Towards Utopia. By " A Free Lance." (Swan Sonnenschein and
Co.)—This " Free Lance " has no little of the Don Quixote. Doubtless he means well, as indeed did " the friendless people's friend," but he is a little, or even not a little, touched," to judge by some of his speculations. If a gentleman meets his cook, he does not take off his hat to her, he indignantly complains. It is sufficient to reply that it is not part of our manners ; though one might add that a distinguished person, who was wont to do this very thing, Louis XIV., was about as mean and selfish in his relations to women as a man could be. He complains again that there are no less than seventy-three thousand coachmen and grooms in England. In Utopia, "to a very great extent private possession of horses will be superseded by the hiring of horses from a large public establishment." We presume there will be a, country as well as town in Utopia. Who is to take care of the
' hired horse in the country ? " Free Lance " would say, "Let the hirer groom him himself." Very easy for a doctor, say, or an old man, or a woman. Of course, now and then " Free Lance" lights upon a truth ; there are abuses and absurdities in our social system, as there have been ever since a social system existed. But of all squalid and dismal existences, the Utopia to which this writer would bring us would be the worst.
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