THE MORNING LAND OF LIFE.

I DWELT in a bright land far away

A beautiful morning land-

Where the winds and wild birds sung all day,
And the waves, repeating their roundelay,
Danced over the golden sand.

I know the paths o'er its low, green hills,
The banks where its violets grow,
The osier clumps by its laughing rills,
And the odour its every flower distils,
Though I left it long ago.

I know where the sybil Summer weaves
The charms of her sweetest spell;

Where the soft South wind and the low-voiced leaves
Make a touching plaint, like a sprite that grieves
In the heart of a rose-lipped shell.

I know the cliff where the lichen clings,
And the crimson berries grow;

Where the mists are woven in rainbow rings,
And the cascade leaps with its snowy wings,
To the shadowy pool below.

But alas! for me, its pleasant bowers,

And the radiant bloom they wore,
The birds that sung, and the sunny showers
That kissed the lips of the fair young flowers,
Are never, never more!

WHAT time the mighty moon was gathering light,
Loved paced the thymy plots of Paradise,
And all about him roll'd his lustrous eyes;
When, turning round a Cassia, full in view,
Death, walking all alone beneath a yew,

And talking to himself, first met his sight:

"You must begone," said Death, "These walks are mine." Love wept, and spread his sheeny vans for flight;

Yet, ere he parted, said, "This hour is thine :

Thou art the shadow of life, and as the tree

Stands in the sun, and shadows all beneath,

So in the light of great eternity

Love eminent creates the shade of death;

The shadow passeth when the tree shall fall,
But I shall reign for ever over all."-Tennyson.

UP-HILL.

DOES the road wind up-hill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place ?

A roof?-for, when the slow, dark hours begin, May not the darkness hide it from my face? You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?

Those who have gone before.

Then, must I knock, or call when just in sight? They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?

Yea, beds for ALL who come.-Christina Rosetti.

THE SABBATH.

FRESH glides the brook and blows the gale,
Yet yonder halts the quiet mill;
The whirring wheel, the rushing sail,
How motionless and still!

Six days stern labour shuts the poor From Nature's careless banquet hall; The seventh, an angel opes the door, And, smiling, welcomes all.

A Father's tender mercy gave

This holy respite to the breast, To breath the gale, to watch the wave, And know-the wheel may rest.

Six days of toil, poor child of Cain,

Thy strength thy master's slave must be ; The seventh, thy limbs escape the chainA God hath made thee free!

The fields that yester morning knew Thy footsteps as their serf, survey; On thee, as them, descends the dewThe baptism of the day.

Fresh glides the brook and blows the gale,
But yonder halts the quiet mill;
The whirring wheel, the rushing sail,
How motionless and still!

So rest, O, weary heart! But lo!

The church spire glist'ning up to heaven, To warn thee where thy thoughts should go The day thy God hath given !

Lone through the landscape's solemn rest
The spire its moral points on high;
O, soul, at peace within the breast,
Rise mingling with the sky!

They tell thee in their dreaming school Of power from bold dominion hurl'd, When rich and poor, with juster rule, Shall share the alter'd world.

Alas! since time itself began,

That fable hath but fool'd the hour; Each age that ripens power in man But subjects man to power.

Yet every day in seven, at least,

One bright republic shall be known; Man's world a while hath surely ceased, When God proclaims His own.

Six days may rank divide the poor,
O, Dives, from thy banquet hall;
The seventh, the Father opes the door,
And holds His feast for all!

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.

No. 3.]

[VOL. II.

THE three leading branches of work in the Temperance cause are those named above. The advocates of the movement endeavour, as one branch of their labours, to set in motion the ponderous machinery of Government, and to induce the State to listen to the earnest voice of a large section of the people, who have at heart the temporal and eternal welfare of their brethren among the labouring classes.

In the effort to induce the Legislature to think aright on the subject of the liquor traffic, the friends of the poor are hopeful of success. They know that they can bring economical reasons to bear on the minds in Parliament; and hope, in the end, to teach even Chancellors of the Exchequer that the nation loses more than it gains by the encouragement of the sale of intoxicating drinks.

Hopeful of success as they are, the advocates of Temperance must not despond if matters seem at first to go very much against them. It is no easy matter-no labour of a day-to divert a mighty river from its course, and to overcome the traditional policy of the House of Commons on such a matter.

