the ロード THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT. was delivered by Mr. Pyper. The Rev. W. A. Russell, in an DROMORE.-Tuesday evening, November 24, at a meeting DERVOCK.-Tuesday evening, 24th Nov., a large meeting was held in the Presbyterian Church, Dervock. The Rev. A. Field presided, and Mr. Pyper lectured. After the lecture, the Rev. John Beatty cordially moved a resolution approving of a prohibitory law. Mr. James Nevin seconded the resolution, which was carried unanimously. A vote of thanks to Mr. Pyper for his eloquent lecture passed by acclamation, and was conveyed, in highly complimentary terms, by the chairman. DONOUGH MORE.-Thursday evening, 17th December, a very DUBLIN.-For a long time a coffee palace, as a check to the ENNISKILLEN BAND OF HOPE.-Monday evening, Dec. 7, She is FINVOY.-Friday 27th Nov., a numerously attended meet- KNOCKANBOY.-Wednesday, 25th Nov., Mr. Pyper addressed KILREA.-Monday evening, 30th Nov., a meeting of the a resolution, pledging the meeting to support the Permissive KILRAUGHTS.-Tuesday evening, 1st Dec., a large meeting MOSSIDE.-Thursday, 26th Nov., Mr. Pyper, in company MILLTOWN, BANBRIDGE.-Friday evening, 27th November, the members of the Milltown Total Abstinence Society held their tenth anniversary in the school-room there. The meeting was large and respectable. The president of the society, John Smyth, jun., Esq., occupied the chair, and introduced the speakers. Mr. Wm. Church, Secretary of the Irish Temperance League, first addressed the meeting in a very able and argumentative speech. He was followed by the Rev. R. Lewers, Temperance Agent for the General Assembly, who also delivered a pathetic and interesting address. A motion in favour of the Permissive Bill, moved by Mr. Church, and seconded by Mr. Thomas Dickson, was unanimously carried. Thanks were conveyed to the speakers, the ladies, and the stewards by the Rev. J. Rutherford. Several names were added to the Temperance roll.-W. S. MOIRA.-Friday evening, 11th December, a meeting was held in the Parish School-house, Moira. There was a good attendance. The Rev. J. Harding presided, and Mr. Pyper lectured on the occasion. A resolution pledging the meeting to support the Permissive Bill was unanimously passed, on the motion of the Rev. J. Carey, seconded by the Rev. S. Graham, after which some new names were added to the Total Abstinence list, and the meeting separated. NEWRY.-Friday evening, Nov. 13, the usual fortnightly meeting of the Presbyterian Band of Hope was held in the Trevor Hill School. There was a large attendance. The proceedings were rendered interesting by the presentation of the poetical works of Longfellow, beautifully bound, to a lady of the committee, as a slight acknowledgment of her assiduous labours to promote the prosperity of the Band. PORTADOWN.-Thursday evening, 19th November, a meeting of the Portadown Temperance Society was held in the Town-Hall. The Rev. James Young presided on the occasion, and the audience was large and respectable. Mr. Pyper lectured in his usual impressive style, commending Total Abstinence as a duty, and condemning the liquor traffic as a national sin. At the close of the lecture, Mr. T. Shillington, Secretary, ably moved a resolution pledging the society to exert its influence in support of the Permissive Bill to be introduced into the House of Commons next session of Parliament by Wilfrid Lawson, Esq., member for Carlisle. The motion was seconded in an excellent speech by the Rev. L. D. Elliott, and enthusiastically carried. The hearty thanks of the meeting were then accorded to the lecturer, on the motion of Mr. Wilson, seconded by the Rev. Mr. Raynor, and the interesting proceedings were terminated by the doxology and benediction. On Friday afternoon, 20th November, Mr. Pyper lectured to a large Band of Hope meeting in Mr. R. Ferguson's handsome National School-house, Thomas Street, Portadown. The Rev. J. Donald occupied the chair, and several new members were enrolled at the close of the lecture. On the motion of Mr. Ferguson, seconded by Mr, W. J. Corry, the warmest thanks of the meeting were teudered to Mr. Pyper. STRABANE TEMPERANCE ASSOCIATION.-On Monday evening last, 14th December, a lecture was delivered in connection with this association, in the Town Hall, Strabane, by John Pyper, Esq., M.C.P., agent of the Irish Temperance League. Subject-"The Bible a Total Abstinence Book-the various Hebrew and Greek terms translated wine in our English version made plain by diagrams." The chair was occupied by the Rev. W. A. Russell, president of the association. There was a good attendance. The proceedings having been opened by prayer, the chairman appropriately introduced the lecturer, who, on coming forward, was warmly received; and in an address, characterized by much argumentative power and eloquence, demonstrated to the apparent satisfaction of all present, that the Bible, in its principles and its precepts, is strictly a total abstinence book. At the close of the lecture the Rev. J. A. Chancellor, vice-president, gave an encouraging statement of the progress made by the society during the past year, hoping that the able and unanswerable arguments contained in Mr. Pyper's lecture, would be the means of causing a much greater success to attend the operations of the society during the ensuing year. He concluded an excellent and telling address by moving a resolution in support of the Permissive Bill. The resolution was seconded by Mr. R. Smyth, secretary, and The interesting proceedings were carried unanimously. then terminated by the benediction.