en will certainly find
out vicious ones for themselves. Sydney Smith truly said, "In order to
attack vice with effect, we must set up something better in its place."

Temperance reformers have not sufficiently considered how much the
drinking habits of the country are the consequences of gross tastes, and
of the too limited opportunities which exist in this country for
obtaining access to amusements of an innocent and improving tendency.
The workman's tastes have been allowed to remain uncultivated; present
wants engross his thoughts; the gratification of his appetites is his
highest pleasure; and when he relaxes, it is to indulge immoderately in
beer or whisky. The Germans were at one time the drunkenest of nations;
they are now amongst the soberest. "As drunken as a German boor," was a
common proverb. How have they been weaned from drink? Principally by
Education and Music.

Music has a most humanizing effect. The cultivation of the art has a
most favourable influence upon public morals. It furnishes a source of
pleasure in every family. It gives home a new attraction. It makes
social intercourse more cheerful. Father Mathew followed up his
Temperance movement by a Singing movement. He promoted the establishment
of musical clubs all over Ireland: for he felt that, as he had taken the
people's whisky from them, he must give them some wholesome stimulus in
its stead. He gave them Music. Singing classes were established, to
refine the taste, soften the manners, and humanize the mass of the Irish
people. But we fear that the example set by Father Mathew has already
been forgotten.

"What a fulness of enjoyment," says Channing, "has our Creator placed
within our reach, by surrounding us with an atmosphere which may be
shaped into sweet sounds! And yet this goodness is almost lost upon us,
through want of culture of the organ by which this provision is to be
enjoyed."

How much would the general cultivation of the gift of music improve us
as a people! Children ought to learn it in schools, as they do in
Germany. The voice of music would then be heard in every household. Our
old English glees would no longer be forgotten. Men and women might sing
in the intervals of their work,--as the Germans do in going to and
coming from their wars. The work would not be worse done, because it was
done amidst music and cheerfulness. The breath of society would be
sweetened, and pleasure would be linked with labour.

Why not have som