factories such great numbers of the rural
population as now yearly throng into these prosperous cities, a prefect
of the department, M. Dieudonne, declared that it was not an unusual
thing to see workmen in Lille who worked only three days in the week and
spent the other four in drinking corn brandy and Hollands gin. At that
time the workpeople of the sister city of Roubaix had a much better
reputation, while of the rural populations of French Flanders Dr.
Villerme then affirmed, after a careful study of their habits, that
nothing was to be seen among them of the 'debauchery and the daily and
disgusting drunkenness prevalent in the large towns.'

Persons familiar with the rural aspects of the Nord assure me that this
can no longer be said with truth of the rural farm-labourers. It is,
probably, more true of the farmers and of their families than it was
fifty years ago, but it is, unfortunately, also less true than it then
was of the rural labourers. The number of small cabarets has quadrupled
during the last quarter of a century in the arrondissement of Douai
alone, which contains 6 cantons, 66 communes, and 131,278 inhabitants,
the majority of them occupied in agriculture; and, taking the whole
department, it appears that the consumption of spirits represents an
increase of 100 per cent. in the average consumption of pure alcohol in
the last forty years. It rose from 2.52 litres, in 1849, for every man,
woman, and child, to 4.65 litres, in 1869, and it is now estimated to
reach 6 litres, which would represent an annual consumption of about 16
bottles of brandy at 42 degrees, for every man, woman, and child in the
department. I did not happen to see any drunken women or children in the
department, but M. Jules Simon, in his work, _L'Ouvriere_, gives an
uncanny account of feminine drunkenness at Lille, where there are
special cabarets, it seems, for women. I believe no special estaminets
have yet been set up there for women addicted to tobacco, and, indeed, I
do not know that the civilisation of French Flanders has yet reached the
point of treating the question 'whether women ought to smoke' as a
practical question, worthy the grave attention of savants and
philosophers. Possibly, if England, like France, had enjoyed the
advantage of sixteen changes in her form of government, and of three
successful foreign invasions, during the past century, questions of this
sort might now subtend no greater an arc in England than they