THE streets were empty. Pitiless cold had driven all who had the shelter of a roof to their homes; and the north-east blast seemed to howl in triumph above the untrodden snow. Winter was at the heart of all things. The wretched, dumb with excessive misery, suffered in stupid resignation the tyranny of the season. Human blood stagnated in the breast of want; and death in that despairing hour losing its terrors, looked, in the eyes of many a wretch, a sweet deliverer. It was a time when the very poor, barred from the commonest things of earth, take strange counsel with themselves, and, in the deep humility of destitution, believe they are the burden and the offal of the world. It was a time when the easy, comfortable man, touched with finest sense of human suffering, gives from his abundance; and, whilst bestowing, feels almost ashamed that, with such wide-spread misery circled round him, he has all things fitting-all things grateful. The smitten spirit asks wherefore he is not of the multitude of wretchedness; demands to know for what especial excellence he is promoted above the thousand, thousand starving creatures in his very tenderness for misery tests his privilege of exemption from a woe that withers manhood in man, bowing him downward to the brute. And so questioned, this man gives in modesty of spirit-in very thankfulness of soul. His alms are not cold, formal charities, but reverent sacrifices to his suffering brother. It was a time when selfishness hugs itself in its own warmth; with no other thoughts than of its pleasant possessions; all made pleasanter, sweeter, by the desolation around. When the mere worldling rejoices the more in his warm chamber, because it is so bitter cold without; when he eats and drinks with whetted appetite, because he hears of destitution prowling like a wolf around his well-barred house; when, in fine, he bears his every comfort about him with the pride of a conqueror. A time when such a man sees in the misery of his fellow-beings nothing save his own victory of fortune-his own successes in a suffering world. To such a man the poor are but the tattered slaves that grace his triumph. It was a time, too, when human nature often shows its true divinity, and, with misery like a garment clinging to it, forgets its wretchedness in sympathy with suffering. A time when in the cellars and garrets of the poor are acted scenes which make the noblest heroism of life; which prove the immortal texture of the human heart not wholly seared by the branding-iron of the torturing hours. A time when in want, in anguish, in throes of mortal agony, some seed is sown that bears a flower in heaven. Such was the time, the hour approaching midnight, when a woman sat on a door-step in a London street. Was she sleeping, or was she another victim of the icy season? Her head had fallen backward against the door, and her face shone like a white stone in the moonlight. There was a terrible history in that face, cut and lined as it was by the twin workers vice and misery. Her temples were sunken; her brow wrinkled and pinched; and her thin, jagged mouth, in its stony silence, breathed a frightful eloquence. It was a hard mystery to work out, to look upon that face, and try to see it in its babyhood. Could it be thought that that woman was once a child? Still she was motionless-breathless. And now a quick, tripping footstep sounds in the deserted street; and a woman, thinly, poorly clad, but clean and neat withal, approaches the door. She is humming a tune, 、a blithe defiance to the season, and her manner is of one hastening homeward. "Good God! if it isn't a corpse!" she cried, standing suddenly fixed before what seemed, in truth, the effigy of death. In a moment, recovering herself, she stooped towards the sitter, and gently shook her. "Stone cold-frozen! Lord in heaven! that His creatures should perish in the street!" And then the woman, with a piercing shriek, called the watch; but the watch, true to its reputation for sound substantial sleep, answered not. "Watch-watch!" screamed the woman with increasing shrillness; but the howling of the midnight wind was the only response. A moment she paused; then looked at what she deemed the dead; and flinging her arms about her, flew back along the path she had trod. With scarcely breath to do common credit to her powers of scolding, she drew up at a watch-box, and addressed herself to the peaceful man within. "Why, watch-here! a pretty fellow !