praying places being common enough in these regions.

On the opposite or north side of the valley, the mountains, which are mostly gneiss and dark purple granite, recede somewhat from the river, and send down long spurs which, projecting laterally into the valley, sink into broad sloping beds of gravel and shingle, and end in bluff cliffs overhanging the channel of the river.

About a mile from Gulbásha we found numerous remains of the old Jade works, such as marks of encampments, piles of rough broken lumps of Jade which had been thrown aside; also small caves and borings in the alluvial bank, where they had dug out the water-deposited pebbles of Jade, the "Yesham-i-ab," which, from its purity and compactness, is considered the most valuable. On the north side of the valley about this point, the spurs and slopes of the mountain are generally covered with fine sand and clay, often yellow, pink, and greenish in colour; and at one part our attention was attracted by the very peculiar appearance they presented, the whole surface for a considerable distance being riddled with black-looking holes, from which long shoots of broken débris channelled the mountain side into the ravines below, and among these holes or cave-mouths stood rough piles and pyramids of stone, of the most variegated colours. From the bank of the river we followed a rough path, marked at intervals by tall narrow stones set upright, and after about two miles' walk up some 500 or 600 feet we reached the spot, and found ourselves in the middle of the old Jade mines of the Chinese. Some of the mouths or holes which we had seen from a distance were high enough to admit a man upright, but most of them could only be entered stooping. From these entrances, passages and galleries pierced the mountain in various directions some of them followed a winding course for a considerable distance, and were often carried upwards or downwards to avoid some obstacle, so that it was no easy matter to follow them; others branched and divided, while others

again pierced through the thickness of the spur and emerged on the opposite side. In many places the passages were enlarged into chambers which had been used as dwellings by the miners, and places of shelter for their animals. In some of these we found remains of food, rough fire-places, bundles of fuel, and in one was a large stone, hollowed out as a cistern or water vessel. There were also lying about on the ledges of the rock, in places where the most recent works had been carried on, numbers of little wooden wedges, some new, others blunted by wear, which had been used to drive in between the fissures of the Jade. We found also horns of cattle and goats, apparently for holding and pouring water, and in one place a stone with a round cup hollowed in its surface, and looking like a mortar; it may possibly have been used for grinding some kind of stone for the purpose of polishing or testing.

The Jade stone itself, a silicate of magnesia, occurs in large, broken, irregular lumps, and is associated with steatite and serpentine, with which it often seems to blend. The fissures between the masses were often filled up by a white powdery clay. These layers and blocks of Jade did not form distinct strata, but with a general look of stratification they seemed to be broken up, as it were, between the more defined strata of mica and clay slates, which, with gneiss, here formed the bulk of the rocks. The Jade rocks were often many feet in thickness, but were so seamed by cracks and fissures, or at least marks of cleavage, that it was not easy to find a piece of even a few inches thick that did not show lines or flaws. The colour of the cut surface varies from a light straw-green through different shades of green up to nearly black, the latter resembling the Nephrite of Siberia. The pale transparent Jade is the most valued, and is what the Chinese generally use for carving into elaborate vases and other ornaments. Some of the Jade ornaments seen in China are of the most intricate and exquisite beauty of workmanship. There were vases looted

from the Summer Palace of Pekin which are said to have taken a man a lifetime to carve. The polished surface of the stone is intensely hard, and cannot be scratched by hard steel. It is chiefly in China and among the Tibetans that Jade ornaments and charms are much valued, and they are but little regarded by the Mahomedans of Turkestan. The quarries, as now seen, extend over an irregular belt of a mile or so in length, and 200 or 300 feet in breadth along the mountain side, and in this space there are the entrances of at least a hundred mines. Besides these there are several smaller and less ancient diggings at greater distances up the mountain side. Some of the quarries had evidently been abandoned for a long period.

piles and heaps of fragments of Jade at the entrances of the mines were probably of an inferior quality, and not worth cutting and carrying away.

The region where these Jade quarries are situated is now within the territories of the ruler of Yarkand, but up to the years 1852 or 1853 the whole of Eastern Turkestan, including Yarkand and Khotan, was under the rule of the Chinese, and had been so for more than a century, and it was then that these quarries were worked. The population of Turkestan had all along been Ma

homedan, and about the year 1852 the people finally rose against their masters, and the whole of the Chinese, civil and military, were massacred. At this time the Jade workers must have fled from the diggings, and probably shared the fate of their fellow-countrymen since then the mines have been entirely deserted, and probably, until our visit, were untrodden by human foot. The Kirghiz, who in summer pasture their herds in the valley, know of the mines, but never visit them; and none of the Mahomedans of Turkestan attempt the art of Jade cutting, or indeed value stone ornaments.

