bor as ourself. But will any man tell me how we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, if we see them oppressed, made poor, made miserable, made ignorant and criminal, by the measures of a bad government, and this not in individual cases, but by thousands and tens of thousands, if we move neither hand nor foot to help them? If we are commanded "to do justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly before God;" if we are again commanded "to do to others as we would be done by;" if, again, we are told that the very mark and distinction of our Christianity is, that "we love one another;" if we are told that, inasmuch as we give but a cup of cold water in the name of Christ to one of his very least disciples, we give it to him: is there, let me ask you, any turn or escape from these great cardinal commands and injunctions? Is there any exception in favor of political crimes and oppressions? The greater the mischief, the greater the need of our assistance; and I will boldly challenge any one to show me any causes or machinery of human suffering, so mighty or prolific as that of bad government.

There are those, and that perhaps in nearly every third house, who think that religion consists in cultivating certain inward feelings; in reading certain books, in making certain prayers, and passing through certain forms. This may be a religion of some kind; but I will boldly tell all those who practise it that it is not the Christian religion. The religion of Christ is a religion not of negative virtues, but of active, ardent, generous deeds, and sympathies with our fellow-creatures and their sorrows. A religion of inward feeling without outward work is the religion of monks, let its votaries call themselves what else they will. The religion of Christ led him out into the highways and hedges, into the streets and the market-places, and to the daily denouncement of public oppressors, as well as to the alleviation of private woe. The religion that is not prepared to attack human evils at their root, and to prevent them as much as possible by destroying their causes, has been long ago pronounced to be "a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal." The man who sees trade destroyed by the mischievous acts of a bad government, and his poor neighbors suffering all round him in consequence, and does not set heartily to work to reform that government, to endeavor to procure a better system, but, on the contrary, shrinks into his house and his closet, lest he ruffle or excite his feelings, is but acting over again the proud Levite, and leaving it to the good Samaritan to pour the oil and the wine into his neighbor's wounds. In a word, Christianity is not merely a religion of principles, but of consequences; and he who does not dare to look those principles freely in the face, and, without fear of man or devil, of high or low, of unpopularity or personal sacrifice, to carry these divine principles boldly out into their full, direct, and legitimate consequences—

that man may talk of Christianity, but has yet to learn what is.-Speech delivered at Nottingham, 1835.

THE TRUE DIGNITY OF LABOR.

Bu:

From the foundation of the world there has been a tendency to look down upon labor, and upon those who live by it, with entempt, as though it were something mean and ignoble. This one of those vulgar prejudices which have arisen from consider ing every thing vulgar that was peculiar to the multitude. B cause the multitude have been suffered to remain too long rud and ignorant, every thing associated with their condition has been confounded with the circumstances of this condition. The multitude were, in their rudeness and ignorance, mean in the public estimation, and the labor of their hands was held to be mean too. Nay, it has been said that labor is the result of Gods primary curse, pronounced on man for his disobedience. that is a great mistake. God told Adam that the ground was cursed for his sake; but not that his labor was cursed. He told him that in the sweat of his face he should eat his bread till he returned to the ground. But so far from labor partaking of the curse, it was given him as the means of triumphing over the curse. The ground was to produce thorns and thistles, but labor was to extirpate these thorns and thistles, and to cover the face of the earth with fruit-trees and bounteous harvests. And labor has done this: labor has already converted the earth, so far as its surface is concerned, from a wilderness into a paradise. Man eats his bread in the sweat of his face, but is there any bread so sweet as that, when he has only nature to contend with, and not the false arrangements of his fellow-men? So far is labor from being a curse, so far is it from being a disgrace; it is the very principle which, like the winds of the air, or the agitation of the sea, keeps the world in health. It is the very life-blood of society, stirring in all its veins, and diffusing vigor and enjoyment through the whole system. Without man's labor, God had created the world in vain! Without our labor, all life, except that of the rudest and most savage kind, must perish. Arts, civilization, refinement, and religion must perish. Labor is the grand pedestal of God's blessings upon earth; it is more-like man and the world itself it is the offspring and the work of God.

