it, descend below, where, though they are but bodiless. syllables, they are often fashioned by the imps into pins and needles, and straightway returned to the world to torment their begetter."

The collected works of Douglas Jerrold were pub lished in a cheap form during his lifetime, and had the advantage of his revision. The chief qualities of his writings are wit, originality, humorous philosophy, and earnestness of purpose. A genial spirit tempers what would otherwise be a severe and often fierce phraseology; the diamond is pure and brilliant, though the setting may be rough. His earnestness of style and purpose is intense, and the reader cannot doubt that he believes what he is saying; he is not like the preacher who expected his hearers to believe what he taught, yet did not exactly believe it himself. He had a happy way of telling a story, and clothing a moral or a truth in it. His faith was, that man is a social being; and he had deep sympathy for his ignorant and suffering fellow-creatures, which did not expend itself in mere words and ink, but often in deeds. One who knew him well has said, that if everyone who received a kindness at the hands of Douglas Jerrold were to lay a flower on his tomb, he would have a monument of roses.

It is not possible to do an author justice by quotations; his entire works and nothing less will do him justice. To pick out bits here and there as specimens, is imitating the man who carried about a brick as a specimen of the house he had to sell.

An

author's most delicate thoughts will not bear transplanting; it is natural that loosened from their native soil they should lack vigour and completeness. Thoughts that glitter in the book are dull when isolated: the bright pebble you gather on the sea shore becomes dim when carried home. "It is in their places that bursts of eloquence and glimpses ci divine grace, and moralizings, and snatches of sweet verse arrest the mind; when heaped together they

are like furniture in a shop, and that which might be ornament becomes upholstery."

Here are a few specimens of Jerrold's wit, and power of repartee; they are not his best things: those were never recorded.—A musical bore having remarked of a certain tune that "it always carried him away;" Jerrold asked, innocently, "Is there nobody who can whistle it?"-An elderly lady attributed the greyness of her hair to the use of essence of lavender. "Nay, my dear madam," said Jerrold, "you mean essence of thyme" (time).—When a person asked him indignantly, "Do you call that kindness—a man kind who is away from his family, and never sends them a farthing?" "Yes," replied Jerrold, "unremitting kindness."-A man who was fond of what is improperly called "good living," after puzzling his friends for some time by asking them to guess what he had eaten for dinner, told them it was calves' tails; when Jerrold quietly remarked that "extremes meet."

Jerrold's fault as a man— -if it be a fault-was a too great tenderness of heart. He never could say No. His purse-when he had a purse-was at every man's service, as were also his time, his pen, and his influence in the world. If he possessed a shilling, somebody would get sixpence of it from him. He had a lending look, of which many took advantage. The first time he ever saw Tom Dibdin, that worthy gentleman and song-writer said to him-"Youngster, have you sufficient confidence in me to lend me a guinea?"-" Oh, yes," said the author of 'BlackEyed Susan,' "I have all the confidence, but I have the guinea." A generosity which knew no limit--not even the limit at his bankers-led him into trials from which a colder man would have easily escapod. To give all that he possessed to relieve a brother from immediate trouble, was nothing; he as willingly mortgaged his future for a friend as another

man would bestow his advice or blessing. And yet this man was accused of ill-nature!

The question of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of plays will possibly be mooted by some. It is difficult to divest the mind of the popular religious prejudice against the theatre, which has originated, and in part justly so, from the abuse and degeneracy of the play-house. But considered as a school for the study of elocution and action, for the delineation of character, the "holding as 'twere the mirror up to nature, showing virtue her own form, and vice its own image," what objection can there be to the theatre in the abstract? John Milton, the severe moralist, the Puritan, the mirror of personal sanctity, wrote a play, one of the most charming of poetic creations, the "Masque of Comus"-and superintended its exhibition. True it was produced at a lordly mansion, and not a licensed play-house, and therefore might be witnessed without wickedness. That is the gist of the objection-the theatre is degrading and disreputable, not the play-not the good drama. I cannot defend the theatre as it exists in this or any other land in the present day. The pieces played are often immoral trash, and the hour of performance is too long and late; but if these evils were remedied, and the bad adjuncts removed, instead of being an evil and a place to avoid, the theatre would be the resort of the wise and good.

I must pass briefly over Jerrold's connection with "Punch." He was one of its originators, and its editor for many years. I honour "Punch" as the embodiment of English sense, honesty, and nationalitv. It is no small benefit to society to make it smile at its follies. What does the wise Solomon say of hearty mirth?" A merry heart doeth good like a medicine."

Jerrold did not believe that a man served GOD by despising God's good gifts of imagination, and wit, and the thousand external beauties of this beautiful

world; or that immortal spirits became brighter in proportion as they became duller men. Wit and humour are flowers of the mind that brighten our souls, as the flowers of the earth brighten the landscape. Imagination is a God-like, creative faculty, and makes the great painter, poet, preacher, and musician.

Jerrold was a hater of Cant. He believed with Hood that many people think they are pious when they are only bilious. He did not satirise religion, only its counterfeit. If you ask was Jerrold a religious man, I reply, yes, if you mean a man who did to others as he would have others do to him. He was no sectarian, and he did not believe that men advanced their spiritual state by being mopish and melancholy, walking through this world with downcast eyes; nor, on the other hand, did he accord with those pleasure-seekers who spend the first half of their lives in making the other half miserable. He honoured labour, and man as man. He believed work dignified a man, and that the clothes which did a man most honour were not his Sunday clothes.

His connection with the newspaper press I regard as one of the most useful occupations of his life. He was ever the staunch friend of freedom, as well as of civil and religious liberty, and the rights of the people. He advocated with undaunted courage and matchless ability every movement for the improvement of the people's sanitary, moral, and spiritual condition. He raised the paper he edited to the highest circulation, and proved throughout his literary carcer that "the pen is mightier than the sword."

TOTAL ABSTINENCE:

ITS USE AND ABUSE

BY THE REV. JOHN

KINGSTON,

Licentiate in Theology of the University of Durham; and ex-Classical and ex-Law Scholar, Queen's University, Dublin.

66

[Delivered in Manchester.]

THE title of this lecture will, doubtless, be extremely distasteful to two classes of persons, with neither of which do I feel the slightest sympathy; namely, the anti-teetotaller and the ultra-teetotaller. I desire to take up a middle position. "What!" the former will exclaim, are you beginning to stand in doubt of your principles? Teetotalism, then, is not, in your estimation, the grand panacea which so many would fain make us believe it to be." "What!" exclaims our fanatical friend, " are you about to shew the white feather?' We want no half-hearted workers in our noble cause." Gently, my friends both. I steer a middle course, because I see danger on both sides.

In that part of the sea which separates Italy from Sicily, there is, on the Sicilian coast, a dangerous whirlpool which the ancients called Charybdis; and on the Italian side are some sunken rocks, which they denominated Scylla. Now, the cautious mariner kept the centre course, lest by avoiding one danger he should fall into a greater. And thus Virgil's line became a proverb