siastic melancholy were the prominent features of his character His affections were tranquil but obstinate to excess. He formed his attachments with caution and timidity, but when once formed they were cordial and permanent. In the midst of a tumultuous crowd he walked in solitude. Wrapped in his own visionary ideas, he was often e stranger to the world about him; and sensible of his own deficiency in the knowledge of mankind, he scarcely ever ventured an opinion of his own, and was apt to pay an unwarrantable deference to the judgment of others. Though far from being weak, no man was more liable to be governed; but when conviction had once Jentered his mind, he became firm and decisive; equally courageous to combat an acknowledged prejudice, or to die for a new one. As he was the third prince of his house, he had no likely prospect of succeeding to the sovereignty. His ambition had never been awakened; his passions had taken another direction. Contented to find himself independent of the will of others, he never enforced his own as a law; his utmost wishes did not soar beyond the peaceful quietude of a private life, free from care. He read much but without discrimination. As his education had been neglected, and as he had early entered the career of arms, his understanding had never been fully matured. Hence the knowledge he afterwards acquired served but to increase the chaos of his ideas, because it was built on an unstable foundation He was a Protestant, as all his family had been by birth, but not by investigation, which he had never attempted although at one period of his life he had been an enthusiast in its cause He had never as far as came to my knowledge been a freemason One evening we were, as usual, walking by ourselves, well masked, in the square of St. Mark.-It was growing late, and the crowd was dispersing, when the Prince observed a mask which followed us everywhere. This mask was an Armenian and walked alone. We quickened our steps, and endeavoured to baffle him by repeatedly altering our course. It was in vain, the mask was always close behind us." You have had no intrigue here, I hope," said the Prince at last, "the husbands of Venice are dangerous." "I do not know a single lady in the place," was my answer.-"Let us sit down here and speak German," said he, "I fancy we are mistaken for some other persons." We sat down upon a stone bench, and expected the mask would have passed by. He came directly up to us, and took his seat by the side of the Prince. The latter took out his watch, and rising at the same time, addresssd me thus in a loud voice in French: "It is past nine. Come we forget we are to be at the Louvre." This speech he only invented in order to deceive the mask as to onr route-"Nine," repeated the latter in the same language, in a slow and expressive voice, " congratulate yourself, my Prince," (calling him by his real name); "he died at nine." In saying this he rose and went away. We looked at each other in amazement.-"Who is dead ?" said the Prince at length after a long silence.-"Let us follow him," replied I, "and demand an explanation." We searched every corner of the place but the mask wes nowhere to be found. We returned to our Hotel disappointed. The Prince spoke not a word to me the whole way; he walked apart by himself, and appeared to be greatly agitated, which he afterwards confessed to me was the case.-Having reached home, he began at length to speak :" Is it not laughable," said he, "that a madman should have the power thus to disturb a man's tranquility in two or three words ?" We wished each other a good night; and, as soon as 1 was in my own apartment, I noted down in my pocket-book the day and the hour when this adventure happened. It was on a Thursday. The next evening the Prince said to me, "Suppose we go to the square of St. Mark. and seek for our mysterious Armenian? I long to see this comedy unravelled." I consented. We walked in the square till elevent. The Armenian was [nowhere to be seen. We repeated our walk the four following evenings, and each time with the same success. On the sixth evening, as we went out of the hotel, it occurred to me, whether designedly or otherwise I cannot recollect, to tell the servants where we might be found.in case we should be inquired for. The Prince remarked my precaution and approved of it with a smile. We found the square of St. Mark very much crowded.-Scarcely had we advanced thirty steps, when I perceived the Armenian who was pressing rapidly through the crowd, and seemed to be in search of some one. We were just approaching him, when įBaron Fone of the Prince's retinue, came up to us quite breathless, and delivered to the Prince a letter: "It is sealed with black," said he, "and we supposed from this that it might contain matters of importance." I was struck as with a thunderbolt. The Prince went near a torch, and began to read. "My Cousin is dead!" exclaimed he." When ?" inquired I, anxiously interrupting him. He looked again into the letter. "Last Thursday night at nine." We had not recovered from our surprise when the Armenian stood before us, "You are known here, my Prince" said he, "Hasten to your hotel. You will find there the deputies from the Seuate. Do not hesitate to accept the honour they intend to offer you. Baron F- -forgot to tell you that your remitances are arrived."