We shall now attempt to sketch out the story of _Alton Locke_, in order that our readers may comprehend the nature of the book with which we are dealing--less, we admit, on account of the book itself, than for the sake of the subject which it is manifestly intended to illustrate. By no other method can we do justice to the topic; and if situations should occur which may seem to justify the strictures of Mr Wauch, and to provoke a smile, we ask indulgence for the sake of a cause which is here most earnestly advocated--according to the best of his ability--by a man of no common acquirements, zeal, energy, and purity of purpose, though the warmth of his heart may very frequently overpower the discretion of his head. Alton Locke, the subject of this autobiography, is the son of poor parents. His father had failed in business as a grocer, having imprudently started a small shop, without adequate capital, in an obscure district of London, where indeed there were far too many such already, and died, "as many small tradesmen do, of bad debts and a broken heart, and left us beggars." Alton's mother was a woman of a sterner mood. Reared in the most rigid tenets of the Baptist sect, and steeped in the austerest Calvinism, she regarded this world necessarily as a place of tribulation and inevitable woe, and fought and struggled on right earnestly, mortifying every natural affection in her bosom, except love to her children, and exhibiting that only through the medium of severity and restraint. "My mother," says Alton, "moved by rule and method; by God's law, as she considered, and that only. She seldom smiled. Her word was absolute. She never commanded twice without punishing. And yet there were abysses of unspoken tenderness in her, as well as clear, sound, womanly sense and insight. But she thought herself as much bound to keep down all tenderness as if she had been some ascetic of the middle ages--so do extremes meet! It was 'carnal,' she considered. She had as yet no right to have any 'spiritual affection' for us. We were still 'children of wrath and of the devil'--not yet 'convinced of sin,' 'converted, born again.' She had no more spiritual bond with us, she thought, than she had with a heathen or a Papist. She dared not even pray for our conversion, earnestly as she prayed on every other subject. For though the majority of her sect would have done so, her clear logical sense would yield to no such tender inconsistency. Had it not been decided from all eternity? We were elect, or we were reprobate. Could her prayers alter that?"