Notwithstanding Mr Wauch's anathema, we have perused the book; and, while agreeing with him entirely in his strictures regarding its artistical construction, and admitting that, as an autobiography--which it professes to be--it is so palpably absurd in its details, as to diminish the effect of the lesson which it is meant to convey, we yet honour and respect the feeling which has dictated it, and our warmest sympathy is enlisted in the cause which it intends to advocate. No man with a human heart in his bosom, unless that heart is utterly indurated and depraved by the influence of mammon, can be indifferent to the welfare of the working-classes. Even if he were not urged to consider the awful social questions which daily demand our attention in this perplexing and bewildered age, by the impulses of humanity, or by the call of Christian duty, the lower motive of interest alone should incline him to serious reflection on a subject which involves the wellbeing, both temporal and eternal, of thousands of his fellow-creatures, and possibly the permanence of order and tranquillity in this realm of Great Britain. Our civil history during the last thirty years of peace resembles nothing which the world has yet seen, or which can be found in the records of civilisation. The progress which has been made in the mechanical sciences is of itself almost equivalent to a revolution. The whole face of society has been altered; old employments have become obsolete, old customs have been abrogated or remodelled, and old institutions have undergone innovation. The modern citizen thinks and acts differently from his fathers. What to them was object of reverence is to him subject for ridicule; what they were accustomed to prize and honour, he regards with undisguised contempt. All this we style improvement, taking no heed the whilst whether such improvement has fulfilled its primary condition of contributing to and increasing the welfare and prosperity of the people. Statistical books are written to demonstrate how enormously we have increased in wealth; and yet, side by side with Mr Porter's bulky tomes, you will find pamphlets containing ample and distinct evidence that hundreds of thousands of our industrious fellow-countrymen are at this moment famishing for lack of employment, or compelled to sell their labour for such wretched remuneration that the pauper's dole is by many regarded with absolute envy. Dives and Lazarus elbow one another in the street; and our political economists select Dives as the sole type of the nation. Sanitary commissioners are appointed to whiten the outside of the sepulchre; and during the operation, their souls are made sick by the taint of the rottenness from within. The reform of Parliament is, comparatively speaking, a matter of yesterday, and yet the operatives are petitioning for the Charter!