The Petitions of Abstainers may be ordered to lie on the table, they may not be granted even a first reading; but something has, nevertheless, been done. That the petitions have been presented is a step gained—a step in advance.

In the Dublin University Historical Society, & similar effort, on a smaller scale, has, during the last three or four years, been made. The subject of Total Abstinence has been well ventilated, and the society of Burke, Curran, and Whiteside has, on each division, produced a decreasing majority of votes against the cause.

The gradual influencing of public opinion in its highest court, is, perhaps, the most which we are reasonably entitled to expect. The ponderous engine of the State cannot be diverted to a new road in a moment. But like Sir F. Buxton and Wilberforce in former years, who had the cause of foreign slaves at heart, and succeeded in emanci

so we now, trusting in the same Great Helper, and using the same means, shall, even if it be after long toil, greatly conquer.

But we, as journalists, and thus directors of one section of public opinion in this matter, demand that the advocates of the Permissive Bill, should remember that all these three agencies must be unitedly kept in exercise-energy, perseverance, prayer-none can be omitted. This, our work, must be no spasmodic one; when we have made one strong effort, we must not recoil. The sluggish and resisting mass of the English and Irish people has to be moved, and no sudden blow, but a long, steady, hopeful effort is demanded.

Let us all pass this watchword, "IT MUST BE DONE." As we walk through the streets of our cities, and hear the boisterous crowd carousing in each public-house, and see the whole neighbourhood illuminated with the glare of the gin-palace, let us think of our effort to limit or put down this traffic, and say firmly, "IT MUST BE DONE." As we watch the soldier, and the sailor, the artizan, the shopman, and the labourer, turning in one after another to those sinful doors, and leading with them wretched outcasts from the streets to drink, and drink and be drunken together, let us firmly say, while we think of our public effort to put a stop to all this, "IT MUST BE DONE."

It is said that the repeal of the malt tax in England is to be this session the universal demand of the agricultural interest, and that it is likely to prove a test question on the hustings. By counter-agitation we must parry this blow to the cause of public temperance. It seems very illiberal, perhaps, to resist the cause of free trade in beer and spirits. The Englishman "likes his drop of good beer." The Irishman thinks there is nothing like "the drop of whiskey." But we must cure the dangerous appetites of both, or, at least, render their gratification of them more difficult and more costly.

A word now on social and personal work in the cause. Public meetings and platform addresses are the chief means of carrying on the social work. But we have our warning to give to those who are fond of joining in public demonstrations,

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or of having themselves stirred up by exciting and too true tales of drunkenness and it is this: Take care lest the sentiments excited by eloquent addresses, and heightened by the thrill of sympathy called forth by the presence of a crowded assembly, should evaporate in mere emotion. This is the danger of public meetings, and they do no good save as they lead to personal action. People soon cease even to feel, if they do not lay themselves out to work.

Anxiously would we press on all the readers of our Journal, that it is, after all, their own personal exertion, their individual help, which is needed. Their mission is, to go themselves among the poor victims of intemperance, and lovingly to help them to arise and shake their fetters off. It is to move, angel-like, among the masses, and, regarding them as individuals, to warn them of the end of the course they are pursuing when they spend their evenings and their earnings in publichouses. It is by doing this, that the largest amount of temperance success must be attained. Is there one drunkard in the reader's neighbourhood? Then your mission is to go and save him, rather than to listen to public orators who tell you how those far off may be saved. Are you doing this? If not, you have yet to learn what it is truly to be an advocate of Temperance.

The Shadow of St. Sepulchre's.

A LONDON STORY.

Blowed if I wanted to see Lunnun alone; and if you beant just the young 'un to go with, I'd like to know wur I could find him. Ho there, no noise! Hark! if that beant the "goods" a-roaring along to Easton. That's our chance youngster; good or bad we must go up by that to Lunnun. Now's our time."

It was not long before the goods' train stopped at the shunting. But short as the interval was, Matt's ready wit had formed his plan before it arrived. He pointed out to Jem an empty van which was labelled, London-empty; and when the solitary porter was engaged at the further end of the station, he had dragged Jem after him into a dark recess of the van and hitched the door to again. Both lay quiet.