Whether the Chinese will ever regain their power in Turkestan is very doubtful, certainly at present they are making no advance, and all communication with China, the land of "Khatai," or Cathay, as it is called, is entirely cut off. The Atálik Gházi, the ruler of Yarkand, is at present supreme lord of all these countries, but he lately has had his hands full in putting down his enemies. It is not unlikely that the Russians may soon step in; but whoever may ultimately be in power, the old Chinese Jade quarries will probably, for many years to come, remain in their present deserted state, serving only for shelter and retreat to the wolf and fox.

456

THREE ladies were standing, not long ago, in a poor and dingy court in London, when a group of dirty-faced urchins exclaimed in a tone, partly of impudence and partly of fun: "What a lot o' landladies, this morning!"

saw.

The words set me thinking, for I felt that the boys' mirth was excited, not only by the number of landladies (or of ladies acting as such), but also, probably, by the contrast between these ladies and the landladies they usually For the landlady to the London poor is too often a struggling, cheated, much-worried, long-suffering woman; soured by constant dealing with untrustworthy people; embittered by loss; a prey to the worst lodgers, whom she allows to fall into debt, and is afraid to turn out, lest she should lose the amount they owe her; without spirit or education to enable her to devise improvements, or capital to execute them— never able, in short, to use the power given her by her position to bring order into the lives of her tenants: being, indeed, too frequently entirely under their control. There is a numerous class of landladies worse even than this-bullying, violent, passionate, revengeful, and cowardly. They alter, nately cajole and threaten, but rarely intend to carry out either their promises or their threats. Severe without principle, weakly indulgent towards evil, given to lying and swearing,

too

covetous to be drunken, yet indulgent to any lodger who will "treat" them; their influence is incalculably mischievous.

Ought this to be the idea suggested by the word "landlady" to the poor of our cities? The old word "landlord" is a proud one to many an English

gentleman, who holds dominion over the neat cottage, with its well-stocked garden; over the comfortable farmhouse; over broad, sloping parks, and rich farm-lands. It is a delight to

him to keep thus fair the part of the earth over which it has been given him to rule. And, as to his people, he I would think it shameful to receive the rents from his well-managed estates in the country, year by year, without some slight recognition of his tenantry-at least on birthdays or at Christmas.

But where are the owners, or lords, or ladies, of most courts like that in which I stood with my two fellowworkers? Who holds dominion there? Who heads the tenants there? If any among the nobly born, or better educated, own them, do they bear the mark of their hands? And if they do not own them, might they not do so? There are in those courts as loyal English hearts as ever loved or reverenced the squire in the village, only they have been so forgotten. Dark under the level ground, in kitchens damp with foulest moisture, there they huddle in multitudes, and no one loves or raises them. It must not be thought that the over-worked clergymen and missionaries, heroic as they often are, can do all that might be done for them. They count their flock by thousands, and these people want watching one by one. The clergy have no control over these places, nor have they half the power of directing labour to useful ends, which those might have who owned the houses, and were constantly brought into direct contact with the people.

How this relation of landlord and tenant might be established in some of the lowest districts of London, and with

1

what results, I am about to describe by relating what has been done in the last two years in Blank Court. I have already, in these pages, given an account of my former efforts to establish this relation on a healthy footing in another London court; of the details of my plan of action; and of its success. I am not, therefore, in what follows, putting forth anything new in its main idea, but am simply insisting on, principles of the truth of which every day's experience only makes me the more deeply assured, and recounting the history of an attempt to spread those principles to a class still lower than that alluded to in my former paper.

It was near the end of 1869 that I first heard that a good many houses in Blank Court were to be disposed of. Eventually, in the course of that year, six tenroomed houses were bought by the Countess of Ducie, and five more by another lady, and placed partially under my care. I was especially glad to obtain some influence here, as I knew this place to be one of the worst in Marylebone; its inhabitants were mainly costermongers and small hawkers, and were almost the poorest class of those amongst our population who have any settled home, the next grade below them being vagrants who sleep in common lodginghouses; and I knew that its moral standing was equally low. Its reputation had long been familiar to me; for when unruly and hopeless tenants were sent away from other houses in the district, I had often heard that they had gone to Blank Court, the tone in which it was said implying that they had now sunk to the lowest depths of degradation. A lawyer friend had also said to me, on hearing that it was proposed to buy houses there, "Blank Court! why, that is the place one is always noticing in the police reports for its rows."