-He disappeared among the crowd. We hastened to our hotel, and found everything as the Armenian had told us. Three noblemen of the republic were waiting to pay their respects to the Prince, and to escort him in state to the Assembly, where the first nobility of the city were ready to receive him. He had hardly time enough to give me a hint to sit up for him till his return. (To be continued.) THE MORN IS BREAKING. BY M. C. COOKE. Through the dark gloom a paleness glides over the east, THE unhappy disciples of Antichrist who have been praying to get rid of Walter Cooper, must "wait a little longer" as he will remain in Manchester for another month at least. Lectures in the Hall of Science, to-morrow, Sunday 7th of Oct., will be in the morning at eleven, on Moral and Social Philosophy as developed in the writings of Charles Dickens. In the evening at half-past slx, on the Character and Writings of Lord Byron. We are almost afraid to praise friend Cooper any more lest the Hall should be turned out of window, by tremendous crowds struggling to get into it. Last Sunday the audience was so numerous that money takers grew frightened and so great was the the excitement amongst money payers, that many of thempaid less than they intended. What to-morrow will bring forth God only knows. Published every Saturday, at the Hall of Science, Camp Field and sold by J. R. COOPER, Bridge Street, Manchester, and GEORGE SMITH, Greengate, and 10, Regent Road, Salford. Watson. Queen's Head Passage, London. Printed by GEORGE SMITH, Bookseller and Stationer, Greengate, and 10, Regent Road, Salford. Single numbers forwarded to any part of the country, on receipt of two postage stamps. THE LANCASHIRE BEACON. No. 11.] Responsible Editor,-CHARLES SOUTHWELL, HALL OF SCIENCE, MANCHESTER. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY. OUR CHALLENGE TO THE BISHOP OF MANCHESTER. FROM the challenge (a copy of which will be found in another part of this number) to our Right Reverend Father in God, the Bishop of Manchester, it would seem that we have no undue respect for men in high places. Nor have we; but let it not be supposed we would behave rudely to that or any class of men, unless convinced that they deserve a rough handling. It is only when satisfied they abuse the influence inseparable from their high station that we abuse them, if indeed the language of truth can fitly be called abusive. For the respectable we entertain profoundest respect, but for political knaves we have nothing respectful even though they may plead a chartered right to play the game of imposture and strut about in full canonicals. That Clothes make the man, the want of them the fellow, Is no doctrine of ours, and therefore we cannot say The rest is leather and prunella. Nor do we think great men when greatly wrong should be allowed to go on greatly sinning without rebuke or hindrance. At a late notorious meeting whence The Man from London was taken by policemen he said to the Bishop of Manchester, Sir, you are acting a most ungentlemanly part, and were you fifty times a Bishop I would tell you so— -and we are ready to defend him for exhibiting (as Betsy Prig of the Courier will have it) his combined Cockney impudence and ignoance. His reverend Father in Godship acted most irreverendly upon that occasion-not only did he resort to knock-down argument by way of silencing opposition to as shameful and dirty a job as ever hire. ling Whig was engaged in, but to escape the humiliation of defeat told rank falsehood, for when the resolu tion was put he declared there was a majority in its favor whereas, in point of fact, more held up their hands against than for that resolution. We told him so, and ouly when he persisted in stating what was not true did The Man from London rebuke him. It will not do for the admirers of that distinguished Bishop to put in the false plea that we are Infidel, and therefore upon the fine old popish principle no faith should be kept with us, as if we were his Satanic Majesty himself we have it on the highest authority that telling the truth is the best possible way of shaming us. We are confident that by truth telling we shall most effectually shame false preachers whether they be Bishops or smaller men, and therefore we do so. Nor can any one truly affirm the preachers of our day [PRICE, 1d. need no shaming, as they would be none the worse if more Christian. a Bishop Latimer, in his Plough Sermon, speaking of the