completed under the successors of the founder, and mostly by his son Ramses Miamun." Before this wondrous structure a large sub divo court, 270 by 320 feet, was afterwards erected, with a majestic pylon, and ornamented only on the sides by pillars. Thus far the great plan of this temple comprehended a length of 1,170 feet, to say nothing of a row of sphinx beyond the outward pylon, and other additious; making a total length of nearly 2,000 feet. The later dynasties, although they found the temple in a state of completeness, yet "could not renounce the idea of doing honour to this centre of Theban worship, began by erecting small temples on the great plain surrounded by the outer wall, and afterwards gradually enlarging these again." Ramses III., the conqueror of Asia, about 1,500 years before Christ, contributed to the magnificence of the structure by adding a separate temple with a court of columns; an hypostole or gallery, 200 feet long; and a sanctuary, dedicated to the third person of the Theban Trinity. We must, however, pass over some of the successive changes which contributed to the glory of this temple of temples. Suffice it to say, that in the course of 3,500 years a little sanctuary, in the midst of the entire temple, grew into a temple-city, covering a surface of a quarter of a geographical mile in length, and about 2,000 feet in breadth; and that in the multifarious inscriptions and sculptures which adorn it, "it presents an almost unbroken thread and an interesting standard for the history of the whole new Egyptian empire, from its commencement in the old empire down to its fall under the Roman rule." And yet how little remains to us of the life of Egypt! No longer do throngs of worshippers crowd these spacious courts, no longer do the sound of barbarian hymns echo beneath gigantic porticoes. Thebes is a city of the dead, a mighty stone-graven chronicle of an empire which has ceased to have a personal existence in the page of History. LETTERS LEFT AT THE PASTRYCOOK'S.* THIS little volume of fun has helped us to pass one of the rainiest afternoons during the rainiest of winters, without knowing the full extent of the "pouring like cats and dogs." "Christmas Books," since Dickens's Carol are generally great bores, and we put them down as visitors do mammas' prodigies,"-with a strong private opinion that they are exceedingly tiresome, and exceedingly stupid. There is this slight difference in position, however, with them,-that the books are never likely to "run alone," which the prodigies may-and at a pretty "fast" pace probably. These letters are from a young lady at "College," to a bosom friend, and the following extract will give a notion of the spirit of the matter : "Now, Nelly, I intend to give you what I call a cat's-eye view of the principal girls. "Noble (the dignified one) is the queen of the school, and head monitress. They all look up to her with awe, for she knows one of the maids of honour, and has an aunt who goes to Almack's. Her guardian (Meggy tells me that it is her father; but he's called her guardian, which is more than I can understand), Lord Lovime, drives to the College in a beautiful mail phaton, with a dear little tiger, so tiny, you might put him in your muff, Nelly. She is considered very elegant, and walks about the playground with her gloves and parasol. She calls eating vulgar, but I'm *Letters Left at the Pastrycook's. Being the Clandestine Correspondence between Kitty Clover at School, and her "Dear, dear Friend," in Town. Edited by Horace Mayhew. London: Ingram, Cooke, and Co. 1853. sure she eats as much as any one. She says it takes four generations to make a lady, is exceedingly bitter against all trades and shops, and declares that half the girls at College haven't a drop of blood in their veins ; and yet, to look at Miss Smiffel, the butcher's daughter, Nell, you would imagine she was full of nothing else -she is as red in the face as the lamp over a surgeon's door. "I don't know, but I don't like Miss Noble, with all her grandeur, and her gold fork and spoon with the magnificent crest upon them. She is disdainful, and without pity to any one who doesn't keep a carriage, and as servile to those who do-but then it must have two horses. Her features are certainly handsome, but as cold as marble. To look at her, you would imagine it was the head of some beautiful bust; and it's a great pity she ever speaks, for it spoils the illusion. I almost pity her, though, Nelly, for she seems so lonely on the pedestal upon which she has taken her stand, and from which she never descends. Her dignity draws around her a circle (an aristocratic circle, I suppose she would call it), into which no one ever thinks of stepping. All I know is, I would not exchange my own dear fond papa and mamma for the whole bunch of her fine relations, whose proud titles are all she cares for. She calls