-people pay rates, and—watch, watch-there's a dead woman-dead, I tell you-watch-pay rates, and are let to die, and-watch-watch-watch!" And still she screamed, and at length clawed at and shook the modest wooden tenement which, in those happy but not distant days of England, sheltered many of England's civil guardians. The watchman was coiled up for unbroken repose. He had evidently settled the matter with himself to sleep until called to breakfast by the tradesman who at the corner-post spread his hospitable table for the early wayfarers who loved saloop. Besides, the watchman was at least sixty-five years old; twenty years he had been guardian of the public peace, and he knew-no one better-that on such a night even robbery would take a holiday, forgetting the cares and profits of business in comfortable blankets. At length, but slowly, did the watchman answer the summons. He gradually uncoiled himself; and whilst the woman's tongue rang-rang like a bell--he calmly pushed up his hat, and opening his two small, swinish eyes, looked at the intruder. "Well! after that I hope you are awake—and after that—-—_” "What's the matter?" asked the watchman, feeling that the hour of saloop was not arrived, and surlily shaking himself at the disappointment. "What's the matter?" "The matter! Poppy-head!" 66 Any of your bad language, and I shall lock you up." And this the watchman said with quite the air of a man who keeps his word. "There's a woman froze to death," cried the disturber of the watchman's peace. “That was last night,” said the watchman. - "I tell you to-night, man-to-night. She's on a door-step, there "and the woman pointed down the street. "I should like to know what we pay you watchmen for, if poor creatures are to drop down dead with cold on the highway." The watchman lifted his lantern to the face of the speaker—it was a frank, lively, good-humoured face, with about five-and-thirty years lightly laid upon it--and closing one eye, as if the act gave peculiar significance to what he said, slowly observed, syllable by syllable, “Any more of your imperance, and "-here he took an oath, confirming it with a smart blow of his stick upon the pavement, "and I'll lock you up." The woman made some answer; but the words were lost, drowned by the watchman's rattle, which he whirled about. As cricket answers cricket, the rattle found a response. Along the street the sound was caught up, prolonged and carried forward; and small bye-lanes gave forth a wooden voice-a voice that cried to all the astounded streets, "Justice is awake!" And then lantern after lantern glimmered in the night; one lantern advancing with a sober and considerate pace; another with a sort of flutter; another dancing like a jack-a-lantern over the snow. And so lantern after lantern, with watchman behind, came and clustered about the box of him, who was on the instant greeted as Drizzle. "What's the row?" cried an Irishman-a young fellow of about sixty, who flourished his stick, and stamped upon the pavement, like indignant virtue, impatient of a wrong. "What's the row? Is it her?" and he was about to lay his civil hand upon the woman. Every watchman asked his separate question; it seemed to be his separate right; and Drizzle, as though respecting the privilege of his brethren, heard them all-yes, every one-before he answered. He then replied, very measuredly, " A woman is froze to death." "Agin," answered Drizzle. Then turning himself round, he headed the watch; and motioning to the woman to show the way, he slowly led his fellows down the street. In due time they arrived at the spot. "Froze to death?" cried Drizzle, doubtingly, holding his lantern to the bloodless, rigid features of the miserable outcast. "Froze to death?" asked every other watchman, on taking a like survey. "No, no; not dead! thank God! not dead," exclaimed the woman, stooping towards her wretched sister. "Her heart beats-I think it beats." "Werry drunk, but not a bit dead," said Drizzle; and his brethrenone and all-murmured. 66 Well, what are you going to do with her?" asked the woman, vehemently. "What should we do with her?" cried Drizzle. "She isn't dead, and she isn't a-breaking the peace." "But she will be dead if she's left here, and so I desire-— ” “You desire!” said Drizzle ;" and after all what's your name, and where do you come from?" "My name's Mrs. Aniseed, I live in Short's Gardens, and I come from -the Lord ha' mercy! what's this?" she cried, as something stirred beneath the ends of the woman's shawl that lay upon her lap. With the words, Mrs. Aniseed plucked the shawl aside, and discovered a sleeping infant. "What a heavenly babe !" she cried and truly the child, in its marble whiteness, looked beautiful; a lovely human bud,—a sweet, unsullied sojourner of earth, cradled on the knees of misery and vice. For an instant the watchmen in silence gazed upon the babe. Even their natures, hardened in scenes of crime and destitution, were touched by the appealing innocence of the child. "Poor little heart!" said one. "God help it!" cried