life, and laughs at love as a romance; a heart--unless it be a bullock's,
and well cooked,--is tacitly understood to be a mistake; and conscience a
thing that no one can afford to keep. Our young men are bald at
twenty-five, and woman is exhausted still sooner. I am told Quakers are
sometimes moved by the spirit. I am told mad Ranters sing, and preach,
and roar as if they were in earnest. I hear that there is even
enthusiasm amongst the Mormons; but that matters little. We are very few
of us connected with such _outre_ sects, and the exceptions but prove the
rule.

But a truce to generalities. Let us give modern instances. Look at
Jenkins, the genteel stockbroker. In autumn he may be seen getting into
his brougham, which already contains his better-half and the
olive-branches that have blessed their mutual loves. This brougham will
deposit the Jenkinses, and boxes of luggage innumerable, at the Brighton
Railway Terminus, whence it is their intention to start for that crowded
and once fashionable watering-place. Jenkins has been dying all the
summer of the heat. Why, like the blessed ass as he is, did he stop in
town, when for a few shillings he might have been braced and cooled by
sea breezes, but because of that monotony which forbids a man consulting
nature and common sense. Jenkins only goes out of town when the
fashionable world goes; he would not for the life of him leave till the
season was over.

Again, does ever the country look lovelier than when the snows of winter
reluctantly make way for the first flowers of spring? Is ever the air
more balmy or purer than when the young breath of summer, like a tender
maiden, kisses timidly the cheek, and winds its way, like a blessing from
above, to the weary heart? Does ever the sky look bluer, or the sun more
glorious, or the earth more green, or is ever the melody of birds more
musical, than then? and yet at that time the _beau monde_ must resort to
town, and London drawing-rooms must emit a polluted air, and late hours
must enfeeble, and bright eyes must become dull, and cheeks that might
have vied in loveliness with the rose, sallow and pale.

It is a fine thing for a man to get hold of a good cause; one of the
finest sights that earth can boast is that of a man or set of men
standing up to put into action what they know to be some blessed God-sent
truth. A Cromwell mourning the flat Popery of St. Paul's--a Luther,
before principalities and powers, ex