-Londonderry Standard. Grave Sweet Melody: A Choice Collection of Poetry, chiefly Modern, Selected and Arranged by S. B. LOUDON, Liverpool. PREFATORY NOTE. THE Compiler, in presenting the readers of the League Journal with the first instalment of a work which he trusts will give them as much pleasure to read as it gives him to prepare, desires to express his best acknowledgments to the Rev. Dr. Bonar, Rev. Dr. Macduff, the Author of the "Three Wakings and Other Poems," the Translator of "Hymns from the Land of Luther," and many other well-known authors, who, with Christian courtesy and kindness altogether their own, have given him permission to copy from their writings. The authorship of a large number of the " pieces" which he has prepared for publication he has been quite unable to discover, and consequently could not apply for liberty to make use of them. He begs to add that it is not his design to insert only such poems as are but little known. He has not felt justified in excluding from his MS. those which are universal favourites. THE CHARM OF SYMPATHY. A HERMIT from the banks of Trent, Far from the world's bewildering maze, To humbler scenes of calm content If haply from his guarded breast The wisdom of the unerring Sway; In Power's all-brilliant robes appear; Indulge in Fortune's golden dream; Then ask thy breast if Peace be there. No! it shall tell thee, Peace retires, If once of her loved friends deprived; Contentment calm, subdu'd desires, And happiness from Heaven derived. For what though Fortune's frown deny With wealth to bid the sufferer live? Yet Pity's hand can oft supply A balm she never knew to give. Be thine those feelings of the mind That wake at honour's, friendship's call; Benevolence, that unconfin'd, Extends her liberal hand to all. By Sympathy's untutored voice Be taught her social laws to keep; "Rejoice with them that do rejoice, And weep with them that weep." The heart that bleeds for others' woes Shall feel each selfish sorrow less; His breast who happiness bestows Reflected happiness shall bless. Edmund Cartwright. CHURCH-YARD MUSINGS. SOLEMNLY, sadly, sullen, and strange, Something of sorrow, and something of change And the ivy taps on the mouldering stone, And all things seem to sigh 'Alas!' And we all must soon lie low! It will and it must, but not for long; Hogg's Instructor. THY BROTHER'S BURDEN. O BEAR thy brother's burden, When sorrow wrings his aching breast For kindly sympathy. For sweet and holy is the balm That kindly words impart; And often will their charm avail To soothe the weary heart. Turn not thine ear unkindly From griefs that others feel; But throw o'er paths, that else were dark, And, oh be sure thy gentle words Are echoed from above. How grandly solemn is this arch of night! With what a placid and effulgent face The mild moon travels 'mid the golden isles, Doubt the Designer, sneer at the design, In these, Thy mighty works, no evidence of Thee. Chambers's Journal. TO OUR READERS. A new tale, "The Shadow of St. Sepulchre's, a London story," will be commenced in our next number. THE IRISH Temperance League Journal. No. 2.] FEBRUARY, 1864. The Shadow of St. Sepulchre's. A LONDON STORY. CHAPTER I. ECHOES, but not the noonday echoes of a London street, where no moment's pause from dawn to night is left to rest the ears of weary shopmen, or suffer the sad wail of the hurdy-gurdy which that poor girl winds so patiently, to be heard for so much as an instant. Echoes, but not of the splashing tide in cool caves, where the stalactite drips from above, and the seaweed weeps at low water and draggles on the sand. Echoes, not of the minute gun, far away from lighthouse or lifeboat, where the hopeless struggle for safety lasts the whole night long, and only the gleam of the lightning shows the spot where life is being wasted with so lavish a hand, and only the burst of the shattering thunder replies to the summons for help that the lonely seaman flings to the sky, and sea, and distant land. No, the echoes are roused by the solitary tramp of a friendless boy in the shadow of the huge church of St. Sepulchre's. There, in the heart of London, each footfall has its reply; and there is no other sound but the chime of the quarters from those ancient bells, and the boom of the hour, as it strikes two far up as it seems in the clouds above. And he trembled at the echoes, this lonely lad, so far away from