How many and how marvellous are the changes that ten years have wrought. New sympathies have been awakened; a new spirit has been hovering above us and around us, with “healing on its wings.” Ten years ago—women and children slaved in our coal mines, degraded far below the level of “brutes that perish;” women, harnessed to their loads, crawling like reptiles along damps and slimes, underneath the earth: children, whose weak and “winking” eyes had never seen the light, with minds as dark as the strata wherein they toiled! Ten years ago—the loom, too, hid its victims far away out of Humanity’s sight, in the sole keeping of those who, in their thirst for “gold, more gold,” made their alchemy of infant sinews, and sweats from the brow of age. Ten years ago—the shopman—in the hot summer time, centred in the crowded thoroughfare, where dust and air so closely mingle that they are inhaled together from sunrise to midnight—laboured for eighteen hours; an item of God’s creation for whom there was no care; never, during the six days of his master’s week, seeing the faces of his children, save in sleep, and too worn, too weary, when the sabbath came, to find it a day of rest. How long was the prayer unanswered,— “Give me one hour of rest from toil, From daily toil for daily bread; Untwisting Labour’s heavy coil From round the heart and head!” Ten years ago—no voice was raised for mercy to the lone sempstress; sure “slave of the lamp;” working from “weary chime to chime;” bearing her cross in solitude—toiling, while starving, for the few soiled pence, the very touch of which would be contamination to the kidded hands of tawdry footmen; these poor women sunk into their graves, they and their famished children, unmissed of any, for there were none to ask where they were gone. Ten years ago—and the governess, in age, in poverty, in sickness, had no refuge—no shelter, even from a storm that might have been a passing one. Her life of labour—labour of head, eyes, hands, and tongue; toil without rest—uncheered, unappreciated, unrecompensed, which left “No leisure to be gay or glad,” followed by a deserted sick bed; a death, unmarked by any kindly eye, and a coffin grudged for its cost. Such was her too common lot! Ten years ago, the poor dressmaker fagged out her life; fainting during her brief minutes of “rest;” standing when sleepy, while one, of more robust strength than her companions, stalked about the thronged and ill-ventilated work-room, till past midnight, touching those whose fingers relax, and whispering the warning sound—“Wake up—wake up!” Need we prolong this list—this contrast, appalling yet glorious, of the present time with ten years ago? One more must be added to it presently.