If besides we reckon up the procuresses, the keepers of low gin-palaces and beer-shops, where women are the bait, we are lost and bewildered, and dare not trust ourselves to give in numbers any idea of the persons directly and indirectly connected with prostitution, or of the sum spent annually in London on that vice alone. And all this is carried on in the most methodical way. There are men and women whose constant employment is to search all parts of the metropolis for fresh victims; and to them young girls from the country and servant maids-of-all-work are easy prey. Then letters are written and sent to the clubs and to the patrons of such infamy, and they are furnished with all the particulars, and the price of the victim’s willing or unwilling seduction and shame. This state of things is progressive. Last year the returns of the City missionaries show an increase in their districts of fallen women to the number of 1,035. Of course it is only with the dregs that the City missionary comes in contact. While a woman preserves her health, and youth, and good looks, she lives in better quarters than those into which the City missionary generally finds his way. For a time she is gay; she dresses fine, spends money freely, drinks, and sings, and then prematurely becomes old, and sad, and poor. Is this ever to be so? Is woman always to sell herself to man? And is man to dream that the smile thus bought is no lie, but a precious truth? I don’t suppose that if men were temperate universal chastity would be the result; but that we should have less immorality is, I think, an admitted fact. Why are women, prostitutes? Chiefly, we are told, because of poverty; and of all causes of poverty, is not intemperance the greatest? Would you see how one vice is connected with another? Come up Portland-place at night. True, there are no public-houses here, but they are plentiful enough in the neighbourhood; and in them all night the men and painted women from Portland-place madden themselves with drink. Yes, here are the women that should have been British wives and mothers utterly perverted, and dragging down with them many a heart that might have emerged into a noble life. Lust and intemperance have slain them. “Lost, lost, lost for ever!” is the cry that greets us as we look at them.