And bear in mind one thing more. Man has his courtesies of war, and his chivalries of war: he does not strike the unarmed man; he spares the woman and the child. But Nature is as fierce when she is offended, as she is bounteous and kind when she is obeyed. She spares neither woman nor child. She has no pity; for some awful, but most good reason, she is not allowed to have any pity. Silently she strikes the sleeping babe, with as little remorse as she would strike the strong man, with the spade or the musket in his hand. Ah! would to God that some man had the pictorial eloquence to put before the mothers of England the mass of preventable suffering, the mass of preventable agony of mind and body, which exists in England year after year! and would that some man had the logical eloquence to make them understand that it is in their power, in the power of the mothers and wives of the higher class, I will not say to stop it all,— God only knows that, but to stop, as I believe, three fourths of it.

It is in the power, I believe, of any woman in this room to save three or four lives-human livesduring the next six months. It is in your power, ladies; and it is so easy. You might save several lives apiece, if you chose, without, I believe, interfering with your daily business, or with your daily pleasure; or, if you choose, with your daily frivolities, in any way whatsoever. Let me ask, then, those who are here, and who have not yet laid these things to heart: Will you let this meeting to-day be a mere passing matter of two or three hours' interest, which you may go away and forget for the next book or the next amusement? Or will you be in earnest? Will you learn-I say it openly-from the noble chairman, how easy it is to be in earnest in life; how every one of you, amid all the artificial complications of English society in the nineteenth century, can find a work to do, a noble work to do, a

chivalrous work to do,—just as chivalrous as if you lived in any old magic land, such as Spenser talked of in his Faery Queene; how you can be as true a knight-errant or lady-errant in the present century, as if you had lived far away in the dark ages of violence and rapine? Will you, I ask, learn this? Will you learn to be in earnest; and to use the position, and the station, and the talent that God has given you to save alive those who should live? And will you remember that it is not the will of your Father that is in Heaven that one little one that plays in the kennel outside should perish, either in body or in soul?

11 *

GREAT CITIES, AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND EVIL.*

THE pleasure, gentlemen and ladies, of addressing you here is mixed in my mind with very solemn feelings; the honor which you have done me is tempered by humiliating thoughts.

For it was in this very city of Bristol, twenty-seven years ago, that I received my first lesson in what is now called Social Science; and yet, alas! more than ten years elapsed ere I could even spell out that lesson, though it had been written for me (as well as for all England) in letters of flame, from the one end of heaven to the other.

I was a school-boy in Clifton up above. I had been hearing of political disturbances, even of riots, of which I understood nothing, and for which I cared nothing. But on one memorable Sunday afternoon I saw an object which was distinctly not political. Otherwise I should have no right to speak of it here. It was an afternoon of sullen autumn rain. The fog hung thick over the docks and lowlands. Glaring through that fog I saw a bright mass of flame,almost like a half-risen sun.

That, I was told, was the gate of the new jail on fire. That the prisoners in it had been set free; that But why speak of what too many here recollect but too well? The fog rolled slowly upward. Dark figures, even at that great distance, were flitting to and fro across what seemed the mouth of

*Lecture delivered at Bristol, October 5, 1857.

the pit. The flame increased, multiplied, at one point after another; till by ten o'clock that night I seemed to be looking down upon Dante's Inferno, and to hear the multitudinous moan and wail of the lost spirits surging to and fro amid that sea of fire.

Right behind Brandon Hill-how can I ever forget it? rose the great central mass of fire; till the little mound seemed converted into a volcano, from the peak of which the flame streamed up, not red alone, but delicately green and blue, pale rose and pearly white, while crimson sparks leaped and fell again in the midst of that rainbow, not of hope, but of despair; and dull explosions down below mingled with the roar of the mob, and the infernal hiss and crackle of the flame.

Higher and higher the fog was scorched and shrivelled upward by the fierce heat below, glowing through and through with red reflected glare, till it arched itself into one vast dome of red-hot iron, fit roof for all the madness down below, and beneath it, miles away, I could see the lonely tower of Dundie shining red; the symbol of the old faith, looking down in stately wonder and sorrow upon the fearful birth-throes of a new age. Yes. Why did I say just now, despair? I was wrong. Birth-throes, and not death-pangs, those horrors were. Else they would have no place in my discourse; no place, indeed, in my mind. Why talk over the signs of disease, decay, death? Let the dead bury their dead: and let us follow Him who dieth not; by whose command

The old order changeth, giving place to the new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways.

If we will believe this, if we will look on each convulsion of society, however terrible for the time being, as a token, not of decrepitude, but of youth; not as the expiring convulsions of sinking humanity,

but as upward struggles, upward toward fuller light, freer air, a juster, simpler, and more active life; then we shall be able to look calmly, however sadly, on the most appalling tragedies of humanity, - even on these late Indian ones, - and take our share, faithful and hopeful, in supplying the new and deeper wants of a new and nobler time.

But to return. It was on the Tuesday or Wednesday after, if I recollect right, that I saw another, and a still more awful sight. Along the north side of Queen-square, in front of ruins which had been three days before noble buildings, lay a ghastly row, not of corpses, but of corpse-fragments. I have no more wish than you to dilate upon that sight. But there was one charred fragment, with a scrap of old red petticoat adhering to it, which I never forgot, — which I trust in God that I never shall forget. It is good for a man to be brought, once at least in his life, face to face with fact, ultimate fact, however horrible it may be; and have to confess to himself, shuddering, what things are possible upon God's earth, when man has forgotten that his only welfare lies in living after the likeness of God.

Not that I learned the lesson then. When the first excitement of horror and wonder were past, what I had seen made me for years the veriest aristocrat, full of hatred and contempt of these dangerous classes, whose existence I had for the first time discovered. It required many years,-years, too, of personal intercourse with the poor, to explain to me the true meaning of what I saw here in October twenty-seven years ago; and to learn a part of that lesson which God taught to others thereby. And one part at least of that lesson was this, That the social state of a city depends directly on its moral state, and I fear dissenting voices, but I must say what I believe to be truth-that the moral state of a city depends— how far I know not, but frightfully, to an extent as