rous, unquiet slumber of sick Life, is heard in Heaven! Oh, under that hideous coverlet of vapors and putrefactions and unimaginable gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies simmering and hid! The joyful and the sorrowful are there; men are dying there, men are being born, men are praying. On the other side of a brick partition, men are cursing. And around them all is the vast void, Night. The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed saloons, or reposes within damask curtains; Wretchedness cowers into truckle-beds or shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of straw; in obscure cellars Rouge-et-Noir languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard, hungry villains; while Councilors of State sit plotting and playing their high chess game, whereof the pawns are Men. The Lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready; and she, full of hope and fear, glides down, to fly with him. over the borders; the Thief, still more silently, sets-to his pick-locks and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore in their boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts; but, in the condemned cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint, and blood-shot eyes look out through the darkness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern last morning. Six men are to be hanged on the morrow; their gallows must even now be a-building. Upward of five hundred thousand two-legged animals without feathers lie round us, in horizontal position, their heads all in night-caps and full of the most foolish dreams. Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers in his rank dens of shame; and the Mother, with streaming hair, kneels over her pallid,

dying infant, whose cracked lips only her tears now moisten. All these heaped and huddled together, with nothing but a little carpentry and masonry between them -crammed-in like salted fish in their barrel or weltering like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, each struggling to get its head above the others! Such work goes on under that smoke counterpane! But I sit above it all; I am alone with the stars. - -CARLYLE.

The Whisky Ring in City Politics.

Great cities are likely to rule the American Republic. They will also ruin it, if they are governed by the whisky ring, as they have been in a majority of cases thus far in our history. The predominant political influence of the whisky ring in great and corrupt cities is incompatible with the success of American institutions, or with safety to life and property under universal suffrage in mismanaged municipalities.-JOSEPH Cook.`

Condensed Comments.

The city is the strategic point of our modern life. We shall lose the battle for righteousness if we do not plant our batteries in the city, and man them with our best soldiers. CHARLES C. ALBERTSON.

There Mammon holds high carnival in its gilded palaces while little children hunger, mothers grow faint for food and die, and strong men weep for want of work. W. T. STEAD.

The city is the most difficult and perplexing problem of modern times.-FRANCIS LIEBER.

COMMON THINGS.

Prayer for Common Things.

Give me, dear Lord, Thy magic common things,
Which all can see, which all may share-
Sunlight and dewdrops, grass and stars and sea;
Nothing unique or new and nothing rare.

Just daisies, knap-weed, wind among the thorns,
Some clouds to cross the blue old sky above,
Rain, winter fires, a useful hand, a heart,
The common glory of a woman's love.

Then when my feet no longer tread old paths
(Keep them from fouling sweet things anywhere),

Write one old epitaph in grace-lit words

Such things look fairer that he sojourned here.”
ANONYMOUS.

The Common People.

I believe in the people-the average common sense and capacity of the millions-in government of, for and by the people. The most of the people mean right, and in the end they will do right.-Wendell Phillips.

Relief in Common Things.

Sometimes the troubled tide of all the past
Upon my spirit's trembling strand is rolled.
Years never mine-ages an hundredfold,
With all the weight those ages have amassed

Of human grief and wrong, are on me cast.
Within one sorcerous moment I grow old,
And blanch as one who scarce his

way can hold Upon a verge that takes some flood-tide vast.

Then comes relief through some dear common thing— The voices of the children at their play,

The wind-wave through the bright meadows, moving fast;

The blue-bird's skyward call, on happy wing;

So the sweet present reassumes her sway;
So lapse the surges of the monstrous past.

EDITH M. THOMAS.

The Common Courtesies of Life.

What silences we keep, year after year,
With those who are most near to us and dear!
We live beside each other day by day,

And speak of myriad things, but seldom say
The full, sweet word that lies just in our reach—
Beneath the commonplace of common speech.
ANONYMOUS.

Martyrs of Common Life.

In their midst I saw

Some who appeared more radiant than the rest,
And asked what meant their bright pre-eminence
In glory. Oriel answered: "These are they
Of whom the Church so often sings-
Some of the martyrs' noble army. These

For Christ gave up their bodies to be burned,

Or bowed their necks unto the murderous sword;
Or, though their names appear not on the scroll
Of martyrologists, laid down their life-

Not less a martyrdom in Jesus' eyes

For His dear brethren's sake, watching the couch
Of loathsome sickness or of slow decay,
Or visiting the captive in his cell,

Or struggling with a burden not their own
Until their very life-strings wore away.
These, too, are martyrs, brother,"

BICKERSTETH.

CONSCIENCE.

God Revealed in Conscience.

I claim it to be the fact of experience (if you doubt, will you try the scientific method of experiment on this subject?) that whenever we submit utterly, affectionately, irreversibly, to the best we know that is, to the Innermost Holiest of Conscience-at that instant, and never before, there flashes through us, with quick, splendid, interior, unexpected illumination, a Power not ourselves. The image of the star or a representation of the sun is found within the chambers of the poor, feeble instrument. You can not have that inner witness until you have that exterior and interior conformity to Conscience; but whoever has these will know by the inner light that God is with him in a sense utterly unknown before.-JOSEPH COOK.