"Well, I hope we shan't be caught before we get there; it would be an awkward job to be found skulking in the Easton van and not able to say how we got here."

Rushing over the high embankments, roaring over iron bridges, throbbing interminably through tunnels, screaming through stations, whistling through woodlands, the ponderous train threaded the dawn and dashed into the day. With the day came London. With London arose mingled hope and fear in Jem's breast. The empty truck was left standing with a dozen others in a siding just outside the goods' station of the Great Northern Terminus. The youths saw that they could disembark at their leisure. Engine-driver, pointsmen, stokers, porters, were all off to their breakfasts. The station was empty.

"I'm precious hungry, Matt," said Jem. "I could eat a cat in his fur," growled Matt. "Let's be off then," and they quietly left the van and proceeded to leave the station. They came to the gates; they were locked. They looked about and found a side-door by which the porters had gone forth into the streets. The clock of the station struck as they passed the door. The two lads stood in the London streetwhere next? They turned to the left. It was as likely to lead them towards breakfast as if they had turned to the right, and nature was asserting just then this, her universal rule, hunger and thirst.

As the lads moved down the footpath they presented a strange contrast in appearance. Already I have given you an idea of Jemmy Neville's outward appearance, and if you add to the handsome features, and bright eyes, a very good suit of clothes, you will be prepared to Helieve me when I say that the contrast between him and the young hostler in his striped yellow and black vest and shirt sleeves was one sufficiently marked to attract attention.

The contrast, or something else, did evidently attract the eyes of one passer-by at least, who was walking leisurely up to the station, knowing that there was plenty of time to catch the Northern train. With an eye fixed first admiringly on Jem, who talked in an animated voice to his companion, then with a glance, first of curiosity then of surprise and recognition at Matt, this individual stopped short just as the youths were entering an eating-house down the street, shifted his very stout umbrella into his left hand, and with three strides stood by Matt, seized him by the collar, and with an oath dragged him into the house.

"Blast you, take off your hands, or I'll be the end of you, you Jem heard no more, something instantly suggested to him a very close association between that sturdy Yorkshire grip, and the chink of the gold and silver in the pockets of the hopeful Matt. To flee from the company of a thief, and to escape sharing his punishment,

whatever it might be, were Jem's resolves, taken and executed in about two seconds; the third instant found him round the corner, and striding off he knew not whither, through lanes and streets, and under the shadow of high towering warehouses, away from Matt and shame, from Matt and punishment.

CHAPTER IV.

"I have not one single farthing in the world;" such was the uppermost thought in Jemmy's mind. "I will never steal it;" this was the next. What was the third? What must it have been? for, an hour later, we find him again minus a coat which he had worn only a fortnight, and plus five shillings and threepence in his trousers pocket, and a very substantial roll of bread and wedge of cheese in his hands.

Behold James Neville, jun., of Easton, sitting on a barrel in the yard of a brewery, without a coat, with five and threepence as his capital, and the world before him.

I do not pretend to reveal his thoughts. It would take some labour to unravel them, and a very ready pen to write them down. But all he could think of amounted in the end to this. He had gained the "freedom" he had longed for, as far as the removal of all restraint could set him free, and yet he felt he was as helpless as a slave. The tyrant, hunger, stood but a few days' march before him, and would infallibly approach him with rapid strides. "The big world" which he had idolized was not big enough to give him employment that minute, and too big to take the slightest notice of him, as he sat on a beer-barrel and wondered what he should do next.

"My mother, my sisters." I think his lips formed once or twice those tender words-names to which desolation was just beginning to lend a fresh tenderness. "My mother. She is crying for me now; my sisters are heart-broken, perhaps. All Easton is in a fuss. Where am I? They don't know, and I know almost as little myself. Do I wish myself back? No, it would be the old drudgery."

Matt's poison had sunk too deep into Jem. He had shared his companion's life just long enough to have his sensibility dulled, his sense of right and wrong tampered with, and God's precious gift of conscience more than insulted. Alas! a thought less fearfully resolute than that-"Evil, be thou my good"-which Milton puts into the mouth of the fallen angel, but amounting very nearly to that, arose in Jem's mind.

