hearth, until the cloud is suddenly fanned
away by the wings of the Angel of Death: all
these distractions let him put aside, holding
steadily to one truth " Waking and sleeping,
I and mine are slowly poisoned. Imperfect
development and premature decay are the
lot of those who are dear to me as my life.
I bring children into the world to suffer
unnaturally, and to die when my Merciful
Father would have them live. The beauty
of infancy is blotted out from my sight, and
in its .stead sickliness and pain look at me
from the wan mother's knee. Shameful
deprivation of the commonest appliances,
distinguishing the lives of human beings from the
lives of beasts, is my inheritance. My family
is one of tens of thousands of families who
are set aside as food for pestilence." And let
him then, being made in the form of man,
resolve, "I will not bear it, and it shall
not be!"

If working men will be thus true to
themselves and one another, there never was a
time when they had so much just sympathy
and so much ready help at hand. The whole
powerful middle-class of this country, newly
smitten with a sense of self-reproach—far
more potent with it, we fully believe, than:
the lower motives of self-defence and fear—
is ready to join them. The utmost power of
the press is eager to assist them. But the
movement, to be irresistible, must originate
with themselves, the suffering many. Let
them take the initiative, and call the middle-class
to unite with them: which they will do,
heart and soul! Let the working people, in
the metropolis, in any one great town, but
turn their intelligence, their energy, their
numbers, their power of union, their patience,
their perseverance, in this straight direction
in earnest — and by Christmas, they shall find
a government in Downing- street and a
House of Commons within hail of it,
possessing not the faintest family resemblance
to the Indifferents and lncapables last heard
of in that slumberous neighbourhood.

It is only through a government so acted
upon and so forced to acquit itself of its
first responsibility, that the intolerable ills
arising from the present nature of the dwellings
of the poor can be remedied. A Board
of Health can do much, but not near enough.
Funds are wanted, and great powers are
wanted; powers to over-ride little interests .
for the general good; powers to coerce the
ignorant, obstinate, and slothful, and to punish
all who, by any infraction of necessary laws,
imperil the public health. The working
people and the middle class thoroughly
resolved to have such laws, there is no more
choice left to all the Red Tape in Britain as
to the form in which it shall tie itself next,
than there is option in the barrel of a barrel-organ
what tune it shall play.

But, though it is easily foreseen that such
an alliance must soon incalculably mitigate,
and in the end annihilate, the dark list of
calamities resulting from sinful and cruel
neglect which the late visitation has unhappily
pily not for the first time unveiled; it is
impossible to set limits to the happy issues
that would flow from it. A better
understanding between the two great divisions of
society, a habit of kinder and nearer approach,
an increased respect and trustfulness on both
sides, a gently corrected method in each of
considering the views of the other, would
lead to such blessed improvements and
inter-changes among us, that even our narrow
wisdom might within the compass of a short
time learn to bless the sickly year in which
so much good blossomed out of evil.

In the plainest sincerity, in affectionate
sympathy, in the ardent desire of our heart
to do them some service, and to see them
take their place in the system which should
bind us all together, and bring home, to us
all, the happiness of which our necessarily
varied conditions are all susceptible, we submit
these few words to the working men.
The time is ripe for every one of them to
raise himself and those who are dear to him,
at no man's cost, with no violence or injustice,
with cheerful help and support, with
lasting benefit to the whole community.
Even the many among them at whose
firesides there will be vacant seats this winter,
we address with hope. However hard the
trial and heavy the bereavement, there is a
far higher consolation in striving for the life
that is left, than in brooding with sullen eyes
beside the grave.

THE GHOST OF PIT POND.

IN the days when stage-coaches flourished,
there was no better house on the Bath road,
for the traveller to stop at, than " The Castle"
at Marlborough. No disparagement to Mr.
Botham's celebrated inn at Salt Hill, but that
was a place for lovers, and lovers only; you
might breakfast there, it is true, but if you
were not newly married, it was scarcely
advisable to trespass longer than the promised
twenty minutes— practically ten— which the
coachman allowed for the consumption of that
meal. A single man sojourning at Salt Hill,
was a fish completely out of water: he excited
no curiosity on the part of the chambermaids;
the waiters were inattentive and careless, for
what was a bachelor's gratuity compared with
a bridegroom's; he gave the young lady at the
bar no opportunity for displaying the fluttering
sympathy which a bridal party always
awakens; and to the landlord he was
objectionable, because he occupied space that might
be more profitably filled, and besides, when
his little bill was sent in, the bachelor looked
at the items before paying it, a proceeding
which no true Benedick ever dreamt of. You
see, therefore, that the only course for the
solitary traveller was to resume his seat on
the box, and push on. There was nothing to
delay him at Beading, but when he had