neck, and tied my pocket-book to the D's of
the saddle. I pulled my rings off my fingers,
and put them in my pocket—had heard of
wreckers cutting off the fingers of drowned
men—and then was on the point of dashing
forward at random, when some inner feeling
made me cast another steady glance all round.
At that moment, just behind me, something
sparkled twice, and disappeared, and then
reappearing, shone faintly, but so steadily, that
there could be no doubt it was a light on the
Cheshire shore. In an instant, my horse's
head was turned round. I had gathered him
together, dug in the spurs, and crying from
the bottom of my heart, "Thank God!" in the
same moment, not profanely, but with a horseman's
instinct, shouting encouragingly, and
dashed away toward the light. It was a hard
fight; the ground seemed melting from under
us—now struggling through soft sand, now
splashing over hard, now swimming (that was
easy), and now and again leaping and half
falling, but never losing hold of my horse or
sight of the beacon; we forced through every
obstacle, until at length the water grew
shallower and shallower; we reached the
sand, and, passing the sand, rattled over the
shingle of high-water mark—and I was saved!
But I did not, could not stop; up the loose
shingles I pressed on to the light that had
saved me. I could not rest one instant, even
for thanksgiving, until I knew to what
providential circumstance I owed my safety.
I drew up at a fisherman's hut of the humblest
kind, built on the highest part of the shore,
full two miles from Parkgate; a light, which
seemed faint when close to it, twinkled from a
small latticed window. I threw myself from
my horse, and knocked loudly at the door,
and as I knocked, fumbled with one hand in
my soaked pocket for my purse. Twice I
knocked again, and the door, which was
unhasped, flew open. A woman, weeping
bitterly, rose at this rude summons; and at
the same moment I saw on the table the small
coffin of a young child, with a rushlight
burning at either end. I owed my life to
death!

THE LABOURER'S READING-ROOM.

THE other day we talked about "Whole
Hogs," or sound ideas which tend to become
rotten, since they have been detached from
their true place in the body politic. What
we then said of social panaceas, may be said
of every word, deed, or thought, of which a
man is capable. Man, in himself, no less than
in society, is altogether complex; and an
isolated fragment of him, taken from within
or from without, conveys no truth with any
certainty; it is little better than a syllable or
word extracted from a sentence, with the
context left behind. We are about to show
what has been done by a few working men
who act upon the principle of self-reliance;
but, at the outset, we must guard ourselves
and them against a common source of
misconception. Self-reliance is not self-sufficiency.
Self-sufficiency is the "Whole Hog" of self-
reliance, and is a state of mind thoroughly
swinish.

In the last number of the " Law Review,"
at the close of a letter from Lord Brougham
to Lord Denman upon the subject of Law
Reform, there occurs the following passage:—

"You may remember that nearly a quarter
of a century ago, with our lamented friend
Dr. Birkbeck, we experienced the difficulty of
making the Mechanics' Institutes, which he
had founded, available to the class of ordinary
workmen and their families. Under the
advice and with the aid of his worthy
successor in these good works, Dr. Elliott, of
Carlisle, this most important step has been
taken, and I feel assured with success. The
men who live by weekly wages have
established Reading-rooms, under their own
exclusive management. That this plan afforded the
only means of keeping such institutions to
their true object—the improvement of the
humbler classes, we never doubted; indeed,
we declared it, once and again, both at
meetings and in publications. But at length
the work is actually done, and it is delightful
to see it flourish; for it must of necessity
spread far and wide through the country,
and produce the most blessed fruits."

The good work is indeed begun; moat
happily begun, in the right spirit. Hitherto,
however, it had been an experiment made in
a corner, and known only to a few. If it,
really, soon spread its example far and wide
through the country, it will be again Lord
Brougham whom the public has to thank for
one—we trust far from the last—of a long
series of aids to the substantial well-being of
society.

The Reading-room to which Lord Brougham
alludes, and of which we intend presently to
give the history, was founded on the humblest
scale by a few members of the poorest class of
operatives, handloom-weavers. It has been
managed exclusively by workmen for themselves;
every member of its governing body
being, by its laws, a man receiving weekly
wages for his labour. In its origin and
progress, there is nothing which cannot be
imitated by the working men of every town
in the United Kingdom. But before we give
the details of its origin and progress, let us
note how requisite it is that if the working
men are to have reading associations, they
should be associations managed by themselves.

In 1824, Mechanics' Institutions and
Apprentice Reading-rooms were begun in
England, chiefly by the exertions of Dr.
Birkbeck, who had, twenty-three years before,
first given lectures to the artisans at Glasgow.
Dr. Birkbeck may be fairly called the founder
of Mechanics' Institutions; he gave also
munificent assistance in money, advanced by
him for the erection of an institute, and never
wholly repaid. In a tract on Popular Education,