It is marvellous how soon, under the pressure of what seems necessity, our feelings of duty fly away, and what seemed a sin an hour before, now seems almost right, if we can on any plea justify it as necessary. Before half-an-hour's musing on the barrel was over, it seemed to Jem that he must "go through with it.' "When I see the world I'll be off to Easton again, and who will be the worse. Now I should go back like a sneak, with my tail between my legs. They will be glad enough to get a sight of me this day twelve months; but what would they do with me now?" This thought nerved him up. A recklessness of the future gave him a sort of delirious power in the present. He stood up, saying to himself, “Lon

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don seems so hot this Summer weather, that a coat is only a doubtful advantage."

So Jem leaped up and shook himself, and shook off in the action three very important and useful appendages of a man's complex nature-namely, his conscience, his self-respect, and his hat. The fall of the latter on the pavement reminded him that he must cut a very strange figure indeed ; for he felt that to walk about in a good straw hat, with blue ribbons, and bare shirt sleeves, is at least an unusual costume.

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"I say, my man," he said, addressing a labourer with a black cloth cap and brass buttons, who was sauntering into the yard, here's a fair 'swop.' I'll give you that hat for your cap and sixpence."

"Cute young shaver," thought the other, "perhaps the sixpence had better go the other way.' And then he replied straight out, “I haint the man to deny a neighbour a hadvantage, so 'ere's rather a neat vest for your'n and two bob."

"I don't want to take anything but the cap. Here, take the hat and give us that old cap. You get the best of the bargain," said Jem.

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man.

'Now, I'd just like to know this," answered the "Who are you? What brought you 'ere? Are you hon to stand treat? If so, I'm your man. Do step hover the way to the 'Hoyster in 'Arness' and treat me to a pot, and you shall have another-if you can pay for it."

The die was cast; Jem tasted the liquor, poor miserable stuff as it was. It was the first step on that path which leads to ruin. Jem was not seventeen, but before three p.m. that July day he had poured down his throat more than he had ever tasted in a twelvemonth at home, and reeling out of the tavern he found he had neither hat to his head, waistcoat to his back, nor one penny in his pocket; the fact of the matter being that the neighbourly owner of the cap had sent him adrift just at the moment when the score equalled the sum which he had abstracted from the pocket of the muddled boy.

And Jem reeled into the street, wandered on, on, on, till it grew darker and darker, and finally with a headache that nearly drove him mad, and limbs which refused any longer to support him, sank down under an archway, and fell asleep.

CHAPTER V.

You must go back now to the opening scene of my story. It is two o'clock in the morning of the seventh of August. The city is wrapped in stillness. All the busy traffic of the day is whirled away. Warehouses are locked up from the outside. Quills and ink are lying about ten thousand desks; and the great genius of Co." which by day is omnipresent in the city of London is nowhere to be seen. The men who make up firms and parterships are now sleeping in their West End mansions or their Southwark houses. The Sunday which is beginning now will give time for a double coating of dust to gather on everything within doors and without; but beyond that there will be little to mark its occurrence in the city; though the churches are innumerable, worshippers are few. The great fire of London was very lavish in its consumption of Church-oak; but it stopped just at the northern wall of

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Sepulchre's Church, by Pie-corner, and left the old, half-Gothic, half-Perpendicular structure standing as one of its landmarks.

Here to the right stands St. Sepulchre's, and so near does Newgate frown, that the condemned felon in those black cells can hear the grating of the sexton's rope against the stones between each shock of the heavy knell that calls gaping hundreds to his execution.

St. Sepulchre's is a church of grim associations. Its name, to begin with, has as dreary a sound as any other name I am acquainted with. It is a church full of old memories of hangings at Tyburne for theft and libel; a melancholy church, whose sad fate it has been, for many a score of years, to hear the groans of the fettered victims of unjust laws. Nay, more, some of those graves there that look so like all other graves, entomb murderers, thieves, and pickpockets. Long ago the people of the neighbourhood were too choice to let the dust of murderers and felons mingle with their own innocent ashes'; and we read that in 1585, the body of a certain John Awfield was refused a last resting place here, although his capital crime had been one of which, in these days, the law scarcely takes cognizance; he was arraigned for sparcinge abroad certain lewd, sedicious, and trayterous bookes," and suffered for it by his neck.