home, and so unaccustomed to the life that now lay before him. To fight his way against every obstacle in a city where it seems all is a downward or an upward course; where, child of the country, you must either rise with the flow or fall with the ebb-tide of life, and where there is no standing still, for you must eat or starve; and in order to eat you must labour, or learn beg, or steal. If you labour you may rise; if you you beg or steal you will fall. How shall to labour when all are rivals, save the silk-decked ladies, and the black-coated lords, who whirl the mud from their wheels over your shrinking form in the West End, and the quiet, but terrible dead, who sleep by St. Sepulchre's black walls beside you, or seem to shudder in their shrouds and answer the gibbering ghosts which fancy calls forth to frighten you as you turn that corner and pass from darkness into something blacker still. And all this time his mother and sisters have been hunting for the missing one through lanes and fields, calling his loved name loudly in farm-yard and copse, and promising more than forgiveness if he would but return. How vainly! he is far away now, farther than they could think possible, for the express train has [VOL. II. wings to bear fugitives from the hated drudgery of Weep on, then, at home, fair sisters and Oh! well had it been for him had that first step never been taken; well for him had he never met that tempter, and heard that voice which always called up the lowest principles of his nature, and made the battle with the invisible foe ten times more terrible when backed up by such incarnate sin as this! It is necessary to sketch the circumstances which led Jemmy Neville to the position in which he stood in the midnight which divided the 6th and 7th of August, 1853. His father had been master of a work-house in the East riding of Yorkshire, and his mother had exercised, ever since her marriage, the office of matron. Four children had sprung from their union. Mary and Jane were older than Jemmy, and Margaret was the youngest of all. From their parents each child inherited that face of noble beauty and straight-forward honesty which recommends its owner to others in any walk of life; whose eyes in all the country beamed as brightly and spoke as eloquently as Mary's? and Jemmy could never have been mistaken for any but her brother. The same long lashes, the same soft depth, the same occasional fire marked both, and promised a life of something more than common to each. Could such children have been formed but to pass unnoticed through the world? Their parents said no, and said it truly. But men and women can make themselves notorious as well as known, and oftentimes the same natural gifts, according as they are cultivated, neglected, or perverted, lead to success or failure to honest triumph, or to the convict cell. 66 Happier, on the whole, perhaps, is he who remains in the lower walks of life, in manly independence and daily toil, than his brother who Lives to clutch the golden keys, To mould a mighty State's decrees, Or shape the whisper of a throne!' What restless nights is not his simple brother spared! How many more thorns are oftentimes concealed in a pillow of down than in a bed of straw! Misery as well as sin comes from within, and circumstances have less to say to our failure The mind is its own or success than we think place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." 46 Jemmy Neville had little opportunity for developing any of the talents with which Nature had so liberally endowed him in the narrow round 18 THE SHADOW OF ST. SEPULCHRE'S. of boyish sports and duties which his position as only son of the master of a union workhouse in a not destitute district of England provided; and yet that position was not without its advantages in one way. His quick apprehension detected traits of character of every kind in the varied train of poor who passed from year to year beneath his father's care. There was a mass of paupers, the standing inhabitants of the workhouse, who never changed, except to grow older; and there was, in addition to this, a floating population of itinerant beggars and suspicious-looking tramps, who flowed like a turbid current through the place, and left their stain upon the minds of the rest, who, perhaps, knew less of sin than of misery, until they gradually became more and more tainted, and the workhouse became little more than a moral pest-house. Beneath the surface, smooth and fair enough, owing to the habits of inexorable order and submission into which James Neville, senior, had tutored his subjects, seethed a moral plague which could not but leave its stain on an innocent boy's mind. For his father, with absolute confidence in a loving son, and with a natural unsuspicion of evil, suffered Jemmy to associate too freely with some of the youths of the place, for want of other companionship, and even employed him on frequent occasions to remain all night on the watch in one of the wards