I do not now intend to go over the beaten track of this argument; my intention is simply to refer to it, and adduce another instance of this strange and short-sighted policy, which prefers waiting to acting, and despises cheap, though timely interference with evil, and indulges in the somewhat late, but more expensive process of reparation. And to begin. Imagine--unhappily you need exercise no great stretch of the faculty, the papers teem with too many instances--imagine a poor, woe-begone, miserable creature, destitute and friendless, without a home, without a meal; his tattered clothing displaying through every rent the shrunken form and wasted limbs to which hunger and want have reduced him. See him as night falls, plodding onwards through the crowded thoroughfares of the great city; his lack-lustre eye glazed and filmy; his pale face and blue lip actually corpse-like in their ghast-liness. He gazes at the passers-by with the vacant stare of idiotcy. Starvation has sapped the very intellect, and he is like one in some frightful vision; a vague desire for rest--a dreamy belief that death will release him--lives in the place of hope; and as he leans over the battlements of the tall bridge, the plash of the dark river murmurs softly to his ear. His despair has conjured up a thousand strange and flitting fancies, and voices seem to call to him from the dull stream, and invite him to lie down and be at peace. Meanwhile the crowd passes on. Men in all the worldliness of their hopes and fears, their wishes, their expectations, and their dreads, pour by. None regard _him_, who at that moment stands on the very brink of an eternity, whither his thoughts have gone before him. As he gazes, his eye is attracted by the star-like spangle of lights in the water. It is the reflection of those in the house of the Humane Society; and he suddenly remembers that there is such an institution; and he bethinks him, as well as his poor brain will let him, that some benevolent people have called this association by this pleasing title, and the very word is a balm to his broken heart. “Humane Society!” Muttering the words, he staggers onwards; a feeling too faint for hope still survives; and he bends his wearied steps towards the building. It is indeed a goodly edifice; Portland stone and granite, massive columns and a portico, are all there; and Humanity herself is emblematised in the figures which decorate the pedestal. The man of misery stands without and looks up at this stately pile; the dying embers emit one sparky and for a second, hope brightens into a brief flicker. He enters the spacious hall, on one side of which a marble group is seen representing the “good Samaritan;” the appeal comes home to his heart, and he could cry, but hunger has dried up his tears.