another. Yes, God help it! And with such easy adjuration do we leave thousands and tens of thousands of human souls to want and ignorance, doom, when yet sleeping the sleep of guiltlessness, to future devils-their own unguided passions. We make them outcasts, wretches; and then punish, in their wickedness, our own selfishness,—our own neglect. We cry “God help the babes !" and hang the men. Yet a moment. The child is still before us. May we not see about it, contending for it, the principles of good and evil? A contest between the angels and the fiends? Come hither, statesman; you who live within a party circle; you who nightly fight some miserable fight, continually strive in some selfish struggle for power and place; considering men only as tools, the merest instruments of your aggrandizement; come here, in the wintry street, and look upon God's image in its babyhood! Consider this little man. Are not creatures such as these the noblest, grandest things of earth? Have they not solemn natures? are they not subtly touched for the highest purposes of human life? Come they not into this world to grace and dignify it? There is no spot, no coarser stuff in the pauper flesh before you that indicates a lower nature. There is no felonmark upon it—no natural formation indicating the thief in its baby fingers —no inevitable blasphemy upon its lips. It lies before you a fair, unsullied thing, fresh from the hand of God. Will you, without an effort, let the great fiend stamp his fiery brand upon it? Shall it, even in its sleeping innocence, be made a trading thing by misery and vice?—a creature borne from street to street, a piece of living merchandise for mingled beggary and crime? Say, what, with its awakening soul, shall it learn? —what lessons whereby to pass through life, making an item in the social sum? Why, cunning will be its wisdom; hypocrisy its truth; theft its natural law of self-preservation. To this child, so nurtured, so taught, your whole code of morals, nay, your brief right and wrong, are writ in stranger figures than Egyptian hieroglyphs, and—time passes—and you scourge the creature never taught for the heinous guilt of knowing nought but ill! The good has been a sealed book to him, and the dunce is punished with the gaol. Doubtless there are great statesmen ; wizards in bullion and bank paper; thinkers profound in cotton, and every turn and variation of the markets, abroad and at home. But there are statesmen yet to come; statesmen of nobler aims of more heroic action; teachers of the people; vindicators of the universal dignity of man ; apostles of the great social truth that knowledge, which is the spiritual light of God, like His material light, was made to bless and comfort all men. And when these men arise and it is worse than weak, it is sinful, to despair of them-the youngling poor will not be bound upon the very threshold of human life, and made, by want and ignorance, life's shame and curse. There is not a babe lying in the public street on its mother's lap-the unconscious mendicant to ripen into the criminal-that is not a reproach to the State; a scandal and a crying shame upon men who study all politics save the politics of the human heart. To return to the child of our story; to the baby St. Giles; for indeed it is he. In a moment Mrs. Aniseed caught the infant to her bosom, and pressed it to her cheek. As she did so she turned pale, and tears came into her eyes. "It's dead," she cried; "blessed angel! the cold, the cruel cold has killed it." "Nonsense!" said Drizzle," the woman's for killing everything. It's no more dead than its mother here, and—” and here the watchman turned to his companions for counsel,-" and what are we to do with her?" "We can't take her to the workhouse," said one; "it's past the hour." "Past the hour!" exclaimed Mrs. Aniseed, still hugging and warming the babe at her bosom-"it isn't past the hour to die, is it?" "You're a foolish, wiolent woman," said Drizzle. "I tell you what we must do; we'll take her to the watch-house." "The watch-house!" cried Mrs. Aniseed. "Poor soul! what have you got to comfort her with there?" "Comfort! Well, I'm sure-you do talk it strong! As if women sitting about in doorways was to be treated with comfort.-Howsomever, mates," said the benevolent Drizzle, “for once we'll try the workhouse." With this, two of the watchmen raised the woman, and stumbling at almost every step, they bore their burden on. "Make haste!" cried Drizzle, doubtless yearning for the hospitality of his box, "make haste! if the cold doesn't bite a man like nippers!" And so, shambling along, and violently smiting in their turn both arms against his sides, Drizzle preceded his fellows, and at length halted at the workhouse. "It hasn't |