Clergy whom he knew so well, said-Moses was a marvellous man, a good man; Moses was wonderful fellow, and did his duty being a we lack such as Moses was. In married man; another part of the same Sermon that eccentric overseer of spiritual paupers proceeds thus: Now I will ask you a strange question. Who is the most diligent Bishop and best preacher in all England, that passeth all the rest in doing good offices? I can tell you for I know who it it is; I know him well. But now I think I see you listening and hearkening that I should name him. There is one that passeth all the others and is the most diligent prelate and preacher in all England: and will ye know who it is? I will tell you-It is the Devil. He is the most diligent preacher of all other; he is never out of his diocese; he is never from his cure; there was never such a preacher in England as he. In the mean time the prelates take their pleasure; they are lords, and no laborers; therefore ye unpreaching prelates learn of the Devil to be diligent in doing of your office. Learn of the Devil, if you will not learn of God and good men; learn of the Devil I say. Seldom has a Bishop so completely given the Devil his due as in this instance and never to our knowledge has a Bishop so completely given to the Clergy their due. Though the Plough Sermon was preached so long ago as 1548, it is still a faithful picture of both Devil and Clergy. The latter still desert the cure of souls; still take their pleasure; still are lords who are either no laborers, or laborers in such fashion that only themselves benefit by their laboring. How rarely do we hear Bishops preach except they design to preach money out of our pockets. Charity Sermons are their delight, for in them it is quite becoming to enlarge upon the text, he who giveth to the poor (clergy) lendeth unto the Lord, whose stewards never find a difficulty in raising money on Divine security, though strange to say they rarely give back either principal or interest. These stewards on all such occasions do in truth regularly Jew their simple creditors and argue after the manner of a lawyer with heaven for his fee and God for his client. Then it is they make such excellent use of Scripture texts, more especially one to this purpose, If any man neq. lect to provide for his own, especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an Infidel; a text some people are wicked enough to insinuate was slily interpolated by one Peter Priest craft who not having the fear of God before his eyes ventured upon so pious a fraud. Bishops as well as the Clergy generally though devoted to the Mammon of Unrighteousness are not a whit better than when old Latimer took them so roundly to task and declared that all England could not furnish a preacher equal to the Devil. We know there are many who believe there is such divinity doth hedge a Bishop that to treat him as if he were an ordinary man, is unpardonable. Such idolaters will take offence at our freedom in Challenging the Bishop of Manchester, but we cannot hope to please everybody and are resolved not to make the attempt. That high functionary has insulted and villified us. He abused his position as Chairman of an ostensibly public meeting, in order to put down free discussion. He shares with Canon Stowell the infamy of fawning upon and most grossly flattering working men. He sits on Railway Committees instead of attending to the cure of souls, and in doing of his office, might very well "learn of the Devil." Why then should we reverence him? Why fear to speak our free thoughts in his presence? We have proved that the Church of which he is a "distinguished ornament" does not regard the interests, or rest on the affections of the people. Its doctrine, liturgy, cere. monial worship, and costly pharapharnalia are so many instruments with which corrupt statesmen and fanatical factionists work out their atrocious designs. Bishops are pillars on which the temple of Dagon leans, and what can political Sampsons do better than put forth their strength to snap them like reeds. These modern Philistines are to the full as worthy of condign punishment as their ancient prototypes. Ancient Philistines set up an insolent idolatry; so do our Bishops, Ancient Philistines defied the armies of the living God; so do our Bishops. Ancient Philistines put out the eyes of Sampson, and would not our Bishops willingly put The Man's from London's eyes out? Do they not as Locke quaintly expresses it, persuade the people to put out their own eyes that they may the better see the remote light of an invisible star through a telescope. Do they not amuse the multitnde with fables and say with that arch impostor Mokanna— They shall have mysteries, precious stuff For knaves to thrive by, mysteries enough. They shall have miracles, sound ones too, Seen, heard, attested, every thing, but true. Can we in Rabelais, in the Arabian Night's