launched and you could not cast your eye down a column of the Examiner and Times without a bewildering vocabulary of technicalities taking away your breath as you read of "flanges," and "cradles," and "worms," and "axles," and "pulleys," and what not. It was but three days ago the apparatus was set to work, and instead of launching the Great Eastern into the water, it launched one or two men into eternity, and four or five families into bereavement and poverty, by twirling the heads of these families up into the air, and cracking their skulls against the ground. Here, then, we see again the importance of rightly considering how to do a thing before setting about it.

But you will say, we are not here to listen to suggestions about laying the Atlantic cable, or launching the Great Eastern steamer; we want to know how to make home happy here, and how to find a happy home hereafter. Well, in trying to answer the question, how are you to make home happy here? I would say don't live in the light of to-morrow, but make the most of that of to-day. One would have thought it almost impossible for a man in his sober senses, who knows the means of attaining happiness, to stop to ask when he is to put these means into practice. A certain working-man, who shall be nameless, knows well enough that intemperance, licentiousness, or improvidence, are the secret of the misery of his home and the desolation of his family. He says to himself, I will reform these habits-I will renounce my vices-and will turn over a new leaf. But he is always taking just a farewell glass, or taking a farewell oath, or giving his wife a final black eye, previous to beginning the reformation of "to-morrow." He makes up his mind to amend, and then he asks himself when shall I begin? and he resolves day by day to begin to-morrow. Let me ask, how many here amongst us now have fixed upon to-morrow as the beginning of a new life? My friends, is it possible that you can deliberately contemplate the results of your dissoluteness and profligacy! Is it possible that you can feel the aspic pang of remorse striking to your heart while you look upon a haggard wife, on hungry children, on an empty cupboard, and a fireless hearth, and put off till to-morrow the utterance of the tender word which might call up a smile into that pallid face, or the exertion of the manly effort which would feed those hungry children and illume that chilly hearth! I wish I could take my stand now upon the threshold of some drunkard's cottage could lay my hand upon his shoulder-could point him to his pining wife, all scarred and livid with his brutal blows-could show to him the hollow-eyed baby that hangs upon her breast,

and the slatternly little starvelings that huddle half-naked in the room. If I could but touch some gentler chord in his rugged nature, I would beseech him, by the blenching of that hectic cheek, and eloquent but mute reproach of that bruised bosom, by the sickly vacancy of that baby's stare, and by the incipient hell that was festering in the youthful bosoms of those boys and girls-to disentomb his heart and his affections from the family vaults at the Blue Boar, and enshrine them on the sacred altar of a happy home. And if, by a simple exhortation of this kind I could be helped by God to let in a ray of love or hope into some cottage blasted by distress and pain, there would be a reward in the result more rich than gold, and a recompense in the mother's blessing and the wife's "thank God," sweeter and more precious than a throne of rubies!

There are some present now who, I dare say, are not very familiar with some of the dark spots which lie around them in this great working hive in which we live. As a stimulus to those who have feeling and earnest hearts to bestir themselves on behalf of sinful and suffering humanity, as well as a salutary warning to those who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, I shall so far forget my title, for a minute, as to attempt a description of a drunkard's home; and I fear it will be only too faithful a type of many houses in our own city. I don't do this from any desire to exaggerate or bring too prominently forward the poor man's faults for rich men get drunk as well as poorbut they are not snatched from their homes and fined and imprisoned like the poor; they do their debauchery snugly at home, where no one sees them, and appear next day with a clean shirt and choker, as though nothing at all had happened-thanks to the soothing influences of Schweppe's Soda Water, or Messrs. Jewsbury and Brown's Lemonade.-No, I don't want to make too much of the poor man's faults-for

"I must confess that I abhor and shrink
From schemes with a religious willy, nilly,
That frown upon St. Giles's sins, but blink
The peccadilloes of all Piccadilly.

My soul revolts at such hypocrisy,

And will not, dare not, fancy in accord

The Lord of Hosts, with an exclusive lord
Of this world's aristocracy.

It will not own a notion so unholy,

As thinking that the rich by easy trips

May get to heaven-whereas the poor and lowly
Must work their passage as they do in ships.

One place there is-beneath the burial sod,
Where all mankind are equalized by death.
Another place there is the Fane of God,
Where all are equal who draw living breath.
Juggle who will-elsewhere with his own soul,
Playing the Judas with a temporal dole,
He who can come within that awful cope,
In the dread presence of a Maker just,
Who metes to every pinch of human dust
One equal measure of immortal hope,
He who can stand beneath that holy door,
With soul unbowed by heaven's pure spirit-level,
And frame unequal laws for rich and poor,
Might sit for hell and represent the devil."

