. The
gymnastic hall and the grounds were in apple-pie order, and as the lower
part of the large and airy building erected by the firm for this
domicile is used during the day as a kind of creche by the married women
who leave their young children here while they are busy in the factory,
the whole place was alive with merry and laughing little imps. I heard
of other establishments of the same kind at and near Roubaix on a still
larger scale. These I unfortunately had not time to visit. Under the
Empire in 1865 a few energetic citizens of Lille induced the
municipality to guarantee five per cent, interest on a capital of
2,000,000 francs for the establishment of a company to construct, let
and sell houses for working-men under certain conditions as to the
isolation of each house and as to its proper ventilation and drainage.
The rental of these houses can never exceed eight per cent, on the cost
of erection, those of one story never to cost more than 2,400 francs,
and those of two stories more than 3,000 francs, including the cost of
the land. The houses are built of brick with foundations and sills of
Soignies stone. These were the original statutes, but the company is now
allowed to build single-story houses on a larger scale with cellars,
which may be rented for 400 francs a year or bought for 5,000 francs--a
first payment in the case of purchase to be made of 500 francs, and
after that the money to be paid in instalments of 40 francs a month over
thirteen years. All the wells and pumps are supplied by the
municipality.

The municipality also makes an annual grant in aid of a very useful
charity, founded under the Empire, and largely developed by private
gifts and legacies, called the 'Invalids of Labour.' This now secures
pensions to nearly a hundred workmen, disabled by serious accidents
incurred in their labour or through some effort to help others in peril.
It also gives temporary assistance in less severe cases. But the most
characteristic institution which I found flourishing at Lille has a
history worth telling. It strikingly illustrates the development under
the old _regime_ in France and Flanders of those public works of
benevolence of which we are so often and so audaciously asked to believe
that they had no existence before the benign 'principles of 1789'
bedewed the hearts of men, and it not less strikingly illustrates the
demoralising and destructive influence upon all manner of sound and
useful establis