All honor, then, to labor, the offspring of Deity; the most ancient of ancients, sent forth by the Almighty into these nether worlds; the most noble of nobles! Honor to that divine principle which has filled the earth with all the comforts, and joys, and affluence that it possesses, and is undoubtedly the instrument of happiness wherever life is found. Without labor, what is there? Without it, there were no world itself. Whatever we see or per

ceive-in heaven or on the earth-is the product of labor. The sky above us, the ground beneath us, the air we breathe, the sun, the moon, the stars-what are they? The product of labor. They are the labors of the Omnipotent, and all our labors are but a continuance of His. Our work is a divine work. We carry on what God began.

What a glorious spectacle is that of the labor of man upon the earth! It includes every thing in it that is glorious. Look round, my friends, and tell me what you see that is worth seeing that is not the work of your hands, and of the hands of your fellows-the multitude of all ages?

What is it that felled the ancient forests and cleared vast morasses of other ages? That makes green fields smile in the sun, and corn rustling in the breezes of heaven, whisper of plenty and domestic joy? What raised first the hut, and then the cottage, and then the palace? What filled all these with food and furniture, with food simple and also costly; with furniture of infinite variety, from the three-legged stool to the most magnificent cabinet and the regal throne? What made glass, and dyed it with all the hues of rainbows or of summer sunsets? What constructed presses and books, and filled up the walls of libraries, every inch of which contained a mass of latent light hoarded for the use of ages? What took the hint from the split walnut-shell which some boy floated on the brook, and set on the flood first the boat, and then the ship, and has scattered these glorious children of man, the water-walking ships, over all the oceans of the world, and filled them with the produce of all lands, and the machinery and steam of profoundest inventions? What has made the wide sea like a great city street, where merchants are going to and fro full of eager thoughts of self-accumulation, but not the less full of international blessings? What has made the land like one great garden, laid down its roads that run like veins to every portion of the system of life, cut its canals, cast up its lines of railways, and driven along them, in fire and vapor, the awful but beneficial dragons of modern enterprise? What has piled up all our cities with their glittering and exhaustless wealth, their splendid utensils, their paintings, their mechanic wonders, all serving domestic life and its beloved fireside delights? Labor! labor! labor! It is labor, and your labor, men of the multitude, that has done it all!

True, the wise ones tell us that it is intellect that has done it. And all honor to intellect! It is not I nor you, fellow-workers, who will attempt to rob the royal power of intellect of one iota of his renown. Intellect is also a glorious gift of the Divinity,— a divine principle in the earth. We set intellect at the head of labor, and bid it lead the way to all wonders and discoveries; but we know that intellect cannot go alone. Intellect cannot

separate itself from labor. Intellect has also its labor; and in its most abstract and ethereal form cannot develop itself without the co-operation of its twin-brother, labor. When intellect exerts itself, when it thinks, and invents, and discovers,-it then labors. Through the medium of labor it does all that it does; and upon labor it is perfectly dependent to carry out all its mechanical operations. Intellect is the head,-labor the right hand. Take away the hand, and the head is a magazine of knowledge and fire that is sealed up in eternal darkness. Such are the relationships of labor and intellect.

ALARIC ALEXANDER WATTS, 1799

IN fastidious taste and careful finish, few poets of the present century excel Alaric Watts. He was born in London in 1799, and became first known to the public in 1822, when he published some poems under the title of Poetical Sketches, which were very successful. Shortly after he became editor of the Leeds Intelligencer, and distinguished himself by attacking the neglect and inhumanity of the then existing factory system. Afterwards he edited the Manchester Courier for a few years, and then came to London, where he edited the Literary Souvenir, one of the first of the "annuals," of which he brought out eleven volumes. They consisted of prose and poetic sketches, intermingled with engravings of the highest class. He also brought out the Poetical Album, two series,—a judicious and tasteful selection of the fugitive poetry of living English poets; also, Scenes of Life and Shades of Character, two volumes. In 1833 he became editor of the United Service Gazette, then established, with which he continued connected for many years. In 1853 he obtained a literary pension of £100 a year.1

DEATH OF THE FIRST-BORN.

