27 MAY 1876, Page 3

There has arisen close to the St. James's Park Station

of the District Railway within the last year a fantastic building, in it Brobdignagian style of architecture, a dozen storeys high. Here Mr. IL A. Hankey has spent, or is spending, a quarter of a million of money to induce Englishmen to abandon the axiom that each man's house is his castle, by showing how man had better abide in flats than in either houses or castles ; and in educating a select number of our upper classes in the theory and- practice of a refined Socialism. There are, or are to be, 250 seta of apartments, each set distinct, at an average rent of £100 a year; but with a common kitchen, common coffee-room, saloon, and reading-room, servants supplied by the management, and Lite& charges for everything. The experiment is a very interesting one, and ought to succeed, tried on such a scale, amid a population which affords such an area for experiment as that of the wealthier,

unsettled classes of London. The main difficulty will, we imagine, arise in the organisation of service. The Briton may relinquish his regard for his house, but will hold longer to the wish to have his own household about him.