When we contemplate how great a change would be wrought in a nation, were its rulers men fearing God, and hating covetousness, and, like Daniel, going many times a-day to ask counsel of the Lord, we seem to see the pen moving in the hand of the recording angel, as he writes, “No weapon formed against it shall prosper.” We must return for a moment to our own more immediate work. In consequence of the disadvantage to which we have alluded, we have not been able to effect all the improvement we could wish in the dwellings of our poor mothers; but, by the introduction of cleanliness, order, and ventilation, the aspect of many homes has been much changed. Soon after we commenced these meetings, we spent the greater part of one evening in explaining the nature and effects of pure air and ventilation, and illustrating the subject in various ways. The listeners were startled at the facts brought before them: and by their unfeigned expressions of astonishment, it was evident that their ideas on the subject, and nature’s intentions, were quite at variance. Several months afterwards, on entering a house where two of our poor mothers lived, I was pleased to observe how clean and well-ventilated it was. On remarking this, one of the women said—“Ah! that was a wonderful evening when you told us all about what air we could live upon, and what we couldn’t. I says to Mrs L—, as we were going home, ‘There now, we have been a-shutting up our windows, and thinking we were shutting the _pizen_ out, instead of which we were shutting of it in.’ I soon got my window made to open at the top, and it has never been quite shut since; for we always sleeps six in this room. The neighbours did say, at first, that we should catch our deaths; but they soon saw that we were so much better, that half the people in the street open their windows at the top now.” This same woman came to me a few weeks ago, and told me that she had lately removed into another street, where the houses were apparently of a better order than those she had left; but after the first week or two, she found that, in consequence of a drain-pipe being out of order, they were constantly subjected to an unpleasant smell. “I tell my landlord of it,” she said, “every Monday morning when I pay my rent; and he always says to me, ‘I’ll send a man here in a day or two, and have it put to rights;’ and that have been going on now for six weeks, and nobody has been a-near the place to do anything yet. I have two children ill with fever; and we all wake of a morning now with that old miserable, sick, tired feeling we used to have before you told us how to manage better. My boys said this morning, ‘Mother, the work do seem so hard now, to what it used to.’ You know, ma’am, the work isn’t no difference; but we are all getting pizen’d with that nasty smell; and it do seem so hard to me, for I have never had no illness to speak of among ’em all, for the last four years.”