Entertainment, in the wonderful adventures of Sinbad the sailor, or still more marvellous history of Jack and his eleven brothers, find truer stories, more probable romances, or more dignified philosophy than is preached by prelates of our Act of Parliament Church? We know them well, quite as well as Latimer knew the unpreaching prelates of his day; and knowing them dare affirm that did the Devil really turn preacher did he really look to the cure of souls-he could not worse perform the duties appertaining to his pious office. Owls, says Voltaire, hate the glare of day, and unfortunately there are too many owls in the world. But that the multitude love darkness rather than light the kingdom of darkness over which Bishops rule, would give place to an empire of light and love, which truly is the kingdom of God. Were working men less owlish we should see the dawn of a day so intensely bright that Bishops and all other prelates, preaching or unpreaching, who fence about all crime with holiness and blaspheme the name of God by connecting it with the priests of a misinterpreted faith, would as the darkness of which their system is the type vanish into nothingness. That system cannot bear discussion and they know it. Hence their virtuous indignation when such "enemies" of the people as The Man from London say-Let opinion be reviled, despised, hated,or even calumniated; but let it be free. Owl like these overseers of spiritual paupers shrink from the glare of day and with no more wisdom than owls hope to dam up the sources of free thought by calumniating its apostles. But their system is mortally doomed. It cannot stand. We are shaking the rotten bones of orthodoxy. Working men of Lancashire have seen what our 66 never-to-bebeaten spirit" has effected in less than three months. Give us free discussion with a Bishop for antagonist and we pledge ourselves to make good Canon Stowell's prediction by effectually silencing the ministers of Antichrist. And if working men did their duty the Bishop would be obliged to come out and at least try to give a reason for the Antichristian faith of which he is the preacher. Oh, how we long for an opportunity to take to pieces before their wondering eyes that cunningly contrived state puppet show for peeping into which they have paid so handsomely, and how exqui. site our delight will be while showing up the showmen. We have heard of an honest priest who shocked by the excessive credulity of a peasant with regard to the actual presence of God in certain well baked bits of dough called sacramental wafers, said, My good man you ascribe to these things more than is quite reasonable. I who sell them, and have manufactured them by the dozen, know their intrinsic value. Admirable sage but bad priest. Knowing the intrinsic value of deities such as these you had little faith in them. Knowing the intrinsic value of Bishops such as his lordship of Manchester we Challenge him. But alas! poor Bishop, miserable is the dilemma in which that Challenge places him. If he accept working men will no longer consent to be Bishoped at all; if he reject it, they will say this Bishop won't do at any price-let us appoint The Man from London.· GALLERY OF English Freethinkers. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. IN 1839 the Rev. John G. Lorimer of Glasgow lamented the extensive strides made by free thought, or what indeed he called "modern infidelity," and in 1848 the Rev. Hugh Stowell in his Lecture delivered before the Young Men's Christian Association, was quite alarmed at the progress of "modern infidel philosophy," The secret of these lamentations and alarms is the advance of free thought amongst the masses, which will tend to the decrease of priestly power. This secret the former of these gentlemen hints at in his "Essay," where he says:-" In all departments-in literature and science-in views of education and civil government and national happiness-we meet with the principles of unbelief, often unknown to those who hold and propagate them; while in prints and regular publications, and public meetings and lectures, we find abundant evidence that many of the poor and hard wrought, who, of all men need the consolations and hopes of true religion most, have abandoned themselves to infidel reading and are bringing up their children according to the same mistaken model." It as true that the spirit of inquiry is abroad, that it manifests itself in literature, not merely in here and there an isolated work, but in the generality of our new books. Theodore Parker's Discourses are being widely diffused. The Nemesis of Faith is believed to be heterodox to the principles of the established Church. In light literature the names of Bulwer musical screeches, and half remember that they had souls" "Didst thou never, O Traveller, fall in with parties of this tribe? Meseems they are grown somewhat numerous in our day." Again