driven by irresistible impulse to end at once such a complication of evils. The knowledge imposed upon it, that amid all these calamities it had one consolation, its miseries were not eternal; that itself had the power to end them; this power it has employed. It found itself incapable of supporting any longer the wretchedness of its own situation, and the blindness and injustice of mankind; and as while it lived, it lived scorned and neglected, so it now commits itself to the waves, in expectation after it is dead, of being mangled, belied and insulted."

The song of Gaffer Gray is written in a less sombre style, with a mixture of banter and irony. But it is distinguished by the same fulness of feeling, and the same simple, forcible and perfect expression of it. There is nothing wanting, and nothing superfluous: the author has produced exactly the impression he intended.*

The late Æsop Smith, in one of his quaint and significant essays styled The Little World,' charitably observes-We take no account of the strange combination of influences, good or bad, which, after all said, go far to make each one of us what we are. O, friends! let us not judge hastily nor harshly; the Omniscient alone sees truly of us all: He only can discern how different we might each be under other skies and mixed with other men: He can make allowance for the wretched offspring of depravity, swaddled in sheer want or wantoned drunkenness; for how can that poor infant help its evil growing up? He can calculate advantages showered on the child of wealthy piety; and it were shame and sin indeed, to counteract such happy influences. Consider perturbations: rank, pride; infamy; hate; wealth, inordinate self-indulgence; want, theft, meanness, and misery; peace, an efflorescence of all virtues; worry, an irritation boiling up all manner of bitterness. These, as per sample, are in each case, cause and consequence. Every man is his own little world-a fearful

"Ho! why dost thou shiver and shake,
Gaffer Gray!

And why does thy nose look so blue?"
""Tis the weather that's cold,
'Tis I'm grown very old,

And my doublet is not very new,
Well-a-day!"

"Then line thy worn doublet with ale,
Gaffer Gray!

And warm thy old heart with a glass."
"Nay, but credit I've none,

And my money's all gone;

Then say how may that come to pass?
Well-a-day!"

"Hie away to the house on the brow,
Gaffer Gray!

And knock at the jolly priest's door."
"The priest often preaches

Against worldly riches,

But ne'er gives a mite to the poor,
Well-a-day!"

"The lawyer lives under the hill,

Gaffer Gray!

Warmly fenc'd both in back and in front."
"He will fasten his locks,

And will threaten the stocks,

Should he ever more find me in want,
Well-a-day!"

whole, but inextricably bound, and meshed, and netted with others. There is also and specially about every one of us, an atmosphere of spiritual circumstance centrifugally or centripetally all but omnipotent in matters of human affection. Your incorrigible female scold, or profligate male, is a malign comet that throws the most heavenlyordered system into chaos. She or he has heretofore provoked parent and children to suicide;-and more than once has woman's evil specialty of tongue, been recorded on tomb-stones, preaching still to passers-by on that fearful scripture text for termagants.

"The squire has fat beeves and brown ale,
Gaffer Gray!

And the season will welcome you then."
"His fat beeves and his beer,

And his merry new year,
Are all for the flush and the fair,
Well-a-day!"

"My keg is but low, I confess,
Gaffer Gray!

What then?- while it lasts, man, we'll live."
"The poor man alone,

When be hears the poor moan,
Of his morsel a morsel will give,
Well-a-day!"

Mr. H., believing that all men and all actions contribute more or less to the general good, had long been accustoming himself to keep that good in view. Stimulated by the considerations just mentioned, and by events that pressed with daily astonishment on the mind, he ardently applied himself to the study of man (our pet study), and the means of improving his welfare, and lessening the evils that result from his present vices and imperfections. The chief of the principles to which his inquiry led, werethat man is happy in proportion as he is truly informed; that his ignorance, which is the parent of his misery and vices, is not a fault but a misfortune, which can only be remedied by infusing juster principles, and more enlightened notions into his mind; that punishment, violence, and rancour only tend to inflame the passions, and perpetuate the mistakes they are meant to cure; and that, therefore, the best and only effectual means of ameliorating the condition of mankind, is (as Mr. Rarey the

horse-tamer does), by the gentleness of instruction, by the steady inquiry as to the breed, &c., and by a calm but dauntless reliance on the progressive power of truth. As I said before, I should doubt much whether any man who is not in the minority on a great public question would come under our category of greatness. We think with Mr. H. that great questions should not be decided by a majority of votes, but by the majesty of reason. We may learn from his life that the focus of opprobrium has often been cast on those associations that have for their aim the greatest happiness to the greatest number. To reverse the stale and antiquated system-the most virtuous men are liable to be misunderstood and falsely accused; and more particularly if they disdain to live the slaves of fear. Men do not, indeed, become what by nature they are meant to be, but what society makes them. The generous feelings and higher propensities of the soul are, as it were, shrunk up, seared, violently wrenched and amputated, to fit us for the intercourse with the world; something in the manner that beggars maim and mutilate their children, to make them fit for their future situation in life. There is no originality— what's that? H. loquitur. "Originality consists in considering things as they are, independently of what others think; singularity is mere common-place transposed." The one requires the utmost exercise of the judgment; the other suspends the use of it altogether. Great men are haters of shams, however solemn. They make no pretensions to live on spiritual moonshine,-in their walk they travel like the solar rays, in straight lines. They

prefer new lights to steady darkness. All stars and heavenly lights have become veiled to men who follow terrestrial ignus fatui, and think them stars. They refuse truth when she comes, and now truth knows nothing of them.

Hear a writer, who, in Dickens's Household Worlds, while defending the aleshop at home, can discourse sensibly of its counterpart abroad:-The wine-shops are the colleges and chapels of the poor in France. History, morals, politics, jurisprudence, and literature in iniquitous forms, are all taught in these colleges and chapels, where professors of evil continually deliver their lessons, and where hymns are sung nightly to the demon of demoralisation. Can the force of absurdity be pushed much further? In these haunts of the poor, theft is taught as the morality of property; falsehood as the morality of speech; and assassination as the justice of the people. It is in the wine-shop the cabman is taught to think it heroic to shoot the middle-class man who disputes his fare. It is in the wine-shop the workman is taught to admire the man who stabs his fatal mistress. It is in the wine-shop the doom is pronounced of the employer who lowers the pay of the employed. The wine-shops breed in a physical atmosphere of malaria, and a pestilence of envy and vengeance, the men of crime and revolution. Hunger is proverbially a bad counsellor, but drink is a worse; for it blots truth, love, and honour out of men's hearts. French temperance is one of the hugest of humbugs in an age of humbug. We grant there is far less staggering drunkenness amongst that people than our