We have but to look around us and within us to see the sad truth exemplified. Summer is fading with its roses—Youth vanishes with its dreams. “Passing away” is written on all things earthly. Yet “a thing of beauty is a joy for ever.” We have a compensating faculty, which gives immortality to the mortal in the cells of memory; the joys of which Time has robbed us still live on in perennial youth. Nay, more, they live unmarred by the sorrows that in actual life grow up along with them. As the colours of fancy fade from the Present, they gather in brighter radiance around the Past. We conserve the roses of Summer—let us embalm the memories of Youth. THE POWER OF SMALL BEGINNINGS. A grim Lion obstructs the paths of ardent Benevolence in its desire to lessen the monster evils of society, and constantly roars “Impossible! Impossible!” Well-disposed Affluence surveys the encroaching waves of destitution and crime as they roll onwards, spreading their dark waters over the face of society, and folds its hands in powerless despair,—a despair created by a false notion of the inefficacy of individual or limited action. “Who can stem such a tide?” it exclaims; “we must have some great comprehensive system. Without that, single efforts are useless.” Upon this untrue and timid premise many a purse is closed, many a generous impulse checked. It is never remembered that all great facts, for evil or for good, are an aggregate of small details, and must be grappled with _in_ detail. Every one who hath and to spare, has it in his power to do some good and to check some evil; and if all those to whom the ability is given were to do their part, the great “Comprehensive System” which is so much prayed for would arrange itself. The hand of Charity is nowhere so open as in this country; but is often paralysed for the want of being well directed. Of what individual energy can accomplish in a very limited sphere, we can now afford a practical instance. What a single individual in energetic earnest has effected in the “Devil’s Acre,” described in a former number,[6] can be done by any other single individual in any other sink of vice and iniquity, in every other part of the globe. Footnote 6: At page 297.