when circumstances called for a vigilant oversight of some of the temporary inhabitants of the poorhouse. Deep drank Jemmy of the spring of evil counsel. Often did he taste of the tree of knowledge of evil, but not, I fear, of good; and there was a certain shadowing of the earlier brightness of that noble young brow; and just a trace of insincerity in those deep eyes which might well have aroused the fears of a less suspecting parent. But James Neville was blind to his son's deeper life; and, when the father celebrated Jemmy's sixteenth birth day, and presented him on that occasion with an old silver watch of his own as a reward for his diligent attention, both to his book-keeping and his other official duties, he felt himself a happy father, and had no objection to being called a proud one. A fever broke out in one of the wards, and as is too frequently the sad result, the deaths were fearfully numerous. James Neville himself was borne to the grave with many another. But no grave covered a form so respected as his; no tears so hot and bitter dropped on the new laid sod, as those of the mother and daughters, who were left to mourn his loss. Jemmy had, for some time, refused the confidence of his sisters, and his mother's influence was not strong. He longed for a liberty of which he foresaw no prospect, if still retained in connection with his past position; and circumstances which will be detailed in the next chapter, gave him an excuse for escaping from what he termed the drudgery of an honest avocation as clerk to the new master. CHAPTER II. Among the paupers of the class of tramps was a keen-eyed low-browed youth of 18, who soon acquired an influence over the country youth, which shaped the whole history of his life. Matt Long might have sat for a picture of a fallen angel, not that he bore much of the ways of the angel, but he made up for that by being most emphatically stamped as fallen. And yet there was something, even in this child of sin, which could fascinate, in its own dark way. There is a fascination in a serpent's eye, else why did Eve first listen to her tempter? There was a magnetism in those cavernous deep eyes which made the eyes of James Neville leap in answer to each wily insinuation of evil, that Matt propounded as if in soliloquy. I never heard how the friendship between the two boys sprung up, if such acquaintanceship or association for evil can be dignified by the sacred name. But this I know, that about three weeks before the time of our first scene in London, Jemmy was appointed to pass the night in Ward B., to keep an eye on a ruffianly-looking man, unshaved, and threatening in aspect as a thunder cloud, who had claimed the law's permission to seek a night's refuge in the Workhouse of Easton. Jemmy was not afraid of his task. He had lived among low paupers and known their ways too long for that. But there was something in the savage outcast which gave at once a deeper interest, and perhaps a more than usual danger, to the task which the new master set the lad. His instructions were simply to watch and keep his eye from time to time on the stranger, and, should any symptom of evil intention be evinced, to pull a bell, by the door, which rang loudly both in the room of the master and of the two porters-sturdy men-who could at once hurry in and prevent evil. Do not think these precautions in an English workhouse unnecessary. There are few places where human nature may be met with under more forbidding aspects than there; and when a stranger voluntarily seeks its shelter, and at the same time presents such an aspect as this uncombed visitant exhibited, protectors of others may be pardoned for taking unusual precautions to avoid mishaps. But, in the present case, nothing came of all the anticipated evil. The shaggy stranger laid down and coiled himself up like a bear, and snored for ten hours vociferously, doing no injury save that, for which perhaps he could not be held altogether responsible. And yet injury, deep and irreparable, was done in "Ward B" that night. A long double rowof iron stretchers extended from end to end of the sleeping-room. More than half of them had their occupants, the greater number of whom were sound asleep. Two crouched over the remains of the little fire which had been lighted, not for warmth but for minor cooking purposes. These warmed up some miserable coffee in a can, and, mixing with it some yellow clayey-looking sugar, proceeded to supper by the light of the fire, and with the accompaniments of a crust of brown bread and a bit of the rind of a cheese as solids, and a loud chorus of snores in every key on the gamut, as musical accompaniments. At twelve o'clock the light of the fire died away, the supper-loving paupers slunk off to bed, and all was quiet for a while but for the nasal chorus which kept up a rough lullaby to the sleepers. There were fair boys there too, in the midst of all the degradation. Children of sin, but innocent in heart and fair, if not unsoiled, in