toys, were read, loved, and lived with until they became part of the being of their possessors. But distinct from this class--among whom may be counted some of the noblest examples of life--there is the class of degraded poor. Here the want is not so much a want of money (some of the trades, such as hawking, flower-selling, shoe-blacking, occasionally bringing in as much as from ten to twenty shillings a day) as the want of the common virtues of ordinary life. In many of these poor, the mere intellectual conception of principle, as such, is absent; they have no moral ideal; spirituality to them is as little understood in idea as in word. Sinning (sensual low brutal sins) is the most common, the to-be-expected course. The standard has got reversed, and those who have turnings towards, and vague aspirations for, better things too often find it impossible to give these feelings practical expression in a society where wrong is upheld by public opinion; where the only test of right is the avoidance of being ‘nabbed’ by the police; and the highest law is that expressed by the magistrate. How can these people be raised to enjoy spiritual life? Too often the symptoms are mistaken for the disease. In times of illness, bad weather, or depression of their particular trade, their poverty is the one apparent fact about them, and tender-hearted people rush eagerly to relieve it. That poverty was but the natural result of their sinful, self-indulgent lives; and by it they might have learnt great lessons. The hands of the charity-giver too often, in such cases, act as a screen between a man and his Almighty Teacher. The physical suffering which should have recalled to him his past carelessness or sin is thus made of no avail. Mistaken love! gifts cannot raise these people. Better houses, provident clubs, savings banks, &c. are all useful and do necessary work in forming a good ground in which the seed can grow, but thought must be given lest such efforts leave the people in the condition of more comfortable animals. Materialism is already so strong a force in the world that those who look deeper than the material part of man should beware lest they accentuate what is, in whatever form it appears--whether in the low sensuality of the degraded or the enervating luxury of the æsthete--a circumscribed, ungodly life. The stimulus of ‘getting on’ is also used, but it is a dangerous influence, sapping ofttimes the one virtue which is strong and beautiful in the lives of these people, their communistic love; and if adopted by minds empty of principle may become a new source of wrong. ‘Getting on’ regardless of the means is but another way of going back.