able to make money very fairly, sometimes to a considerable extent. But the nature of these occupations has led men, who devote their lives to them, to be more improvident than perhaps any other classes of men; and, moreover, the uncertainty of their gains communicates a large amount of uncertainty to everything they do. In industry they probably equal, and when thoroughly devoted to what they follow, they exceed many others; but from want of system they fail; and although nearly half-a-dozen charitable institutions are devoted to their relief, we still have every-day examples of the improvidence which brought Otway, Chatterton, and Savage, to deplorable deaths, and which embittered the lives of Goldsmith and Theodore Hook. It is plain that men, constituted as these were, never thoroughly understood that it is better to be just to themselves than generous to others, or the sacred duty of "laying by." The With the working classes this duty is self-evident. man who would be their true friend is not he who preaches to them a political crusade, who continually dwells on the inequality which subsists between rich and poor, but who tells them to rely upon themselves, and to take every opportunity of raising themselves. Self-help is the best help in the world; when once a man applies to it, he will not readily apply to any other help. A workman, if he devote himself to the special duty of making his home happy, and of improving his condition, will soon raise himself above what demagogues call the oppressed classes. In Great Britain no one is oppressed but he who chooses to submit; and our industrious and hard-working population every day give instances of men who, without any special good fortune, or any extreme talent, still raise themselves, by a steadiness of purpose and by systematic thrift, into rich men, who are able to sit in Parliament, and to become members of the great governing classes of their country. The great want of the working classes is want of thrift. Instead of preaching to them a crusade against the upper classes, and growing fervidly eloquent upon the inevitable differences in the conditions of the rich and the poor, their true friends will try to urge them to more continuous industry, and to a habit of saving where they can. There is no law in England, or in any other country, most certainly least of all in our own, which will prevent care and industry from making money, or will set aside the weight which the possession of that money will give a man. A thrifty man, with a purpose in his mind, may put before himself any aim he likes, and if he has health and strength he can achieve it. He may become a lawyer, a surgeon, a painter, an author, or a merchant. He can never be submerged if he relies upon purpose and thrift. The history of our great men teems with examples of such purpose crowned with success; and the two most popular works of the day, Self-Help and Industrial Biography, by Mr. Smiles, are actually based upon the fact. Blot out the history of self-made men, and where would the history of our country be? As to the methods of laying by, we can have little to say. There are many securities in England, many ways of em ploying capital. During the immediate process of laying by, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as he once strongly recommended fourteen shilling claret, now, for the working and middle classes, recommends most highly the Post-Office Savings Banks, and in these the provident of such classes have already deposited nearly three millions of money. It is probable the Insurance Companies will find themselves obliged to compete with Government in the price they can offer for the poor man's money; but at any rate the poor man will not find any especial difficulty in investing his money if he once acquires the practice which all his best friends, and which prudence, wisdom, and religion itself so urgently recommend, of LAYING BY. ON THE LENGTH OF OUR DAYS. HE civilization of to-day is distinguished from that of past ages in nothing more than in the respect it pays to human life. Barbarism is cruel, lavish, and wasteful; semi-civilization often equally so; but when true enlightenment and Christianity step in, the respect paid to the perennial miracle of life is at once marked and established. Life of any sort, in the very highest or in the very lowest form, is a standing miracle. From the lowest polype, scarcely to be distinguished from a plant, or the vegetable hardly to be separated from a stone, the same miracle is there, acting in higher or in lower degress. The higher we ascend the greater grows the wonder, the more intense and complicated the marvel. Human life is itself a congeries of miracles. From the bulb of the hair, the brightness of the eye, and the redness of the lip, to the indurated skin upon the sole of the foot, the body of man is indeed "fearfully and wonderfully made." Not only this, but his origin and his growth, to the maturity of the man, is but an extension of the miraculous chain. The pulsation of the heart, the extension of the finger, is each wonderful; what, then, are the reception of outward nature upon the eye, the growth of thought in the brain, the eloquent language of the tongue? Full of wonders are the Almighty's works. The Caffre or the Earthman, the Caucasian or Mongolian, the criminal or the philanthropist, the ignorant or the philosopher, the peasant or the peer, equally exhibit the miracles we speak of. We are far and away above rank or precedence in this matter; ours is an affair of ganglions and nerves, muscles and bone, flesh and blood; in fact, of life! Life being miraculous is therefore precious. There is, humanly speaking, nothing so shockingly wicked as taking life. Murder comprehends all kinds of sin; and this, whether it be short murder or long murder, quick murder or slow murder ; the murder which is done with an oath, an angry word, and a sudden blow, or the murder which is done by overwork in factories, in close courts, by bad air, by foul feeding, and a thousand of those necessities which, forced upon the human race by society, thin its ranks and shorten to every individual member the length of its days. If the sunshine be a glorious thing, and light and air, blue skies and fair winds, glorious agents in producing health and life in that wonderful materia which lies about us, he who, directly or indirectly, deprives anything of these is guilty of murder. He may do this ignorantly, he may do it without thought, he may totally overlook or utterly deny his moral responsibility, but, nevertheless, he is guilty. So much for the importance of the subject. We shall now endeavour to show that more knowledge would enable us to |