early inhabitants
hollowed out for themselves caverns, in which they took refuge from
their enemies and from the beasts of the forest; and these caverns,
called by the people _creuttes_--an obvious corruption of the name of
_crypts_, given them by the Roman conquerors of Gaul, just as the early
French trappers gave the name of 'caches' to the Indian hiding-places of
the Far West--are to be found all about Soissons and Laon. The more
modern lords of St.-Gobain, its monks and its barons, dug out of the
calcareous rock the stones which they used to build their chateaux and
their churches, and they created great _creuttes_ beneath St.-Gobain. It
seems to have occurred to M. Deslandes, during his long and skilful
supervision of the works here, that these caverns might be put to the
very practical use of securing an adequate water-supply. The idea has
been thoroughly carried out, and the subterranean reservoir of
St.-Gobain is much more impressive as a spectacle than the crypts of the
Cisterns at Constantinople. It is kept filled to an average depth of one
metre by the infiltration of the surface waters and by the overflow of a
pond, La Marette, on the plateau of St.-Gobain, and it covers an area of
some 1,200 square metres.

After two or three hours spent in visiting the various departments of
the glassworks overhead, M. Henrivaux led me through winding passages,
which reminded me of the dismal vomitories at Baiae, down in