nued because once
begun,--then discovery, and punishment, and shame, and despair. Youth
must have its pleasures, I know. Young blood is not torpid like that of
age; and song and woman will ever be dear till time furrows the brow and
silvers the hair. But why need we seek them where the air is
contaminated--where the evening's amusement will not bear the morning's
reflection--where, though pleasure lead the way, scattering sweet
flowers, vice and shame and premature old age bring up the rear? Look at
those lads; they cannot have been long emancipated from school. The
erect collar, the straight hat, the long coat, indicate the fact that
they belong to the Young England party; and here, listening to
indifferent songs, and witnessing inferior dramatic performances, and
associating with the refuse of the other sex, they are learning to be
men. What a manhood to look forward to! And if there be no excuse for
them, there is still less for what I may call the domestic part of the
audience,--the fat old women with their baskets filled with prog, the
pursy old tradesmen that drop in to smoke a pipe, and the various tribes
of gents and bagsmen on their way home from the city.

Let me say a word on our domestic life. When there is so little
difference between the majority of men and women, why should the line of
demarcation be so severely drawn? We talk very prettily about home,
sweet home, and poets sing its love and purity and charms; and a popular
picture is that which the artist draws when he groups together the
gray-haired grandfather and grandmother, seated by the fire, and father
and mother by their side, and brave lads and graceful girls around
listening, by the warm light of the lamp, to some tale of manly struggle
or Christian chivalry, or lifting up together the glad voice of song.
But why should your son or mine, immediately he goes out into the world
and leaves the parental roof, become a stranger to all this? If the
Englishman's home be his castle, why should we cast out into the ditch,
to lie down and die in its mire, all who are not of the family? Think of
the thousands and thousands of young men who yearly come up to town,
strangers to every one, and with no chance of getting into female
society, except such as they find at such places as the Eagle. These
women are not lovelier than you meet with in respectable houses--not
better educated nor more correct in their principles; yet, as by natural
instinct