The discussion of the delicate question, as the _Times_ terms it, has lately received new light in an unexpected quarter. The victims themselves have taken to writing. “Another Unfortunate” describes her parents. They were drunkards—their chief expense was gin—their children were left to grow up without moral training of any kind. The writer says:—“We heard nothing of religion. Sometimes when a neighbour died we went to the burial, and thus got within a few steps of the church. If a grand funeral chanced to fall in our way we went to see that, too—the fine black horses and nodding plumes—as we went to see the soldiers when we could for a lark. No parson ever came near us. The place where we lived was too dirty for nicely-shod gentlemen. ‘The publicans and sinners’ of our circumscribed, but thickly-populated locality had no ‘friend’ among them. Our neighbourhood furnished many subjects to the treadmill, the hulks, and the colonies, and some to the gallows. We lived with the fear of these things, and not with the fear of God before our eyes.” From such a training could we expect otherwise? The writer asks what business has society to persecute such as she: a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit; the unfortunate is the fruit, and society is the tree. It is in vain that we reclaim the women. The only remedy—the only way to put down the social evil—is to reclaim the men. MARK-LANE. On a Monday morning, especially on the Eastern Counties lines, the trains running into town have an unusually large number of passengers. They consist generally of the jolly-looking fellows who, at the time of the cattle show, take the town by storm, and fill every omnibus and cab, and dining room, and place of public amusement, and then as suddenly retire as if they were a Tartar horde, dashing into some rich and luxurious capital, then vanishing with their booty, none know whither. However, penetrate into Mark-lane, you may see them every Monday and Friday, smelling very strong of tobacco smoke—for, although smoking is absurdly and strictly prohibited on railways, it is a known fact that people will smoke nevertheless—and with the air of men who are not troubled about trifles, and have their pockets well lined with cash. These are the merchants and millers and maltsters of Mark-lane. All England waits for their reports; their decisions affect the prices of grain at Chicago on one side, and far in the ports of the Black Sea on the other. Bread is the staff of life, and its traffic affects the weal or woe of empires. Prices low in Mark-lane, and in the garrets of London, in the cellars of Manchester, in the wynds of Edinburgh, there is joy. As we may suppose, the trade in grain is one of the most ancient in the world. There were corn merchants and millers long before Mark-lane was built. Originally the corn merchants of the metropolis assembled at a place called Bark’s Quay, where now the Custom-house stands. Then they moved into