the Rev. J. G. Lorimer says, we meet with these principles in Science. Science being founded upon facts we cannot shake the stubborn foundation. If the researches of Professors Lyell or Buckland do tend to the disbelief of written theories or established creeds; if they prove that man is fallihble, but that the stone book is true and alone reveals the word of God, without interpolation or false transcriptions, it is not Lyell or Buckland who is to be charged with fostering unbelief, but the dogmas and creeds of men which have so long passed current as the true coin with the image and superscription of God, now discovered to be the base alloy of the "usurper," bearing upon it the token' of its illegal mint master. Secular Education is another proof of the progress of the times, the unceasing spirit of free thought, a spirit which, of all others, is threatening to become a giant spirit to the Revds. J. G. Lorimer and Hugh Stowell. The Ragged Schools of Scotland and the Secular School agitation of Lancashire threaten to become powerful in the developement of truth and humanity. They manifest the tendency of the age. They are exemplifications of the onward march of free thought, and the masses are looking anxiously for their developement. The Regular publications of the people are no longer Weekly Visitors or Religious Tracts, their prints are not so much illustrations of Scripture history, as portraits of Kossuth and engravings from the masters of Italy. Their "penny trash' " is not embued with dogmas and creeds, but teeming with knowledge and good sense. Fools are being plucked from wisdom's seat, and the priests who deserted the people are being deserted by the people. Dickens, and Jerrold stand foremost, whilst the spirit of free thought pervades their labours. In Ernest Maltravers we are told that " however we may darken and puzzle ourselves with fancies and visions, and the ingenuities of fanatical mysticism, no man can mathematically or syllologistically contend, that the world, which a God made, and a Saviour visited, was designed to be damned." And in a note to the "Last Days of Pompeii," the same illustrious author says that" mitres were worn sometimes by men, and considered a great mark of effeminacy-to be fit for a mitre was therefore to be fit for very little else! It is astonishing how many modern opinions are derived from antiquity. There is a vast deal of wickedness in Latin," And surely there is some deep design in the character of Arbaces the Egyptian. The Satan of priestly rule is being rudely pelted with inkstands. The delineator of Pecksniff and the perambulating parson with an affection for that "particular vanity called rum'" is also no respector of persons, or cabin'd, cribbed and confined within the narrow limits of a creed. Works of a more substantial kind evince the rising spirit of self judgment. The Essays of Emerson and Thomas Carlyle are waging war with antiquated opinions, and establishing the rights of conscience, and that the duty of man to God is a duty over which no other man has any control. The one says, "Go alone; refuse the good models, even those most sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil. Friends enough you shall find who will hold up to your emulation Wesleys and Oberlins, Saints and Prophets. Thank God for these good men, but say, 'I also am a man.' Imitation cannot go above its model." The other in a manner peculiarly his own relates a tale carrying its own moral. "A tribe of men dwelt on the shores of the Asphaltic lake; and having forgotten, as we are all too prone to do, the inner facts of Nature, and taken up with the falsities and outer semblances of it, were fallen into sad conditions, verging indeed towards á certain far deeper lake. Whereupon it pleased kind heaven to send them the Prophet Moses, with an instructive word of warning, out of which might have sprung' remedial measures' not a few. But no: the men of the Dead Sea discovered, as the valet species always does in heroes or prophets, no comeliness in Moses; listened with real tedium to Moses, with light grinning, or with splenetic sniffs and sneers, affecting even to yawn; and signified in short, that they found him a humbug, and even a bore. Such was the candid theory these men of the Asphalte Lake formed to themselves of Moses, that probably he was a humbug, that certainly he was a bore. Moses with drew, but nature and her vigorous veracities did not withdraw. The men of the Dead Sea, when we next went to visit them, were all 'changed into Apes!' sitting on the trees there, grinning now in the most unaffected manner; gibbering and chattering very genuine nonsense; finding the whole Universe now an indisputa ble humbug! The Universe has become a Humbug to these Apes who thought it one. There they sit and chatter to this hour; only, I believe, every Sabbath there returns to them a bewildered half-consciousness, half