Futility of preaching temperance and

virtue amidst such

circum

stances.

the population so dense that we counted in one square 4,500 people,--on each corner a ginshop doing a thriving trade, which all our schools and entertainments, meetings, Bible classes, and sermons scarcely seemed to diminish.

Of what use is it to preach temperance and morality where the conditions are such as almost to make them not merely self-denials but martyrdoms? Well, into this neighbourhood there walk the engineer and railway contractor, backed by the strong arm of government, and forthwith they shovel out the population, square by square, thousands of them, with their goods and chattels, into the streets, to seek elsewhere something they may call a home! Where are they to go? They must live near their work. They cannot all seek out cottages at Barking, or Putney, or Hackney. They surge out of Somerstown and in upon the already over-crowded alleys and streets of St. Pancras—a mighty wave of hearthless and forlorn humanity. The single ones may get quartered on families and share a corner of one small room and an

eighth or ninth of the family bed-that is to say, the floor. The families get into cellars, or encroach on the narrow space of other families, until, at higher rents, they have, in some mysterious way, found holes, like rabbits, where it would seem that every inch of the warren was already overstocked. Intolerable are the conditions of life, horrible the perils, moral and physical, dismal indeed the experiences of a population packed like that. Health there, is merely a name for modified disease, decency is fastidiousness, ordinary morality is a shining virtue, drunkenness is almost venial. All they care for is a night's lodging! Most of them, men, women, or children, live in the streets all day. think it no wonder, if you have examined their pens, that the bar of the gin-palace is crowded by pallid, dirty-faced wretches gloomily drinking their gin or beer; and you look at some huge animal cruelly striking the thin creature who strives to guide him 'homewards,' or at half-conscious mothers soothing their shrivelled infants with the poison that has dried up both nourishment

You

Is the pic

ture exag

and heart within their own breasts--or at boys of nine and ten with old, hard, fixed features and cunning eyes, taking their brandy and cigar. And, while you look and curse the agent of such degradation, you who have seen where these people herd and pen will say, 'If drink brings men to this, that also must bring them to drink.' God save us! If that be all their wages can procure them of joy or comfort, what is left to them but to seek respite and nepenthe' in suicide or intoxication?

gerated? to

But some one may say-as men have said. me before, who lived within a stone's throw of these scenes This picture which you give us is the painting of an excited, hysterical philanthropist. It may be correct of one or two places, but in the main it is exaggerated.' I reply, It is true of almost every district in London where the poor congregate. It is equally true of Manchester, of Liverpool, of Glasgow, of other great towns; it is true, not merely of thousands, but of hundreds of thousands. Dr. French, the medical officer of Liverpool, reported that

26,000 houses in Liverpool were occupied by families in single rooms. Lord Derby's calculation from this statement, that at least onethird of the population of Liverpool, 150,000 persons, were living in these conditions, cannot be exaggerated. In St. George's, Hanover Square, the richest and most aristocratic district in the world, 450 persons were found, a short time ago, living in 12 houses. In St. Giles and Holborn 11,000 families live in single rooms. And what are these rooms like? In one room visited, which was 12ft. by 13 and 7ft. 6in. high, lived 8 persons, paying a rent of four shillings a week. Is it possible to intensify the interest of these facts? Yes! you may even find some rooms occupied by relays of human animals. Persons engaged at or attending theatres at night, sublet their beds to market people, and when the market people turn out, the theatre people turn into the same beds. Here, in these awful depths, humanity asserts its brotherhood in misery, and the sacred community of beasts is proved by their being tied up together in one sheet.

The agricultural labourers.

XXIX.

THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS.

Let us turn our back on towns and manufactures, and, sick at heart with the awful problems these sights suggest, hasten to breathe the pure air of the country. There, amid clipped hedges and shady lanes, by the gloriously green meads and mantling fields of wheat, by grove-crowned hills stretching their velvet-slippered feet down to the tiny rivers that purl and curl along the vales below, where all seems like Eden, and the meanest dwellings are picturesque with thatch and creeping rose or running vine, there at all events, say you, shall we find healthy and happy homes! You reach village after village, and farm after farm, in some of the most populous southern counties, and converse with the old bent men who still ply the spade, or with the women who are toiling in the fields.

They will take you to the cottage, with its