N order to explain the fore

IN

going statement to my readers, it is necessary that I should take them back to the time when Joel Cray left Priestley.

It seems a hard thing to say, but there is no doubt it is true, that the lower orders, as a rule, do not feel the happiness of loving, nor the misery of losing love, so keenly as their brethren of the upper class. The old-fashioned idea that virtue and simplicity are oftener to be found in the country than the town, and amongst the poor than the rich, has long since exploded. Simple the half-heathen villagers may still remain; but it is oftener the hideous simplicity of open vice, so general that its followers have not even the grace left to be ashamed of it, than the innocence that thinks no evil. If the inhabitants of our great towns are vicious, they at least try to hide it. Even with the virtuous poor the idea of love (as we think of love) seldom enters into their calculations on marriage. They see a girl whom they admire, who seems 'likely' in their eyes, and, after their rough fashion, they commence to court her, 'keep company' with her for a few years, at the end of which time perhaps she falls in with

VOL. XXV.-NO. CXLV.

a

' likelier' young man; and then if the first suitor has been really in earnest, a few blows are exchanged between the rivals, separation ensues, and he looks out for another partner. The women are even more phlegmatic than the men. They regard marriage simply as a settlement in life, and any one appears to be eligible who can place them in a house of their own. If the first comer is faithless, they cry out about it loudly and publicly for a day or two, and then it is over; and they also are free to choose again. I suppose this state of things has its advantages. They do not love so deeply or intellectually as we do, consequently they separate with greater ease. Disappointment does not rebound on them with so crushing an effect, and I believe for that very reason they make the more faithful wives and husbands of the two. They expect little, and little satisfies them; and they have to work and struggle to procure the necessaries of life. There is no time left to make the worst of their domestic troubles.

Yet we cannot take up the daily papers, and read of the many crimes that are committed through jealousy, without feeling that some of the class alluded to must be

B