next corner a third friend met him with a similar expression of horror. Feebler and feebler each time waxed the poor man's assurance that he was perfectly well. Before he got home he was convinced that he must be extremely ill; and the story goes, that he took to his bed and died.

Those who would persuade the working men of Britain that their life is a daily martyrdom, a funeral procession to the grave, are practising a similar trick on their credulity, and rousing their imagination to make them miserable. It is not very difficult to make out a plausible case. It is easy to dwell upon the hardships of the working man. With hard work and little for it; long hours and long exposure; a poor dwelling and a heavy rent; with employment often, that like the stone-cutter's or the steel-grinder's is very unhealthy, or like the scavenger's or the miner's, disagreeable and offensive; enjoying no political power and little social influence; exposed to sickness without comforts, and to old age without alleviations; doomed sometimes to look on the illness of wife or child, and feel that the comforts that might restore them are utterly beyond reach; forced to continue this drudgery and carry this burden from childhood to old age with hardly a hope of relief-here certainly are many ugly elements, out of which it is not difficult to

make a very dark picture. Any one wishing to convince the working classes that their life is "a ceaseless degradation, a daily martyrdom, a funeral procession to the grave," has only to work up these things into a vivid picture, excluding every brighter element, and deepening the dark ones to the gloomiest possible shade. A working man, coming under the spell of such an artist, will soon be in the position of the poor man whom his friends beguiled into the belief that he was dying; he may have thought himself well enough before, and been contented and happy; now all is changed; his spirits sink, his energies are paralysed; he is a martyr where martyrdom has not even a chance of a crown-of all men most miserable.

Almost every life has a dark side, and every man. by dwelling on it may convince himself that he is a martyr. A little while ago, an article appeared in the Times on the miseries of dukes. All that could contribute to worry the life of a rich nobleman was elaborately set out; all the business he had to transact, the servants he had to control and watch, the plans he had to form, the improvements he had to superintend, the contracts he had to sanction, the perplexities he had to adjust, the abuse he had to endure. On reading it, one could understand how even a duke might come to believe that his life

was little better than a daily martyrdom, a funeral, procession to the grave. Only last year a young man died in England, the grandson of Lord Byron, the holder of one peerage, and the heir of another, who had deliberately preferred to live and die as a workman in an iron-foundry, rather than take his place in the House of Lords, and enjoy what seemed to him the uncomfortable honours of the peerage. Within the last few months, we have seen the strange spectacle of a crown going a-begging, as if the sentiments of Richard II. on the pleasures of royalty had become the universal creed—

"Let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings :-
How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping killed;
All murder'd; for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of the king,
Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene
To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self, and vain conceit,-
As if this flesh which walls about our life

Were brass impregnable; and humour'd thus
Comes at the last, and with a little pin

Bores through his castle-walls, and-farewell king!"

As the proverb says, "there is a skeleton in every house;" or, as we have heard it expressed, simply

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and plaintively, "there's aye a something." peep behind the scenes of high life would astonish many a one. That merchant prince, whom his poor clerk, with eighty pounds a year, looks up to as a demigod, as he walks majestically through the counting-house-why, at this moment, he may be wishing himself a clerk, a porter in his own office-anything that would free him from the misery that is burning out his heart-his silent but hopeless struggle with coming bankruptcy. That nobleman that rolls proudly past you in his chariot, as you are walking with your children,-perhaps he is thinking that he would not grudge half his acres, if only, like you, he had a son to come after him. Working men, as we call them technically, must not claim a monopoly of martyrdom; they must not fancy that there are no crowns and coronets in the funeral procession to the grave.1

1

Still it is true, as a general rule, that the working classes have a very heavy share of the more common burdens of life, much more heavy than others, and that they are very liable, when great pains are not

1 The story is told of a nobleman, that on one occasion he took a visitor to the top of a hill, commanding a noble view, and told him that he was the proprietor of every acre which he saw. "What a happy man you must be!" was the visitor's remark. "Happy!" returned the nobleman, "in all that wide expanse which you behold, there is not a single hamlet that contains so utterly wretched a man!"

taken to the contrary, to be crushed and broken down by these burdens,-in fact, to be ruined by them, or rather through them, both physically and morally. They are especially ill-fitted to stand a great strain, they are terribly shaken, as regards their outward condition, by the pressure of a great public calamity, like that which is passing over Lancashire now. Certainly the condition of the working man is not what the Christian philanthropist would like. It is not the most favourable for his either getting the most good, or doing the most good,-for his fulfilling in the best manner the high ends of his creation. In general, he carries too much weight. He is apt to get lame in the race, to lose heart, to lose self-respect, and to lie down because he can run no longer. The moment he is down, enemies rush on him and master him,-laziness, drunkenness, lying, and vices whose name is legion. We wish to do our humble part in encouraging the working man to bear his burdens. We would gladly lessen them, if we could; but if we cannot lessen them, we may at least suggest to him how he may bear them more easily. Some people say, Hard toil is the dispensation of Providence; and it is vain, if not impious, to strive against it. Yet is not Providence ever encouraging us to find out ways of lessening labour and of lightening burdens, and is it vain