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In later years, old St. Sepulchre's got over its scruples, and was even liberal enough to grant tombs to murderers; and here is Sarah Malcome's grave, who was executed for cold-blooded murder in 1773.

Strange are the connections between Newgate and this church of the middle ages. For many a long year successive sextons have condoled (for one pound six and eightpence a time), with the poor felons as they drove to death, and have tolled the big bell in their grief. For many a year the bellman of the place used to pace beneath Newgate walls, and make Skinner Street and Snowhill echo with his chant

"All you that in condemned cell do lie,
Prepare ye, for to-morrow ye must die;
Watch all and pray, the hour is drawing near,
When ye before the Almighty shall appear.
Examine well yourselves, in time repent,
That ye may not t' eternal flames be sent;

And when Saint Sepulchre's bell to-morrow tolls,

The Lord above have mercy on your souls.
Past twelve o'clock !"

This good office of the bellman was completed next morning by the same functionary. When the cart passed the portal of the church he bade it stop, and tolling his bell, desired the people to join with him in praying for the culprits' souls, an office which the beadle of the Merchant Tailor's Hall (at a handsome salary), saw that he well fulfilled.*

The last pious and useful office which St. Sepulchre's did for the poor prisoner, was to hand him a choice nosegay for his button hole, to cheer the way to Tyburne. Sixteen-stringed Jack, the murderer of Dr. Bell, in Gunnersbury Lane, was the last culprit who bore this adornment to his execution.

I suppose the old church deemed that it did its auty to its neighbour Newgate, and the wretches there, by these enactments, but I cannot help feeling thankful that a chaplain's earnest words

*Munday's Stowe. Edn. of 1618, p. 25.

and pious counsels, should now take the place of the bellman, the watchman, and the nosegay of the past.

Here from Newgate to St. Sepulchre's, from St. Sepulchre's to Newgate, paced Jem that night. A couple of weeks had passed he knew not how. Life had been kept in the lad until now, thanks to the bright buttons on his waistcoat, and the new gloss of his trousers, but this sort of living could not go on much longer.

He had slept in the open air each night; he had gone about" seeing the big world," each day, and a wonderful world, no doubt, it did appear to him, in spite of the small share in its traffics or its pleasures which he had taken. His eyes had feasted on many a new sight. He had seen the dome of St. Paul's from within; he had also seen the same side of the penny theatre of the New Cut. He had hung over London bridge, and tried to count the spires of the city. He had been down to the docks and had been bewildered with the forest of masts there. He had been among the dust heaps of Spitalfields. He had groped his way among the alleys of St. Giles.

He had now almost made up his mind to begin to seek for something to do. He had begun badly enough, doubtless-drunk the first day of his London life-but that should not occur again. Now he would work. Easy words. But those who are older than he, and better acquainted with London life, know that the supply of labour in every sphere of life, far outbids the demand, and that it is nearly as hard to find an empty crossing to sweep as a vacant clerkship in Whitehall to fill, or a vacant borough to contest.

What brought him to St. Sepulchre's that night? I don't know-unless it had been his evil genius, which seems mysteriously to track out some, and re-appears again and again mischievously, just in those junctures in our history when we are on the point of reforming, blotting the page that lies before us, as we turn down a new leaf.

So it was with Jem. The clock had just struck two. The echo had pealed all over the neighbourhood, and other clocks, many and various, caught the sounds, till, if all London did not know it was two o'clock, it was not the fault of the churches.

Jem hears a strange noise up high on the black wall of Newgate prison. Cautiously he halts to look in the dim light of the gas lamps as yet unaided by the August dawn. Twenty or thirty feet above him he sees a pair of dangling legs protruded from a grated window. Then a body fol lows, then an arm, a head, and in a moment more a rope runs down; there is a shuffling of feet against the rough wall, a heavy fall, a splash of blood, a horrid groan, and all is still. What is it?

(To be continued.)

THE METROPOLITAN POLICE TEMPERANCE SOCIETY Have just issued their first annual report, and it is hopeful and encouraging. The society was formed! on the 17th September, 1862, and it commenced with five members; the number is now eighty, and besides these there are thirty of the members' wives and children belonging to it. Seven public meetings have been held during the year, and a large number of tracts have been circulated among the police of the N Division.