in any decent Christian gathering the better! And so bedtime comes round again; still not a moment to think of God in--of the Judgment which has come a day closer--of your sins which have grown a day heavier--of your soul which has sunk a day further from heaven, a day nearer to hell? Not one. You are dead tired, and mill-work begins so early. Tumble in--God can wait. He has waited fourteen, or eighteen, or twenty years already! 'But you're not all factory hands here. I see a good many lads I know come from the country--from the farms up Kinder or Edale way. Well, I don't know so much about your ways as I do about mills; but I know some, and I can guess some. _You_ are not shut up all day with the roar of the machines in your ears, and the cotton-fluff choking your lungs. You have to live harder, perhaps. You've less chances of getting on in the world; but I declare to you, if you're bad and godless--as some of you are--I think there's a precious sight less excuse for you than there is for the mill-hands!' And with a startling vehemence, greater by far than he had shown in the case of the mill-workers, he threw himself on the vices and the callousness of the field-labourers. For were they not, day by day, and hour by hour, face to face with the Almighty in His marvellous world--with the rising of His sun, with the flash of His lightning, with His clouds which dropped fatness, and with the heavens which declare His glory? Nothing between them and the Most High, if they would open their dull eyes and see! And more than that. Not a bit of their life,' but had been dear to the Lord Jesus--but He had spoken of it, taught from it, made it sacred. The shepherd herding the sheep--how could he, of all men, forget and blaspheme the Good Shepherd? The sower scattering the seed--how could he, of all men, forget and blaspheme the Heavenly Sower? Oh, the crookedness of sin! Oh, the hardness of men's hearts! The secret of the denunciations which followed lay hidden deep in the speaker's personal history. They were the utterances of a man who had stood for years at the 'mules,' catching, when he could, through the coarse panes of factory glass, the dim blue outlines of distant moors. _Here_ were noise, crowd, coarse jesting, mean tyrannies, uncongenial company--everything which a nervous, excitable nature, tuned to poetry in the English way through religion, most loathed; _there_ was beauty, peace, leisure for thought, for holiness, for emotion.