reminiscence; and they sit, with their wizzened smoke-dried visages, aud such an air of supreme tragicality as Apes may; looking out through those blinking, smoke bleared eyes of theirs, into the wonderfullest universal smoky Twilight and undecipherable disordered dusk of things; wholly an uncertainty, Unintelligibility, they and it; and for comYOUTHFUL PECCADILLOES. mentary thereon, here and there an unmusical chatter or mew-truest, tragicalest humbug conceiv- THE youth of large towns almost always suffer from a able by the mind of man or Ape! They made no premature and too rapid developement of the sexual inuse of their souls; and so have lost them. Their worstinct. Rosseau demonstrates that important truth in ship on the Sabbath now is to roost there with un- his Emelius-a book no mother should be without. Public Meetings are called for the expression of sympathy with the oppressed not to draw money from the popular pocket to spread popular delusion. Lecturers start up in all our towns to rescue the memory of great men from oblivion, and show the application of science to the wants of every day life. George Dawson, Emerson, and others are conversing with the masses, not of the utility of creeds or priests, but that which tends to the overthrow of oppressive rule. Whence came these things? Three centuries ago and the books which have been written in this age would have been burnt and the writers of them excommunicated. Publishers of" penny trash" would have suffered imprisonment. Lecturers on science contrary to the Genesis have been placed in the pillory or cou fined in the gaol, and public meetings been denounced as treason to the state. Who has wrought this change? Hobbes, Locke, Shaftesbury, Toland, Tindal, Chubb, Morgan, Walpole, Bolinbroke, Woolston, Collins, Gildon, Hume,Gibbon, Byron, Shelley, Taylor,Carlile, Paine, and such other men have during the last three hundred years toiled to produce these results. And though Lorimer and Stowell may lament at the progress of free thought, it is a great legacy bequeathed to us by such men as these, of which priests or prelates can never plunder us, even for the love of God. CONFESSIONS OF A FREETHINKER. What Buchan is popularly believed to be in physics though good living, shelter, and clothing are excellent the Emelius really is in morals. Parents may learn things, we may pay too dearly for them. I therefore from that most admirable of all educational Treatises preferred hard fare with much (far too much) liberty how with children time is gained by losing it, and the to "the Sauces of Dives" altogether without it. And terrible evils consequent upon a system of education even now though much improved in this particular I which stimulates mental at the cost of bodily power. hate any other restraint than what is imposed by my Every such system is wholly false and wholly per- own reason; and perhaps no man on earth better apnicious. To check, not accelerate, the growth of sexu- preciates that beautiful passage in Sterne-Oh, Slaalism should be the object of parents. Were that very disguise thee as thou wilt; still thou art a bitter principle acted upon in our treatment of children draught, and though thousands in all ages have been made there would be no occasion to amuse them with fic- to taste thee thou art none the less bitter on that account. tions about little babies growing in parsley beds or With so insane a love of liberty no one can be surOld Bogie running away with them. So absurdly prised to learn that I often pushed it to licentiousness paradoxical is our system of early training that while and upon the principle of a short life and a merry inflaming the passions it exhausts the body. By one, made sad mistakes. Not that my life was a making men of children it makes children of men. merry one; far from it. Poets tell us the season of What with the lying tales of nurses and lying books youth is the season of pleasure; but I found it a seaof pedants they have little chance to become either son of misery. Plunged in debt and tormented by strong in mind or sound in body. Perhaps there is desires neither to be satisfied nor repressed, my way no other single vice so exhausting to the body or cor- of life was full of thorns. My greatest danger arose rupting to the mind as early indulgence of the sexual from that precocious development of the instinct alinstinct. Yet generally speaking the youth of large ready referred to. Alone in the world, without patowns are tempted into, rather than restrained from, rents to control or friends to advise me, I went rapidly such indulgence. In my case continence would have down the broad path which leadeth to destruction. been a miracle. Early thrown upon my own reWhen Epictetus was asked why Venus was painted sources which were miserably inadequate, I have naked, he said-Because she leaves her worshippers ever since been without a rag