but deadly to the taste, and that in no way can they answer the need and aspirations of the heart of man, which is greater and grander than them all? Have we paid ministers of religion, bishops and archbishops, millions and millions of pounds to teach men these few self-evident truths, and yet do such orgies as those of which we write not merely exist but flourish, as if we had accepted the creed of the Atheist,—“Let us eat and drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die”? To-morrow! who around us now thinks of to-morrow? Not the young rake chaffing and dancing before us, whose mirth is the delirium of forgetfulness and the intoxication of wine, whose to-morrow is Whitecross-street Prison or the Insolvent Debtors’ Court. Not that brazenfaced woman now arrayed in splendour, and surrounded by her admirers, whose to-morrow is old age, neglect, and a garret. Not those grey-headed gouty old sinners in the boxes, who have not the excuse of youth for the follies with which they desecrate old age. And certainly not that pale clerk, who has most probably embezzled his employer’s money, and who is frantically exclaiming, “Waiter, another bottle of champagne,” as he tells the women of his lot that he feels “a cup too low.” You say he has them to cheer him. Yes, till his money is gone. When he is at Bow-street, as assuredly he will soon be, I promise you they will not be the last to give evidence as to his possession of funds, or the manner of his spending them. There may be honour among thieves, there is none among women when they have once lost their own.