do not go there much. I remember when that dismal song, “Sam Hall,” was sung—a song in which a wretch is supposed to utter all the wretchedness in his soul, all his sickness of life, all his abhorrence of mankind, as he was on his way to Tyburn drop. Horrible as the song was—revolting as it was to all but _blazé_ men, the room was crammed to suffocation,—it was impossible often to get a seat, and you might have heard a pin drop. Where are the crowds that listened to that song? My own companion—where is he? A finer young man, with richer promise, I knew not. He had a generous disposition, a taste for study, and was blessed with the constitution of a horse; he had received a liberal education; his morals had been carefully attended to; his parents were people of large property, and this son I always deemed his mother’s favourite son; and now in his very prime, when he might have been a blessing to society, when in his successful professional career his parents might have reaped a reward, when the heart of some loving, tender, trusting woman might have joyed in his love, when fair young children, calling him father, might have clustered round his knees, he is dying, I am told, before their very eyes, slowly, and with agony, from the terrible effects of drink. And does it not really seem as if there were a curse attaching to those connected with the trade? A week or two since, had you been passing down Bridges-street into the Strand late on a Saturday night, or early on a Sunday morning, on a door-step, in spite of the pouring rain, you might have seen a woman, in her rags and loneliness, trying to gather a few hours of sleep. She was too weak to pursue her unhallowed calling, and had she been so disposed on that cold, wet night, it would have been of little avail had she walked the streets. The policeman as he goes his monotonous rounds tells her to move on. She wakes up, gets upon her legs, hobbles along, and then, when he is past, again, weary and wayworn, seeks the friendly door-step. The policeman returns; “What, here still?” he exclaims. Ah yes! she has not power to move away. She is weak, ill, dying. The friendly police carry her to the neighbouring hospital. “She cannot be received here,” says Routine, and she is taken to the workhouse. Again she is taken to the hospital, admitted at last—for is she not a woman, and a young one, too?—not more than twenty-five, it appears,—and on her face, stained with intemperance and sin, there is the dread stamp of death—in this case, perhaps, a welcome messenger; for who would live, fallen, friendless, forsaken, with a diseased body and a broken heart? “The spirit of a man can sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?” Peace be with her! in another hour or two she will have done with this wretched life of hers, and have gone where “the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.” More than