In 1833 the total abstinence movement was commenced in Lancashire, under the active leadership of Mr. Joseph Livesey, of Preston, and known as “The Temperance Movement,” went through the length and breadth of the land. About two years later, Livesey first met young Cassell in a lecture-room or chapel in Manchester. “I remember quite well,” he writes, “his standing on the right, just below or on the steps of the platform, in his working attire, with a fustian jacket and a white apron on”--a young man of eighteen, in the honestest and best of uniforms--his industrial regimentals. Into the temperance movement John Cassell threw himself heart and soul; and thinking that London would afford a wider field for temperance missionary labours, and that his daily bread, as an artizan, might there be more easily earned, he left Manchester and arrived in the Metropolis in October, 1836, and in a few days he found his way to the New Jerusalem school-rooms in the Westminster Bridge Road, and made his first public speech. He is described by one who was present, as “a gaunt stripling, poorly clad, and travel-stained; plain, straightforward in speech, but broad in provincialism.” Shortly afterwards, he is again to be traced to Milton Street, Barbican. But his appearance here marked an episode in his life; for his energy, his evident thoroughness, and his frank confession that he carried all his worldly goods in his little wallet, and that the few pence in his pocket were his only fortune, at once gained him friends. A gentleman present took him to his own home, and shortly afterwards presented him to Mr. Meredith, who enrolled the young enthusiast forthwith among the paid band of temperance agents he was generously supporting at his own cost. With characteristic energy Cassell started on a temperance tour--a journey fraught with difficulty and hardship; and a few months after we find a notice of him in the _Preston Temperance Advocate_: “John Cassell, the Manchester carpenter, has been labouring with great success in the county of Norfolk. He is passing through Essex on his way to London. He carries his watchman’s rattle--an excellent accompaniment of temperance labours.” A strange life that gaunt young prophet must have led; trudging about from town to village, sounding an alarum ever as he went with his rattle, seeking by all means in his power to rivet a momentary attention, and then from barrel-head or tree-stump preaching in his broad Lancashire idiom a “New Crusade”--not against such puny foes and nations as Turk or Saracen--not of mere battles to be fought out by the exertion of so much or so little physical strength--but of hideous vices to be conquered--vices that sat like skeletons beside half the hearths in England then--and of noble mental victories to be achieved. The women heard his rude eloquence, and tears rushed to their eyes, as they prayed that their brothers and sons might hearken and be convinced. The men paused on their way to the