What are we to do?—to stand stock still, looking to heaven “with a frenzied air, as if to ask if a God were there?” One can almost believe, with George Gilfillan, that the earth needs a new gospel and a new manifestation of divine power. From this low estate who is to rescue us? Not the aristocracy, a barbarous institution, perpetrating barbarous ideas in our midst,—that work is not honourable; whereas all true civilization points us to the fact, that man is only happy and virtuous as he is steadily industrious; and thus our most uncivilized classes are our upper and lower,—our lords and ladies on one side, and our rogues and prostitutes on the other. Not our law-makers, who imprison our young lads in costly jails, where the criminals have luxuries denied to the poor; and then in Newgate, or at the public works, mix them all up together, that the comparatively innocent may learn to be adepts in crime. Not our religious, I fear, when, from the Archbishop of Canterbury down to Dr Cumming, the cry is, If you have a proper translation of the Bible you will destroy the faith of the people. Not our trading classes, becoming richer and more sunk in flunkeyism every day. But it may be that these— “Are graves from which a glorious phantom may Burst to illumine our tempestuous day.” Whom am I to blame? Not the victims, but the fathers, and mothers, and divines, and schoolmasters, and governing classes. Father, you have given your bold, manly son an emasculated religion,—a religion that wilfully shuts its eyes, and will not look upon life as it is; and, immediately he goes into the world, away vanish all the pasteboard defences with which you childishly sought to guard him; and yet you will not confess that in inculcating religious creeds,—that in teaching children catechisms,—that in vaguely telling them to be good,—that in leading them to believe in forms rather than truths, you are only damming up for a while the passionate impulses of young blood, that they may ultimately exert a more tumultuous and irresistible sway. You take the little Arab of the streets, and, for acts of levity and wantonness which all boys commit, you send him to prison, at an age when you confess he is not a responsible creature, and then idiotically wonder that he turns out a criminal, and that he wars with society till he is hanged. You are surprised that woman, fond of praise, of dress, and pleasure, should prefer to walk the street in silk and satin, to have a short life and a merry one, rather than slave and drudge, and end her days after all in a workhouse. You tone down your fashionably educated daughters into automatons, and then wonder that hot youth finds domestic life tame and dull. Above all, do not go away with the idea that we have reached the utmost height of civilization,—that we are a model people,—that it is our mission to set up as teachers of religion to all mankind. Let us