But although I would not exaggerate or misrepresent the errors of the working man I would not hesitate to make a fair description of his self-imposed miseries. In an audience like this it is more than probable that there may be one or two whose potations are somewhat deeper than they need be, and who spend at the sign of the "Hen and Chickens" abroad the money which ought to be devoted to the comfort of the hen and chickens at home. It is just possible I may speak to some drunken father or some dissolute husband, and if I do so, I do not think that this description of his home and prospects is likely to be very wide of the mark. It is a small cottage, thinly furnished, and the furniture, like the wife, seems wasting away. Half of it is at the pawnshop, and it is all gently sinking into the same vortex. He has a wife and only daughter, a fair child of fifteen years, just budding into life. Cruelty and hard usage, together with starvation, have told their tale upon the mother's form and face, and when the lord and master of the house comes staggering home at midnight, he finds that they have stretched her dying on the tattered. bed; the daughter's tearful face is hidden in her mother's bosom, and her thin white hands are clasped about her neck. The conscience

stricken sot stands rooted on the threshold, and stays his staggering feet by grasping at the door-post, and as he glares with bloodshot eyes upon the death-bed that his selfishness prepared, he hears his daughter's sobbing voice exclaim, " Thy will be done!" and then his gasping wife sighs forth the struggling prayer, "Lord, lay not this sin to his charge;" and as the dying intercession floats from that broken heart to heaven the spirit leaves its clay and follows it, and the father is alone with his orphan daughter. Bitterly, oh, bitterly, did he weep as he looked upon the mortal remnant of that patient partner of his life, so still, so cold, so marble white! He would have madly

tried to warm the bosom back to life, but his child withdrew him. from the bed, because she knew that that bosom bore the mark of a foul, savage blow, and she did not want that blow to recoil upon her father's heart. The night rolled slowly by, and the morning sun fell full upon the upturned face of death, and as the drunkard looked towards it then, he saw that the love-light had not faded. from the glassy eyeballs even yet. Another day and night and it is time to take a last fond look before the coffin-lid shall shut the vision out for ever, and a sad, sad look it was. A parting pressure of those marble lips, and a hot tear upon the cheek, and then the daughter comes to place a lily in the bosom, and twine a sweet white rose within the raven hair, and then amidst the tolling of the passing bell and the tramping of the black procession, the scene is closed. But oh, the weary, weary hours of remorse which prey upon the widower when left alone! His life is insupportable; what shall he do, what cordial panacea can quell his fears, and soothe this torturing reflection? His child creeps softly to his side and lays an open book upon his knees, from which she whispers in his ears, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." The words seem to revive him for a moment, as he again asks, "What shall I do?" "Prayer is the best cordial for a wounded spirit, father," says his child; "my mother taught me that." "Prayer! what is prayer?" "I'Il try to pray, at all events," he says; and he turns to fall upon his knees; but all at once a cold and nervous tremor chills his veins, and he turns round again and says, "No; I'll pray to-morrow-I can't pray now-give me my hat?" The door has swung upon its hinges, and he is in the street. The daughter follows to the door, and watches him as he goes down the pavement, till he turns into a house. She follows quickly after him, and gets there just in time to hear him call hoarsely for some brandy. Down on her knees she begs him, by the memory of the loved and lost, for pity's sake to come away; but he thrusts her out, and tells her to begone. Arrived at home, she kneels once more, not now before an earthly but a Heavenly Father; she prays for help to lead her only relative from ruin into peace. The clock strikes ten-eleven-twelve-one-two and three, before the shuffling footstep can be heard against the door, and then it is opened by the strange hand of some ruffian companion, who has helped her father to get home. He gives his drunken charge into her care, with many a coarse and brutal jest, and leaves them alone. His glaring eye happens to rest upon the open Bible he had set aside, and as his child laid her trembling hand upon his breast his tears once more gushed

forth, like the water from the rock beneath the prophet's rod. But, oh! it is a too-late repentance. Next day he dives down to his hell again, to drown his grief in streams of liquid fire. And while he is away, another shadow darkens the threshold of his house, and the poor orphaned girl is listening to the glib and slippery flatterics of some deceitful libertine, and the chaste casket of her fame is in peril of being ransacked of its pearly jewel-virtue. Day after day the father rolls home with his legion of evil spirits revelling in his heart, and day after day the plastic visitor comes with the velvet touch of his soft hand, and foul cajolery of his dainty lips. Is it any wonder that she should, in her unguarded and untended innocence, with the bleeding tendrils of her trusting heart trembling to twine around some true support, with every fibre of her woman's soul torn from the objects that should win its love! Is it a wonder, I repeat, that she should fall beneath the wicked wizardry of the seducer's sorceries, and sink from innocence to be the prey of the libertine, and the toy of the destroyer! And on whose head-O, drunkard! on whose head, O beast, miscalled a man, shall her blood most heavily descend! Yes! let the thought torture thee— let it lash thee as with a whip of scorpions, and lacerate thy very soul with its envenomed smart. You killed your wife with your own selfish, beastly appetite; and you have worse than killed your daughter! After a long, long absence, which you have filled up by puling about your pretty Jane, she comes back to your roof, dishonoured and abandoned, and as you stretch your arms to fold her to your heart, she laughs a hoarse and gipsy laugh-a weird and hollow sound-in which you cannot recognize those tones that read the Bible in your ear, and called on you to pray. You look upon the face, but it is not the same; the blushes, once so modest, have faded from the cheek like withered flowers, and brazen stolid insolence is mantling in its place. What wonder-hell-babe!—what wonder, that upon some bleak and stormy night, she hurls herself from the dark parapet of the bridge, and seeks a refuge from the cold and sluggish earth in the colder and more sluggish water! Drowned! yes, drowned! and gone into eternity before youa ministering spirit to usher you to hell. Don't you remember when her trembling finger pointed you to heaven, and when it traced the lines that spake of Him who was the way, the truth, and the life? But you would not follow it, and you have not only turned away yourself, but have strewed blasting ashes on her flowery path. O, be not surprised to see, as you are hurried through the ebon corridors of the nether world, the pallid