ywhere. In one country he will see the poor fed
and clothed by charity, without any effort being made to relieve them
from the pressure by which they are sunk in destitution. The spirit of
brotherhood is not there; and such charity has nothing of the spirit of
hope and progress in it. In another country, he will see the independent
insisting on the right of the destitute to relief, and providing by law
or custom for such relief. This is a great step, inasmuch as the
interests of the helpless are taken up by the powerful,--a movement
which must have something of the fraternal spirit for its impulse. In a
third, he hears of prison discipline societies, missionary societies,
temperance societies, and societies for the abolition of slavery. This
is better still. It is looking wide,--so wide as that the spirit of
charity acts as seeing the invisible,--the pagan trembling under the
tabu, the negro outraged in his best affections, and the criminal hidden
in the foul retreat of the common jail. It is also a training for
looking deep; for these methods of charity all go to prevent the woes of
future heathen generations, future slaves, drunkards, and criminals, as
well as to soften the lot of those who exist. If, in a fourth society,
the observer finds that the charity has gone deep as well as spread
wide, and that the benevolent are tugging at the roots of indigence and
crime, he may place this society above all the rest as to the brightness
of its prospects. Such a movement can proceed only from the spirit of
fraternity,--from the movers feeling it their own concern that any are
depressed and endangered as they would themselves refuse to be. The
elevation of the depressed classes in such a society, and the consequent
progression of the whole, may be considered certain; for "sooner will
the mother forget her sucking child" than the friends of their race
forsake those for whom they have cared and laboured with disinterested
love and toil. Criminals will never be plunged back into their former
state in America, nor women in France, nor negroes in the colonies of
England. The spirit of justice (which is ultimately one with charity)
has gone forth, not only conquering, but still to conquer.

To the prospects of the sufferers of society let the observer look; and
he will discern the prospects of the society itself.

* * * * *

Useful arts and inventions spread so rapidly in these days of improving
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