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sition to all rules of hygiene. But, in spite of all that, so wonderful is the vitality of the English race, they are what they are; and therefore we have the finest material to work upon that people ever had. And therefore, again, we have the less excuse if we do allow English people to grow up puny, stunted, and diseased.

Let me refer again to that word that I used: death -the amount of death. I really believe there are hundreds of good and kind people who would take up this subject with their whole heart and soul if they were aware of the magnitude of the evil. Lord Shaftesbury told you just now that there were one hundred thousand preventable deaths in England every year. So it is. We talk of the loss of human life in war. We are the fools of smoke and noise; because there are cannon-balls, forsooth, and swords and red coats; and because it costs a great deal of money, and makes a great deal of talk in the papers, we think-What so terrible as war? I will tell you what is ten times, and ten thousand times, more terrible than war, and that is -outraged Nature. War, we are discovering now, is the clumsiest and most expensive of all games; we are finding that if you wish to commit an act of cruelty and folly, the most costly one that you can commit is to contrive to shoot your fellow-men in war. So it is; and thank God that so it is: but Nature, insidious, inexpensive, silent, sends no roar of cannon, no glitter of arms to do her work; she gives no warning note of preparation; she has no protocols, nor any diplomatic advances, whereby she warns her enemy that war is coming. Silently, I say, and insidiously she goes forth : no! she does not even go forth; she does not step out of her path: but quietly, by the very same means by which she makes alive, she puts to death; and so avenges herself of those who have rebelled against her.

By the very same laws by which every blade of grass grows, and every insect springs to life in the sunbeam, she kills and kills and kills, and is never tired of killing ; till she has taught man the terrible lesson he is so slow to learn, that Nature is only conquered by obeying her.

And bear in mind one thing more. Man has his courtesies of war, and his chivalries of war: he does not strike the unarmed man; he spares the woman and the child. But Nature is as fierce when she is offended, as she is bounteous and kind when she is obeyed. She spares neither woman nor child. She has no pity; for some awful, but most good reason, she is not allowed to have any pity. Silently she strikes the sleeping babe, with as little remorse as she would strike the strong man, with the spade or the musket in his hand. Ah! would to God that some man had the pictorial eloquence to put before the mothers of England the mass of preventable suffering, the mass of preventable agony of mind and body, which exists in England year after year! and would that some man had the logical eloquence to make them understand that it is in their power, in the power of the mothers and wives of the higher class, I will not say to stop it all,-God only knows that, but to stop, as I believe, three-fourths of it.

It is in the power, I believe, of any woman in this room to save three or four lives-human lives-during the next six months. It is in your power, ladies; and it is so easy. You might save several lives a piece, if you chose, without, I believe, interfering with your daily business, or with your daily pleasure; or, if you choose, with your daily frivolities, in any way whatsoever. Let me ask, then, those who are here, and who have not yet laid these things to heart: Will you let this meeting to-day be a mere passing matter of two or

three hours' interest, which you may go away and forget for the next book or the next amusement? Or will you be in earnest? Will you learn-I say it openly-from the noble chairman, how easy it is to be in earnest in life; how every one of you, amid all the artificial complications of English society in the nineteenth century, can find a work to do, a noble work to do, a chivalrous work to do, just as chivalrous as if you lived in any old magic land, such as Spenser talked of in his Faery Queene; how you can be as true a knight-errant or lady-errant in the present century, as if you had lived far away in the dark ages of violence and rapine? Will you, I ask, learn this? Will you learn to be in earnest; and to use the position, and the station, and the talent that God has given you to save alive those who should live? And will you remember that it is not the will of your Father that is in Heaven that one little one that plays in the kennel outside should perish, either in body or in soul?

GREAT CITIES, AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOR

GOOD AND EVIL.*

HE pleasure, gentlemen and ladies, of addressing you here is mixed in my mind with very solemn feelings; the honour which you have done me is tempered by humiliating thoughts.

For it was in this very city of Bristol, twenty-seven years ago, that I received my first lesson in what is now called Social Science; and yet, alas! more than ten years elapsed ere I could even spell out that lesson, though it had been written for me (as well as for all England) in letters of flame, from the one end of heaven to the other.

I had been

I was a school-boy in Clifton up above. hearing of political disturbances, even of riots, of which I understood nothing, and for which I cared nothing. But on one memorable Sunday afternoon I saw an object which was distinctly not political. should have no right to speak of it here.

Otherwise I

The

It was an afternoon of sullen autumn rain. fog hung thick over the docks and lowlands. Glaring through that fog I saw a bright mass of flame-almost like a half-risen sun.

That, I was told, was the gate of the new gaol on fire. That the prisoners in it had been set free; that- But why speak of what too many here recolThe fog rolled slowly upward.

lect but too well?

* Lecture delivered at Bristol, October 5, 1857.

Dark figures, even at that great distance, were flitting to and fro across what seemed the mouth of the pit. The flame increased-multiplied-at one point after another; till by ten o'clock that night I seemed to be looking down upon Dante's Inferno, and to hear the multitudinous moan and wail of the lost spirits surging to and fro amid that sea of fire.

Right behind Brandon Hill-how can I ever forget it?-rose the great central mass of fire; till the little mound seemed converted into a volcano, from the peak of which the flame streamed up, not red alone, but delicately green and blue, pale rose and pearly white, while crimson sparks leapt and fell again in the midst of that rainbow, not of hope, but of despair; and dull explosions down below mingled with the roar of the mob, and the infernal hiss and crackle of the flame.

Higher and higher the fog was scorched and shrivelled upward by the fierce heat below, glowing through and through with red reflected glare, till it arched itself into one vast dome of red-hot iron, fit roof for all the madness down below-and beneath it, miles away, I could see the lonely tower of Dundie shining red ;-the symbol of the old faith, looking down in stately wonder and sorrow upon the fearful birth-throes of a new age. Yes. Why did I say just now, despair? I was wrong. Birth-throes, and not death-pangs, those horrors were. Else they would have no place in my discourse; no place, indeed, in my mind. of disease, decay, death?

Why talk over the signs

Let the dead bury their

dead and let us follow Him who dieth not; by whose command

The old order changeth, giving place to the new,

And God fulfils himself in many ways.

If we will believe this,-if we will look on each convulsion of society, however terrible for the time

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