who was in pressing peril of death too, and
who had no possession under the broad sky
but a bottle of physic and a scrap of writing.
He brought both from the house-surgeon of a
Hospital that was too full to admit him, and
stood, giddily staggering in one of the little
pathways, while the Chief Samaritan read,
in hasty characters underlined, how momentous
his necessities were. He held the bottle
of physic in his claw of a hand, and stood,
apparently unconscious of it, staggering, and
staring with his bright glazed eyes; a creature,
surely, as forlorn and desolate as Mother
Earth can have supported on her breast that
night. He was gently taken away, along
with the dying man, to the workhouse; and
he passed into the darkness with his physic-bottle
as if he were going into his grave.

The bread eaten to the last crumb; and
some drinking of water and washing in water
having taken place, with very little stir or
noise indeed; preparations were made for
passing the night. Some, took off their rags
of smock frocks; some, their rags of coats or
jackets, and spread them out within their
narrow bounds for beds: designing to lie upon
them, and use their rugs as a covering. Some,
sat up, pondering, on the edges of their
troughs; others, who were very tired, rested
their unkempt heads upon their hands and
their elbows on their knees, and dozed. When
there were no more who desired to drink or
wash, and all were in their places, the night
officer, standing below the meat-safe, read a
short evening service, including perhaps as
inappropriate a prayer as could possibly be
read (as though the Lord's Prayer stood in
need of it by way of Rider), and a portion of
a chapter from the New Testament. Then,
they all sang the Evening Hymn, and then
they all lay down to sleep.

It was an awful thing, looking round upon
those one hundred and sixty-seven
representatives of many thousands, to reflect that
a Government, unable, with the least regard
to truth, to plead ignorance of the existence
of such a place, should proceed as if the
sleepers never were to wake again. I do
not hesitate to say—why should I, for I know
it to be true!—that an annual sum of money,
contemptible in amount as compared with any
charges upon any list, freely granted in
behalf of these Schools, and shackled with no
preposterous Red Tape conditions, would
relieve the prisons, diminish county rates,
clear loads of shame and guilt out of the
streets, recruit the army and navy, waft to
new countries, Fleets full of useful labor, for
which their inhabitants would be thankful
and beholden to us. It is no depreciation
of the devoted people whom I found
presiding here, to add, that with such assistance
as a trained knowledge of the business
of instruction, and a sound system adjusted to
the peculiar difficulties and conditions of this
sphere of action, their usefulness could be
increased fifty-fold in a few months.

My Lords and Gentlemen, can you, at the
present time, consider this at last, and agree
to do some little easy thing! Dearly beloved
brethren elsewhere, do you know that
between Gorharn controversies, and Pusey
controversies, and Newman controversies, and
twenty other edifying controversies, a certain
large class of minds in the community is
gradually being driven out of all religion?
Would it be well, do you think, to come out
of the controversies for a little while, and be
simply Apostolic thus low down!

GUNS AND PISTOLS.

WOULD it not be a strange thing if—old as
the world is, and countless as are the
generations of men who have quarrelled and
fought—we should now find ourselves coming
round to the use of the same sort of weapons
—the same in principle—as were used in the
earliest warfare!

We do not mean that we are coming to
fisticuffs with our enemies. It may be said,
that the first arms used by fighters were the
arms that grew from their own shoulders.
No doubt, the first men who quarrelled about
wells, or camels, or anything else, on the
plains of the East, might, and probably did,
knock one another down; though the people
who live in those places now are more fond
of making a show of such a thing than of
doing it in reality—throwing themselves
about in a desperate way, and seeming dreadfully
angry, but somehow producing no
terrible results. Such boxing might be the first
fighting; but we are speaking now of weapons
which are not bone of our bone, and flesh of
our flesh. It is commonly agreed that the
first weapons we know of were bows and
arrows; and the next, the sling and stone.
The bow was probably used first against
beasts, and turned to homicidal uses on occasion
of some human quarrel. Its use in
warfare, conducted in deserts or on plains, where
there was room for escape, or among mountains,
where archers could defend a pass below
them, and where cavalry were concerned, is.
obvious enough; it therefore remained in use
and in favour, not only until the invention of
gunpowder, but for two centuries or more
after gunpowder became one of the main
resources of war, even till the lighter sorts
of firearms became common. The cutting
and thrusting instruments of battle took their
turn, when men fought hand to hand. We
must think that the most terrible kind of
fighting of any yet tried—the most terrible
to human feelings (the most glorious, also, if
you will), though by far less destructive of
life than weapons that kill from a distance.
Men who fought in pairs, with the valour
and obstinacy of a Falstaff, "a long hour by
Shrewsbury clock," or with the endless devices
of Homer's heroes, could not be killed off at
a rate nearly approaching that which was
seen at Cressy, when King Edward's archers