"I tell you, to-night, man-to-night. She's on a door-step; there❞—and the woman pointed down the street. "I should like to know what we pay you watchmen for, if poor creatures are to drop down dead with cold on the highway.'

The watchman lifted his lantern to the face of the speakerit was a frank, lively, good-humoured face, with about five-andthirty years lightly laid upon it-and closing one eye, as if the act gave peculiar significance to what he said, observed, syllable by syllable, "Any more of your imperance, and "-here he took an oath, solemnising it with a smart blow of his stick upon the pavement," and I'll lock you up." The woman answered something; but the words were lost, ground by the watchman's rattle which, with consummate excellence-the golden fruit of painful practice -he whirled about. As cricket answers cricket, the rattle found a response. Along the street the sound was caught up, prolonged, and carried forward; and small bye-lanes gave forth a wooden voice-a voice that cried to all the astounded streets, "justice is awake! And then lantern after lantern glimmered in the night one lantern advancing with a sober, a considerate pace; another, with a sort of flutter; another, dancing like a jack-o'lantern over the snow. And so, lantern after lantern, with watchmen behind them, came and clustered about the box of him, who was on the instant greeted as Drizzle.

66

What's the row?" cried an Irishman-a young fellow of about sixty, who flourished his stick, and stamped upon the pavement, like too indignant virtue, impatient of a wrong. "What's the row? Is it her?" and he was about to lay his civil hand upon the woman.

Every watchman asked his separate question; it seemed to be his separate right: and Drizzle, as though respecting the privilege of his brethren, heard them all-yes, every one-before he answered. He then replied, very measuredly-" A woman is froze to death."

"What! agin?" cried two or three.

66

he

Agin," answered Drizzle. Then turning himself round, headed the watch; and motioning to the woman to show the way, he slowly led his fellows down the street. In due time, they arrived at the spot.

"Froze to death?" cried Drizzle doubtingly, holding his lantern to the bloodless, rigid features of the miserable outcast.

"Froze to death? said every other watchman, on taking a like

survey.

"No,-no; not dead! Thank God! not dead," exclaimed the woman, stooping towards her wretched sister. "Her heart beats

-I think it beats."

'Werry drunk; but not a bit dead," said Drizzle: and his brethren-one and all-murmured, as though they had been unjustifiably aroused from their lawful slumbers.

"Well! what are you going to do with her?" asked the woman vehemently.

"What should we do with her?" cried Drizzle.

dead, and she isn't a breaking the peace.

"She isn't

"But she will be dead, if she's left here, and so I desire "You desire!" said Drizzle, "and after all, what's your name, and where do you come from?"

My name's Mrs. Aniseed, I live in Short's Gardens—and I come from—the Lord ha' mercy! what's that?" she cried as something stirred beneath the ends of the woman's shawl, that lay huddled upon her lap. With the words, Mrs. Aniseed plucked the shawl aside, and discovered a sleeping infant. "What a heavenly babe! she cried and, truly, the child in its marble whiteness looked beautiful; a lovely human bud,-a sweet, unsullied sojourner of earth, cradled on the knees of misery and vice.

For an instant, the watchmen in silence gazed upon the babe. Even their natures, hardened in scenes of crime and destitution, were touched by the appealing innocence of the child. "Poor little heart!" said one. God help it!" cried another.

66

Yes; God help it! And with such easy adjuration do we leave thousands and tens of thousands of human souls to want and ignorance; doom them, when yet sleeping the sleep of guiltlessness, to future devils-their own unguided passions. We make them outcasts, wretches; and then punish, in their wickedness, our own selfishness-our own neglect. We cry "God help the babes," and hang the men.

Yet a moment. The child is still before us. May we not see about it-contending for it-the principles of good and evil? A contest between the angels and the fiends? Come hither, statesman; you who live within a party circle; you, who nightly fight some miserable fight; continually strive in some selfish struggle for power and place, considering men only as tools, the merest instruments of your aggrandisement; come here, in the wintry street, and look upon God's image in its babyhood! Con

sider this little man. Are not creatures such as these the noblest, grandest things of earth? Have they not solemn natures—are they not subtly touched for the highest purposes of human life? Come they not into this world to grace and dignify it? There is no spot, no coarser stuff in the pauper flesh before you, that indicates a lower nature. There is no felon mark upon it-no natural formation indicating the thief in its baby fingers-no inevitable blasphemy upon its lips. It lies before you a fair, unsullied thing, fresh from the hand of God. Will you, without an effort, let the great fiend stamp his fiery brand upon it? Shall it, even in its sleeping innocence, be made a trading thing by misery and vice? A creature borne from street to street, a piece of living merchandise for mingled beggary and crime? Say; what, with its awakening soul, shall it learn? What lessons whereby to pass through life, making an item in the social sum? Why, cunning will be its wisdom; hypocrisy its truth; theft its natural law of self-preservation. To this child, so nurtured, so taught, your whole code of morals, nay, your brief right and wrong, are writ in stranger figures than Egyptian hieroglyphs, and-time passes-and you scourge the creature never taught, for the heinous guilt of knowing nought but ill! The good has been a sealed book to him, and the dunce is punished with the jail. Doubtless, there are great statesmen ; wizards in bullion and bankpaper; thinkers profound in cotton, and every turn and variation of the markets, abroad and at home. But there are statesmen yet to come; statesmen of nobler aims-of more heroic action; teachers of the people; vindicators of the universal dignity of man; apostles of the great social truth that knowledge, which is the spiritual light of God, like his material light, was made to bless and comfort all men. And when these men arise-and it is worse than weak, it is sinful, to despair of them-the youngling poor will not be bound upon the very threshold of human life, and made, by want and ignorance, life's shame and curse. There is not a babe lying in the public street on its mother's lap-the unconscious mendicant to ripen into the criminal-that is not a reproach to the state; a scandal and a crying shame who study all politics, save the politics of the human heart. To return to the child of our story; to the baby St. Giles; for indeed it is he.

upon men

In a moment, Mrs. Aniseed caught the infant to her arms; and