card-sharper in England, and Churcher is the
tip-top of skittle sharps ; but that's not their
only trade."

I told him of my adventure, and how I had
tried to arrest his attention as I passed.

"Look you here, sir," he said, " as you've got
away alive, and with your clothes on, from those
two, just you be very thankful for having done
well, and don't ask for anything more. If you
had caught my eye as you passed, I wouldn't
have gone into that crib after you—no, nor
yet if there had been two more along with me.
If we want a man out of that place we go ten
and a dozen strong, and even then it's a risk."

"But, supposing I had really been a simple
countryman, and passed that half door and
gone into the trap?" I asked.

"If you had come out any more, it would
have been in your shirt," replied the policeman.

THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES.

I.

HAST thou not heard it, the universal music?
The throbbing harmony, the old eternal rhyme?
In the wild billows roaring,
In the mad torrent pouring,
And keeping with the stars its beat and march
sublime ?
Hast thou not heard it when the night was silent,
And nothing stirred but winds amid the trees,
And the star-orbits, strings of harps celestial,
Seemed quivering to the rush of melodies ?

II.

If in thy soul there pulse not some faint responsive
echo
Of that  supernal everlasting hymn,
Thou'rt of the low earth, lowly,
Or livest life unholy,
Or dullest spiritual sense by carnal grossness dim.
Hear it. oh Poet, hear it ! Oh, Preacher, give it
welcome !
Oh Loving Heart, receive it, deep in thine inmost
core,
The harmony of Angels, Glory, for ever Glory,
Glory and Peace and Joy, and Love for evermore !

THE HIGHWAY TO THE HOSPITAL.

How many years, and in how many ways,
has prudence been preached to man?
Prudence, that gathers gold by grains out of the
hardest life-rock! In a thousand forms, now
homely as buttermilk, and now arrayed in
Oriental colours, the moralist has presented
patient, even-tempered Prudence — the truest
friend a man can invite to be seated within his
gates. And how stands the work even now?
Centuries of warning, ages of woe; broad
shores strewed with the wrecks of countless
lives—illustrate the moralist's noble truth;
and yet the highway to ruin is as a Derby-day
road, compared with the country lane in which
Dame Prudence of the sober skirt and
homespun hose is leading the way.

In an old quarto, Gothic edition, the NEF DES
TURNES, by SYMPHORIEN CHAMPIER, published
in the year 1502, we find the moralist preaching
in a form that was very old even then. The
Highway to the Hospital is older than the
drunken community of the Children without
Care, and the rest of the representative
gentry " who knew Hebrew," and were borne
about among the vineyards and orchards
of France, in the company of representative
figures of wantonness and dishonesty. Amid
the orgies of Briquerasade and the rascalities of
Cartouche, and the degrading superstitions of
the Grand Grimoire, which pandered to the
passions and vices of the ignorant multitude
through many generations, we find the moralist
at his patient work. The Highway to the
Hospital is set forth in a series of warnings
that, albeit they were being murmured in men's
ears some four centuries ago, sound like the
preaching of yesterday, and wholly and strongly
apply to to-day.

The ways to ruin—to the hospital—the
asylum — the workhouse — are indeed many—
the ancient moralist taught the country bumpkins
of France, in short sharp sentences.
People who have little money and wear silks
and costly clothes go to the hospital. Old
soldiers who have been spendthrifts through
their youth, go to the hospital. People who put
no order whatever in their expenditure, go to the
hospital. Idle and neglectful folk who fear
labour in the days of their youth, go emphatically
to the hospital. Hand-to-mouth livers—to the
hospital.

The moralist of the sixteenth century, it will
be seen suffices for the nineteenth. Those who
fear labour in the days of their youth and take
their way to the hospital or workhouse in their
age, are a host among us—nay, there are those,
and by the thousand, who toil with a will, and
yet reach the hospital at last, and these are
witnesses who tend to the confusion of the
moralist. Hand-to-mouth livers are modern
presences who need rebuking as sternly as the
ne'er-do-wells of 1502. Science has smoothed
the path of the thrifty in these latter days, so
that the hand-to-mouth liver has not the
excuses of his far-off predecessors. But we must
leave the old moralist's line untouched. Thrift
needs a rampart of maxims to prevent its
Quaker look from being blotted out by show
and extravagance, and the silk wearer who
should sport worsted. The disorderly distributor
of his resources is of our time, as the
official gentlemen of Basinghall-street are here
to testify. The moralist proceeds. Lovers of
litigation — to the hospital. Whither are these
tending even now, with all our law reforms?
People who engage in a business which they
don't understand—to the hospital. Jacks of all
trades and masters of none are of an ancient
race, and the blood has not died out yet. They
are shabby citizens who never thrive apace, or
make an inch of progress in art, letters, or
industry. Families wherein there is much
dancing, and in whose home many banquets
are spread—to the hospital. Who eat their
corn in the green ear — to the hospital. Who