us all was light! I was almost angry with myself for feeling so immediately happy; but, after the lapse of a few minutes, the heaviness of the past was superseded by the joyfulness of the present. The evening came in due time, with its sober hues and tones, and I had leisure to think over the doleful knell and the marriage ringings; and then, indeed, I saw, with gratitude to Him who orders all things for the best, how wise it is that the tear should be followed by the smile, and that cause for sorrow should be succeeded by motive for joy!
How many and how marvellous are the changes that ten years have wrought. New sympathies have been awakened; a new spirit has been hovering above us and around us, with "healing on its wings." Ten years ago—women and children slaved in our coal mines, degraded far below the level of "brutes that perish;" women, harnessed to their loads, crawling like reptiles along damps and slimes, underneath the earth: children, whose weak and "winking" eyes had never seen the light, with minds as dark as the strata wherein they toiled! Ten years ago—the loom, too, hid its victims far away out of Humanity's sight, in the sole keeping of those who, in their thirst for "gold, more gold," made their alchemy of infant sinews, and sweats from the brow of age. Ten years ago—the shopman—in the hot summer time, centred in the crowded thoroughfare, where dust and air so closely mingle that they are inhaled together from sunrise to midnight—laboured for eighteen hours; an item of God's creation for whom there was no care; never, during the six days of his master's week, seeing the faces of his children, save in sleep, and too worn, too weary, when the sabbath came, to find it a day of rest. How long was the prayer unanswered,—
""Give me one hour of rest from toil,
From daily toil for daily bread;
Untwisting Labour's heavy coil
From round the heart and head;"
Ten years ago—no voice was raised for mercy to the lone sempstress; sure "slave of the lamp;" working from "weary chime to chime;" bearing her cross in solitude—toiling, while starving, for the few soiled pence, the very touch of which would be contamination to the kidded hands of tawdry footmen; these poor women sunk into their graves, they and their famished children, unmissed of any, for there were none to ask where they were gone. Ten years ago—and the governess, in age, in poverty, in sickness, had no refuge—no shelter, even from a storm that might have been a passing one. Her life of labour—labour of head, eyes, hands, and tongue; toil without rest—uncheered, unappreciated, unrecompensed, which left
"No leisure to be gay or glad,"
