I have here in my hand a cutting from a newspaper, which I took with me three years ago, to a meeting in the interest of social science, held in the rooms of the Society of Arts, and under the presidency of the Prime Minister of England. Under the (so called) 'classical' paintings of Barry, representing the philosophy and poetry of the ancients, Mr. Gladstone was in the chair; and in his presence a member of the Society for the Promotion of Social Science propounded and supported the statement, not irrelevant to our present inquiry, that the essential nature of man was that of a beast of prey. Though, at the time, (suddenly called upon by the author of "Tom Brown at Oxford,") I feebly endeavoured to contradict that Socially Scientific person, I do not at present desire to do so. I have given you a creature of prey for comparison of knowledge. "Doth the eagle know what is in the pit?"--and in this great nest of ours in London, it would be well if to all our children the virtue of the creature of prey were fulfilled, and that, indeed, the stir and tumult of the city were "as the eagle stirreth up her nest and fluttereth over her young." But the slip of paper I had then, and have now, in my hand,[D] contains information about the state of the nest, inconsistent with such similitude. I am not answerable for the juxtaposition of paragraphs in it. The first is a proposal for the building of a new church in Oxford, at the cost of twenty thousand pounds; the second is the account of the inquest on a woman and her child who were starved to death in the Isle of Dogs. The bodies were found lying, without covering, on a bed made of heaped rags; and there was no furniture in the room but a wooden stool, on which lay a tract entitled "_The Goodness of God._" The husband, who had been out of work for six months, went mad two days afterwards; and being refused entrance at the workhouse because it was "full of mad people," was carried off, the "Pall Mall Gazette" says not where. [D] "Pall Mall Gazette," January 29th, 1869.