so high that I will not name it, lest it be supposed that we had not been up long enough to see distinctly and judge correctly. The fruits and flowers also made a very fine display; the former, rich, luscious, and tempting; the latter, fresh, blooming, odorous, and beautiful. One gentleman stepped up to a rich stand of fruit, and asked if a fine "lot of peaches were natural or artificial," his mind being in doubt on the point. The seller, supposing him to be bantering, replied, "Go away, go away, sir; you are natural."

The same evening, it being Saturday, I found my way into Newgate Meat Market, which is two hundred feet long, and one hundred and fifty feet wide; and here another display met my eyes. I have always known that Englishmen are fond of good dinners, and many of them give evidence that they know how to live; and when I went into this market, I ceased to wonder. The finest beef and mutton I ever saw were here, and in quantities enough to supply a nation. I was told that six or eight hundred sheep, and seventy-five or one hundred oxen, are slaughtered here every day.

Leaving this market, I went to another, of a much poorer class. It was about eleven o'clock when I arrived. A hundred lights were flashing out upon the night, and the lower classes of people were purchasing the poorer kinds of food for the next day. There, women with a few pennies were endeavoring to secure a good trade; mothers, with a babe on one arm, and a basket on the other; little children, sent to purchase the cheapest bone; old men, hardly able to stagger home with what they had money to buy. Here came Poverty, creeping along by Covent Garden and Newgate, to expend her few pence in decaying vegetables and tainted meat. I noticed one little girl, who plain

in

tively went from stall to stall, with a single penny her hand, to expend to the best advantage. I followed her along, asked her a few questions, and when she made her meager purchase for her invalid mother, a little brother and herself, I could not resist the inducement to add a mite to her little treasure, that, on the Lord's day, the mouth of the widow might be filled with food; for which I was more than repaid by the graceful courtesy and meek "thank you" of the child, on whose cheek I saw a smile struggling with a

tear.

An old woman, with a wrinkled face and a trembling step, also arrested my attention. She passed up and down the market, to see how best her money could be laid out. There was such a care-worn look, such a sad and melancholy countenance, that pity at once led me, unobserved, to follow her. She filled her basket, and was moving away, when, wishing for an adventure, I said to her, in as kind a tone as possible, "Good woman, shall I carry your basket as far as I go in your direction?" Seeing that my offer was a well-meant one, she gave it me with many thanks. We walked along together, and in a few minutes I had all her history. She was a widow. Her husband died when her little twin children, a boy and a girl, were two years old Her little boy grew up, and, by his thoughtless course, wrung her heart with anguish, and finally left the parental roof, and entered the navy, and she had not seen him for years. "And O," said she, "if he would return, I would forgive him all, and love him as I did when once he carried the basket for me, as you do to-night. When you spoke to me, sir, I thought I heard his voice, and had found my son." The daughter she told me was dead, having worked herself to death to

support her mother. Now the widow lived on with but one hope to see her long-lost child. At the termination of the street we parted, and as I placed the basket on her arm and received her blessing, she said, with all the childishness of age, "If you ever see Edgar, you will tell him to come home; won't you?'

England has much to answer for her people, beg gared to support a royal line and a retinue of nobles. are calling for reform. They read the wrong in the signs of wretchedness and want of thousands who conceal themselves in the lanes and dark avenues of that great city, but who come out to beg, steal, or buy, and then shrink back again, as if afraid of light.

One night, as I wandered through Holborn, I was delighted with the appearance of a store, which set forth in a prominent position, very finely illuminated. On one side, in flaming gas letters, appeared, “God save the Queen," and on the other, "God bless the People; while in the middle blazed forth a crown and other bawbles of royalty. It was a gay sight, and I stood, and, with a crowd of others, gazed on a while; and as I looked, a pale and haggard-looking woman, tall and gaunt, mingled with the throng. A while she gazed with the rest, but at length, rising to her full height, and looking around upon the people, exclaimed, or rather shrieked out, "Admire it, admire it; but know that it was wrung out of poor, old, worn-out frames, like mine!" And then she commenced a rude speech upon the wrongs of the working class, which appealed to all hearts. She was soon hustled away by a police officer, crying, as she went, "Burn on, burn on ; on; the wasted lamp is almost out."

A residence of a few weeks in Europe makes one painfully familiar with scenes of wretchedness and sor

row. Starving families are represented in the street by squalid-looking children, haggard men, and pale, cadaverous women. If you leave the Strand, Holborn, or Oxford Street, and step into the by-ways and sidelanes, you change at once from the rolling carriages of the nobles, and the rich stores, filled with splendid trappings, to the filth and wretchedness of squalid poverty. If you enter the dwellings of the residents in those streets, you will find children who know but little about a respectable meal, or a comfortable bed, and such degradation as will make you weep for poor fallen human nature.

Often, when tired of display, and satisfied with the richness of the more public streets, have I stopped at the door of some rude tenement, and entered into conversation with the father or mother, about the children who were playing around, or who shrunk away at my presence. They would confess, without a blush, that they were uneducated, and brought up in crime and sin. To the question, "Do you go to church?" the answer would be, "Where should a poor man as me get clothes to wear to church?" or, "How can a poor woman like I go into the company of the gentry?" And thus parents and children alike grow up without the light of education or religion. Christianity, in the old world, stalks abroad in spacious cathedrals, or nestles down at the foot of kingly thrones, and goes not to the widow and the fatherless to bless and encourage them. Her dignity would be injured by a contact with the poor, despised, and ignoble, and she turns from them with coldness to take the hand of princes. This may be the religion of the church of England and of Rome, but it is not the religion of THE CHURCH OF GOD.

VI.

THE INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION.

THE Crystal Palace, with its crowded apartments, halls, saloons, and thousands of visitors, was the fortunate idea of Prince Albert. Ever seeking out some plan to benefit the nation, to share the throne of which he had been called by divine Providence, he conceived the purpose, the grandeur of which has been equaled only by the unparalleled success which has crowned it. His ready mind at once foresaw the immense advantage which such an exhibition would be to England, and he set himself to the work. His plans were communicated to the nobles of England and France; consultations were held with artists and mechanics, and an early attempt was determined upon.

“Where shall it be held?" was the first question; and to this but one answer was given. The city of London alone could furnish facilities for such a gathering, and it was determined to erect a building in Hyde Park, between Kensington Road and Rotten Row. The resi dents in the immediate vicinity were naturally opposed to this selection; and as they could not prevent the progress of the enterprise, or prevail upon the commissioners to select a new location, they procured an act of Parliament that the building should be removed as soon as the exhibition closed.

"What shall the building be?" was next asked. This question was not so easily answered. For weeks a

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