"Fare thee well, thou first and fairest."-BURNS.

My sweet one, my sweet one, the tears were in my eyes
When first I clasp'd thee to my heart, and heard thy feeble cries;
For I thought of all that I had borne, as I bent me down to kiss
Thy cherry lips and sunny brow, my first-born bud of bliss!

I turn'd to many a wither'd hope, to years of grief and pain,
And the cruel wrongs of a bitter world flash'd o'er my boding brain;
I thought of friends grown worse than cold-of persecuting foes,
And I ask'd of Heaven if ills like these must mar thy youth's repose?

1" Alaric Watts has given abundant proof," says Mr. Moir, "if not of high creative strength, of gentle pathos, of cultivated intellect, and an eye and ear sensitively alive to all the genial impulses of nature, of home-bred delights, and heartfelt happiness: he is always

elegant and refined, and looks on carelessness
as every man of taste and accomplishment
should-as a vice unworthy of an artist; for
poetry, assuredly, requires the learned skill,
intuitive as that may occasionally seem, as
well as the teeming fancy."

I gazed upon thy quiet face, half blinded by my tears,

Till gleams of bliss, unfelt before, came brightening on my fears:

Sweet rays of hope, that fairer shone 'mid the clouds of gloom that bound

them,

As stars dart down their loveliest light when midnight skies are round them.

My sweet one, my sweet one, thy life's brief hour is o'er,
And a father's anxious fears for thee can fever me no more!

And for the hopes, the sun-bright hopes, that blossom'd at thy birth,-
They, too, have fled, to prove how frail are cherish'd things of earth!

Cradled in thy fair mother's arms, we watch'd thee, day by day,
Pale like the second bow of heaven-as gently waste away;
And, sick with dark foreboding fears we dared not breathe aloud,
Sat, hand in hand, in speechless grief, to wait death's coming cloud!

It came at length; o'er thy bright blue eye the film was gathering fast;
And an awful shade pass'd o'er thy brow, the deepest and the last;
In thicker gushes strove thy breath,-we raised thy drooping head;
A moment more, the final pang,-and thou wert of the dead!

Thy gentle mother turn'd away to hide her face from me,
And murmur'd low of Heaven's behests, and bliss attain'd by thee:
She would have chid me that I mourn'd a doom so blest as thine,
Had not her own deep grief burst forth in tears as wild as mine!

We laid thee down in thy sinless rest, and from thine infant brow
Cull'd one soft lock of radiant hair, our only solace now;

Then placed around thy beauteous corse flowers not more fair and sweet,--
Twin rosebuds in thy little hands, and jasmine at thy feet.

Though other offspring still be ours, as fair perchance as thou,
With all the beauty of thy cheek, the sunshine of thy brow,-
They never can replace the bud our early fondness nursed;
They may be lovely and beloved, but not, like thee, the First!

The First! How many a memory bright that one sweet word can bring
Of hopes that blossom'd, droop'd, and died in life's delightful spring;
Of fervid feelings pass'd away, those early seeds of bliss

That germinate in hearts unsear'd by such a world as this!

My sweet one, my sweet one, my fairest and my first!

When I think of what thou might'st have been, my heart is like to burst;
But gleams of gladness through my gloom their soothing radiance dart,
And my sighs are hush'd, my tears are dried, when I turn to what thou art!

Pure as the snow-flake ere it falls and takes the stain of earth,
With not a taint of mortal life except thy mortal birth,
God bade thee early taste the spring for which so many thirst,
And bliss, eternal bliss, is thine, my Fairest and my First!

TO A CHILD BLOWING BUBBLES.

Thrice happy babe! what radiant dreams are thine,
As thus thou bidd'st thine air-born bubbles soar!
Who would not Wisdom's choicest gifts resign
To be, like thee, a careless child once more?