Yet its outward appearance would not have led a casual observer to guess its real character. Blank Court is not far from Cavendish Square, and daily,

1 Macmillan's Magazine for July 1869. No. 144.-VOL. XXIV.

in the season, scores of carriages, with their gaily dressed occupants, pass the end of it. Should such look down it, they would little divine its inner life. Seen from the outside, and in the daytime, it is a quiet-looking place, the houses a moderate size, and the space between them tolerably wide. It has no roadway, but is nicely enough paved, and old furniture stands out for sale on the pavement, in front of the few shops.

But if any one had entered those houses with me two years ago, he would have seen enough to surprise and horrify him. In many of the houses the dustbins were utterly unapproachable, and cabbage leaves, stale fish, and every sort of dirt were lying in the passages and on the stairs; in some the back kitchen had been used as a dustbin, but had not been emptied for years, and the dust filtered through into the front kitchens, which were the sole living and sleeping rooms of some families; in some, the kitchen stairs were many inches thick with dirt, which was so hardened that a shovel had to be used to get it off; in some there was hardly any water to be had; the wood was eaten away, and broken away; windows were smashed; and the rain was coming through the roofs. At night it was still worse; and during the first winter I had to collect the rents chiefly then, as the inhabitants, being principally costermongers, were out nearly all day, and they were afraid to entrust their rent to their neighbours. It was then that I saw the houses in their most dreadful aspect. I well remember wet, foggy, Monday nights, when I turned down the dingy court, past the brilliantly lighted public-house at the corner, past the old furniture outside the shops, and dived into the dark, yawning, passage ways. The front doors stood open day and night, and as I felt my way down the kitchen stairs, broken, and rounded by the hardened mud upon them, the foul smells which the heavy, foggy air would not allow to rise, met me as I descended, and the plaster rattled down

H H

with a hollow sound as I groped along. It was truly appalling to think that there were human beings who lived habitually in such an atmosphere, with such surroundings. Sometimes I had to open the kitchen door myself, after knocking several times in vain, when a woman, quite drunk, would be lying on the floor on some black mass which served as a bed; sometimes, in answer to my knocks, a half-drunken man would swear, and thrust the rentmoney out to me through a chink of the door, placing his foot against it, so as to prevent it from opening wide enough to admit me. Always it would be shut again without a light being offered to guide me up the pitch-dark stairs. Such was Blank Court in the winter of 1869. Truly, a wild, lawless, desolate little kingdom to come to rule over.

On what principles was I to rule these people? On the same that I had already tried, and tried with success, in other places, and which I may sum

up as the two following: firstly, to demand a strict fulfilment of their duties to me,-one of the chief of which would be the punctual payment of rent; and secondly, to endeavour to be so unfailingly just and patient, that they should learn to trust the rule that was over them.

With regard to details, I would make a few improvements at once-such, for example, as the laying on of water and repairing of dustbins, but, for the most. part, improvements should be made only by degrees, as the people became more capable of valuing and not abusing them. I would have the rooms distempered, and thoroughly cleansed, as they became vacant, and then they should be offered to the more cleanly of the tenants. I would have such repairs. as were not immediately needed, used as a means of giving work to the men in times of distress. I would draught the occupants of the underground kitchens into the upstair rooms, and would ultimately convert the kitchens into bath-rooms and wash houses. I would have the landlady's portion of the house-i.e. the stairs and passages-at

But

once repaired and distempered, and they should be regularly scrubbed, and, as far as possible, made models of cleanliness, for I knew, from former experience, that the example of this would, in time, silently spread itself to the rooms themselves, and that payment for this work would give me some hold over the elder girls. I would collect savings personally, not trust to their being taken to distant banks or saving clubs. And finally, I knew that I should learn to feel these people as my friends, and so should instinctively feel the same respect for their privacy and their independence, and should treat them with the same courtesy that I should show towards any other personal friends. There would be no interference, no entering their rooms uninvited, no offer of money or the necessaries of life. when occasion presented itself, I should give them any help I could, such as I might offer without insult to other friends -sympathy in their distresses; advice, help, and counsel in their difficulties; introductions that might be of use to them; means of education; visits to the country; a lent book when not able to work; a bunch of flowers brought on purpose; an invitation to any entertainment, in a room built at the back of my own house, which would be likely to give them pleasure. convinced that one of the evils of much that is done for the poor, springs from the want of delicacy felt, and courtesy shown, towards them, and that we cannot beneficially help them in any spirit different to that in which we help those who are better off. help may differ in amount, because their needs are greater. It should not differ in kind.

I am

The

To sum up my endeavours in ruling these people should be to maintain perfect strictness in our business relations, perfect respectfulness in our personal relations.

These principles of government and plans of action were not theoretical: they had not been thought out in the. study, but had been worked out in the course of practical dealings with indi