servant. We made known our business, and were admitted to the hall. The lady of the house was called, and engaged to furnish accommodations for the young mother. She took the child from my hands, and I paid her charges for a week, and turned to leave the house with the policeman.

The mother called me back from the door and said, "I can only thank you, sir. God bless you-God will bless you for this."

We left the house. As we entered the street the rain was falling heavily, and violent gusts of wind dashed by, with that dismal moaning sound which is never so mournful, even in the wild woods, as in the dark solitude of a large city late at night. But still, this was less dreary than the scene we had just left; and a load fell from my heart, when I once more felt the night tempest sweeping by me.

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I asked the policeman who he thought the lady could be. Why, sir," said he, “there is no knowing, of course, with certainty; but did you see how she was dressed? and notice how she spoke? I suppose she has been ruined by some heartless fellow in Regent Street. There

are thousands of girls that are; and then they come to the City and starve to death, or die of neglect and privation. From one extreme to the other, this is the way with the London world. For my part, I am satisfied with the lot of a policeman."

I inquired if she could not be relieved by one of the Charities. "Well, sir," said he, "we can do our best; but the Charities are all crowded. I have made three unsuccessful applications for persons in distress within the last two days. But, if you will write something about this case, and let me take your letter, the chance will be fair.”

I engaged to address a letter, the next morning to the City of London Lying-in Hospital, City Road, or any other London Charity. The policeman promised to call for the letter at nine o'clock. By means of these exertions this unfortunate mother received assistance; but her child died the night she came from the West End.

I laid myself down on my pillow that night worn out with fatigue. But too many conhalls of Lord ; of

fused images of the gay

the revelry and splendour of the West End; and of the extreme suffering and wretchedness of that ruined female in the dark and dismal streets of London, crowded upon my fancy to let me sleep.

In one night I had seen the two extremes of a London life-opulence, gaiety, fashion, and song in the palace halls of an English nobleman; and the abject and hopeless misery of a broken-hearted female, who had fallen from such a circle, to fill a grave dug by strangers in the Potter's Field.

Such is London-the West End and Spitalfields a nobleman and a beggar-revelry, mirth, beauty, and fashion-a maniac victim of seduction with her dying child-such is London.

Believe me, sir,

Yours, &c.,

To the Hon. John Quincy Adams.

SIR,

London, 1840.

You are one of the few illustrious men of a past age whom the kind Providence of God has still spared to our country. In childhood I was taught to respect your name; and in after years, as I have seen age gently laying its hand upon you without any of its infirmities, that feeling has grown into reverence.

As I design to speak of some of the distinguished public men and the present political aspects of Great Britain in this communication, I know not to whom I can so well address it as to one so familiar with her past history and present condition as yourself.

For a long time no very deep interest has been felt in the affairs of the British empire, except by our statesmen; but circumstances are now transpiring which have turned the at

tention of our whole country directly towards them.

In every age England has had some bold and generous men, who have resisted the encroachments of the crown upon the rights of the people; but it is lamentable, after all, to think that she has made no greater progress in the path of popular liberty.

One class of her reformers, as Sir Harry Vane, Hampden, Sidney, Raleigh, and Russell, have fallen martyrs to freedom on the field or scaffold, or have dragged out a miserable existence in dungeons. Another class, in the zeal and impatience of reform, have plunged their country into revolution and bloodshed, under the mistaken idea that the sword alone could vindicate the cause of freedom.

But the sword has yet done comparatively little for liberty: power, thus far, has almost always been on the side of oppression and wrong, so that it has seldom been safe to trust the interests of freedom to the terrible chances of battle. Witness Greece and Carthage in the time of Scipio and Mummius. After Liberty had taken her flight from the world at