"It was purposely to remedy what you complain of, my brave lad, that our master took this farm (as I was mentioning to our blind visitor). 'I know very well,' said he, 'that honest men will be rewarded on high, but then, you see, it is far and long to look forward to, and there are many (and much to be pitied are they) who can neither look to such a distance, nor wait with patience the indefinite period which bids them live on hope alone. Then how are these poor, depressed, and toil-worn creatures to find leisure thus to seek religious comfort? Rising at the first dawn of day, they toil and labour with weary limbs, till night releases them and sends them to their wretched hovels. Sunday is spent by them at the public-house, drinking to drive away the recollections both of their past and future wretchedness. Neither can these poor beings turn their very hardships to a good account by extracting a useful moral from them. After a hard day's work does their bread seem less coarse and black, their pallet less hard, their infants less sickly and meagre, their wives less worn down by giving nourishment to the feeble babes of their breast? No, no, far from it. Alas, the thin, half-starved mother is but ill calculated to nourish another, when she is obliged to yield her slender share of the family meal to still the clamours of her famishing children. Yet all this might be endured, aye, even cheerfully, for use has familiarised them with hardships and privations; their bread is food, though coarse and homely, their straw bed rests their weary limbs, and their children, though stunted and sickly, live on. All these, I say, could be borne, did no comparison arise between their own poverty and the condition of others; but, when they visit the town or city on market-days, they see an abundance of good white loaves crowding the windows of the bakers' shops; warm, soft mattresses and blankets are displayed for sale to such as have the means of purchasing; children fresh and blooming as the flowers of May are playing joyously about, and even from the superabundance of their meals casting a portion to the dogs and other pet animals. Ah! human courage gives way at this reverse in the picture of human condition; and when the tired, care-worn men return to their mud hovels, their black bread and straw pallet, and are surrounded by a number of squalid, half-starved, wailing infants, to whom they would gladly have brought the share of cakes and buns thrown by the pampered children of great towns in the streets, or cast to the animals, then bitter discontent and repining take possession of their mind, and, utterly forgetting that on high is One who careth for all, they say, "Why is this difference allowed? and, if there must be both rich and poor in the world, why were not we born to riches? why should not every man have his turn in worldly prosperity? We are not justly used or fairly treated in being always