to cover them. My adoration at her shrine more than once reduced me to that primitive but unpleasant condition; and many a pound have I borrowed to relieve myself from the state, which though called puris naturalibus I thought anything but agreeable to nature. It is not recorded how many sweethearts young Soloman had, but we have it on Scriptural authority that old Solomon of wives and concubines could boast a stock of one thousand or thereabouts. Judging from what he did when old we may infer that he was a devil of a fellow when young. I would willingly prove as much because my opinion decidedly is that extreme love of woman is no proof of extreme corruption in man. On the contrary I believe that generally speaking they are the best men who have the most regard for the other sex, and though I do not deem it safe for woman to put firm faith in the proverb that reformed rakes make the best husbands, I am sure it is frequently found to be the case. Pharisees may object but it is none the less true that careful, because cold blooded, youths seldom develope into noble hearted or clear headed men. I would not be understood to justify, or even apologise for vice of any kind-nothing can be more remote from my intention. I deplore the premature development and misdirection of the sexual instinct, consequent upon a system of training we miscall education. Were I a father, to preserve my son from too early and irregular intercourse with the other sex would be my chief care, and my opinion is that every father ought to raise his voice against that most wretched of all mock morality which hinders gevernment from taking houses of ill fame under its special surveillance. Pas trop governe is a maxim I do not dispute the wisdom of; but statesmen, while careful to avoid governing too much, should avoid the error of governing too little. In France, arrangements with regard to irregular intercourse of the sexes, though far from perfect, are greatly in advance of those established in our own country. In France, courtezans are watched controlled and protected by the State. With us, they are neither watched nor controlled nor "Lord of myself that heritage of woe." During the first years of apprenticeship my wages were insufficient to provide the merest necessaries of life; and fully alive to the necessity of living, and generously too, I did so without much consideration as to consequences. Most of my relatives were either too poor or too selfish to trouble themselves about me, and so for years I was allowed to struggle on amidst a host of constantly increasing difficulties. One of my brothers offered me a home, which, however, I could not bring myself to accept because my love of unrestrained personal liberty was greater than my hatred of gaping creditors. I detested the thought of being compelled to go home or to bed at a certain hour. Poor Megrim in the Blue Devils, when soliloquising on the delights of suicide, feelingly descants upon that eternal circle of miseries-getting up, going to breakfast, going to dinner, going to supper, going to bed, and then getting up again.-At thirteen years of age I could sympathise with that unhappy gentleman so far as regarded the dull routine and wretched uniformity of "respectable" families; and never could endure being forced to do anything. I already belonged to the class of persons described by Lord Bacon as so fond of liberty that they will not consent to wear waistbands. Convinced that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, 1 deemed it quite logical to conclude it was right to work as little and play as much as possible. had heard of a happy servant who worked many years without knowing the comfort of a bed, as according to her own account the moment she got into it she fell asleep and got out of it the instant she awoke. A happy life of that kind had no charms for one who like myself detested regularity, had no particular love for hard work, and half-adozen times a day was ready to exclaim-anything for a change. Albert, the son of William Tell, meeting Gesler on the Swiss mountains, that tyrant in the course of conversation with him learning that the stern patriot preferred living there to descending to the plains is curi-protected. All is hap-hazard with respect to them, ous to know why, asking the boy what his father would lose by doing so. His liberty—was the short but pithy reply. And liberty was just what I feared to lose by taking up my abode with such relatives as might have been willing but certainly were not eager to receive me. The notion crept into my head that and will so remain until the pharisaical spirit shall die the death decreed for it by the spirit of wisdom. In this pious country the practice is to strain at gnats and swallow camels, the most abominable evils being covertly encouraged by the State if they serve some political or party purpose-a fact signally illustrated |