laughed at their dinner-parties and balls, and asked one another inanely, “What is a ‘life-philosopher’?” In the same way, when a small volume of poetry, burning as lava, wild as a storm-wind, came floating out on the top of the seething soup of current literature, bearing the name of Paul Zouche, and it was said that this person was a poet, they questioned smilingly, “Is he dead?” for, naturally, they could not imagine these modern days were capable of giving birth to a living specimen of the _genus_ bard. For they, too, had their motor-cars from France and England;--they, too, had their gambling-dens secreted in private houses of high repute,--they, too, had their country-seats specially indicated as free to such house-parties as wished to indulge in low intrigue and unbridled licentiousness; they, too, weary of simple Christianity, had their own special ‘religions’ of palmistry, crystal-gazing, fortune-telling by cards, and Esoteric ‘faith-healing.’ The days were passing with them--as it passes with many of their ‘set’ in other countries,--in complete forgetfulness of all the nobler ambitions and emotions which lift Man above the level of his companion Beast. For the time is now upon us when what has formerly been known as ‘high’ is of its own accord sinking to the low, and what has been called the ‘low’ is rising to the high. Strange times!--strange days!--when the tradesman can scorn the duchess on account of her ‘dirty mind’--when a certain nobleman can get no honest labourers to work on his estate, because they suspect him of ‘rooking’ young college lads;--and when a church in a seaport town stands empty every Sunday, with its bells ringing in vain, because the congregation which should fill it, know that their so-called ‘holy man’ is a rascal! All over the world this rebellion against Falsehood,--this movement towards Truth is felt,--all over the world the people are growing strong on their legs, and clear in their brains;--no longer cramped and stunted starvelings, they are gradually developing into full growth, and awaking to intelligent action. And wherever the dominion of priestcraft has been destroyed, there they are found at their best and bravest, with a glimmering dawn of the true Christian spirit beginning to lighten their darkness,--a spirit which has no race or sect, but is all-embracing, all-loving, and all-benevolent;--which ‘thinketh no evil,’ but is so nobly sufficing in its tenderness and patience, as to persuade the obstinate, govern the unruly, and recover the lost, by the patient influence of its own example. On the reverse side of the medal, wherever we see priestcraft dominant, there we see ignorance and corruption, vice and hypocrisy, and such a low standard of morals and education as is calculated to keep the soul a slave in irons, with no possibility of any intellectual escape into the ‘glorious liberty of the free.’