brow. THE SHADOW OF ST. SEPULCHRE'S. Twin children, who never owned a father, and whose mother, a worn-out but once beautiful young woman, slept in another ward. In the dim glimmer of that July midnight there was yet light enough to touch the golden-haired twins with an innocent brightness, as if the few faint rays loved to linger there, and rest on the heads of those young sleepers, in the midst of all that moral darkness. An hour had not elapsed when a figure, which might have been taken for white-robed in that slight light, crept from one of the far corners of the room, and, passing by Jemmy, who sat on a stool by the door, with his head against the panels, motioned him to follow, which he did. Matt sat down by the fireside. It was still warm; but indeed the ward, with so many sleepers, could seldom have been called cold. Jim, thot lod won't stir a bit, I should say. He looked pretty well wore out afore he led his bones on that domm'd stretcher. I wish I had a pipe, youngster; nothing warms a fellow's cockles like thot." "No one's allowed to smoke here, Matt Long; and if you began, I'd have to report it to old Evans in the morning, so I think you'd better not try." But Matt just wanted to prove the mental strength of his young ally, so he only replied to the expostulation of Jem by coolly taking out a short clay, and deliberately cutting up and rolling a bit of choice pigtail, he loaded, and lighted, and puffed up the chimney in silence. Why the devil did you do that?" began Jem, "because I dont want to report you to Evans; there's no use getting a row down on you before you're a fortnight in the house." "Report it, and sneak any thing you like, young 'un," was the only reply, and Matt smoked away as an old hand only could; and when he had knocked out the last ashes on the hearthstone, and thrust back the still warm pipe into the pocket of the waistcoat which he had thrown over his shirt, he sat still. After a bit Jemmy began, "I wish you'd get back to bed." "I'd as lief stop where I be," growled Matt. Bed's the proper place for all of you paupers at one o'clock in the morning," retorted Jem, with a spice of irritation in his words, caused, no doubt, by the comparatively small amount of official respect with which he seemed to have inspired the hopeful Mr. Long. "Tell 'ee wot, young Maisther, ye'd better not be coming it that dodge over the loike of I. I was ris an ostler at Richmond, and there's mony a jontleman tipped me a soit more'n they gev others. I war respicted and vallied and no mistake; and wat's a young whipcord o' the loike of you doin' wid comin' the strong and terrible over me.' Thus he vented his natural feelings; but Matt Long had artificial feelings as well, and it was not yet explained what brought him to his present position. Matt talked broad enough brogue when he expressed his natural feelings, but he slipped into another dialect as easily as he would change his coat, if he had had any coat to change, when he came on deeper ground. Nature, it is commonly said, lies deeper down than anything else in a man, but if Matt's nature "James Neville, don't you say a word till I tell a pauper. I came here because I know'd you was "It's not what you call 'divilment' that I want. It's to be free. I long to get out of the drudgery of this place. I'd be glad to do anything to get away. If I have fine eyes and a handsome face, and what you choose to call cuteness, what's the good of them all here to me? I want liberty. Let me once get out into the big world, and fight my way up against the tide, and labour and deny myself and Oh, have mercy on us, are you coming it that style, Jem Neville. Yes, go out and work. I'm sure when you know the pleasure of workin', and toilin', and up at five in the mornin', breakfast at eight, and bread and cheese and swipes at one, and sweatin' on till six, and may be sweatin' on further till dark, ye'd soon gev up the tile, if that's wot you're after. Tell 'ee, tile's not divarshin; and I don't care if there's cracked bones in it if it's divarshin, not that I'm again' a decent koind of divarshin. I'd rather crack a window nor a 'ed; I'd rather break a lock nor an 'art; but still divarshin is my way, and I came 'ere for divarshin. Blow it, w'y do ye be wishin' for tile. Look ye 'ere," and Matt went to the bed and fetched his trousers, and pulled out a leather bag "Dom it, out of his pocket and just showed Jim the glitter of two gold pieces and several silver ones. I didn't come 'ere for nothink." This was another The devil whispered to Jem-the devil always spoke when Matt Long's lips moved-and so Jem said, "I will," and he did not know what he said. Those eyes of Matt's must have had something in them that others could understand when they chose to speak. The devil spoke, and Jem obeyed rather than agreed. He did not obHe lay down-his clothes on. serve that Long drew on his trousers, and thus had all his clothes on, ready for a move. Jem laid there with his eyes wide open, for an |