home, and kissing, and love, and affection, all 'vulgar weaknesses,' very well for the lower classes; as it is lucky she thinks so, for I doubt if she has ever felt their sweet influence, or knows what it is to love devotedly as I do my sweet Nelly, or S. "Rosa Peacock is the beauty, the belle, of the school; and, as far as beauty goes, she certainly deserves the title. She is the daughter of Sir Hercules Peacock, who was a captain in the body of Gentlemen-at-Arms (what kind of gentlemen are they, Nell?) in the time of George IV. and quite an Adonis in his day, and also (so Meggy says) a cheesemonger. Peacock is certainly a lovely creature, tall and majestic, such as we have only seen in the crush-room, Nelly, when we have been coming out of the opera. Her hair is light, and falls in close curls, which droop into the shape of wings on each side of her face, as if it were too pretty for this world, and they wanted to carry it up to heaven. Then she has large die-away eyes, of the colour (excuse me, pet) of what we used, when little girls, to call sky-blue; but then they are a very rich sky-blue, like those pretty muslins which won't be washed. But pretty as Peacock is--and I can tell you the school is rather proud of her-it is a thousand pities she is so conscious of her own beauty. She seems to be always saying, 'Pray admire me.' It is lucky she doesn't sleep in our bedroom, with only the one looking-glass, or else none of us would ever be able to get a peep at it. She is as full of her own charms as Noble is of her dignity. Meggy calls them Pomp and Vanity, and says it is all outside show, like the shops in the Lowther Arcade. They ought to be in the second class, or perhaps the third, only the Lady Principal favours them. She puffs them off, and hands them about as 'show girls;' and they would be sure to be disliked for that circumstance alone, if for no other. But the truth is, they are so disagreeable, their pride is so offensive, that I doubt if they can point to a single friend in the whole school. The consequence is, they are driven to each other's society, and you will see them of a half-holiday walking round our little bit of a playground arm-in-arm, turning their noses up at every one, and studying Debrett's Peerage together." Here is another portrait or two, very life-like. We had a "Miss Carney" at our school, in our juvenile days, and it was very wonderful that she escaped prussic acid, or stabbing with scissors : "In my last letter I forgot to tell you about the two Miss Suetts, Emilia and Julia. They are fat, and round, and heavy, like (Meggy says) a couple of yeast dumplings. Their parents are in India, and they never go home. No one cares much about that, however; for they are great teazes, and the most dreadful telltales. But they are never without preserves and pickles of some kind, and have such delicious pomegranates and guava-jelly sent to them, in such large blue jars, that, after all, I doubt if any two girls would be more missed from the school than the two Suetts disagreeable things as they are. You should only taste their tamarinds, Nell! "But the girl I dislike most is Susan Carney. Fancy a tall, thin creature, with hair the colour of blotting-paper, and with eyes like an owl's, that cannot look at you, and you have her standing before you. She is the sneak' of the school; and moves about like a cat. When we are talking secrets, and turn round, there she is pretending to look for something, but in reality listening. Or, if a girl has comfortably got one of James's delicious novels inside her grammar, and looks up to see that it is all right and snug, there is Carney's cold fishy eye sure to be fixed sideways upon her. Meggy says her eye is so sharp, she's confident that, like a needle's, it would cut thread. cannot have a bit of fun, but Miss Carney is sure to spoil it. We cannot read or write a letter in class without her knowing it. We cannot talk to the masters, or have a comfortable bit of gossip about the filthy dinners and the Lady Principal, without our being requested, before the day is half over, 'to step to Mrs. R.'s boudoir,' after which you will see the girls coming back with red eyes and burning cheeks. We "The oddest thing is, no one is sure it is Carney who tells, though every one is convinced that she does. She manages it so cleverly that she is never found out. We tease her as much as we dare, calling her 'policeman,' 'spy,' 'tell-tit,' and everything we can think of; but it takes no effect upon her. She turns a little pale, talks morality in a whining tone, and leaves it to Mrs. Rodwell to redress her wrongs. "Another curious thing is the way in which she wheedles a secret out of you. Though on your guard, she flatters and fawns, and coaxes and lectures till you have parted with your secret long before you are aware of it. You would imagine she was chloroform, so cleverly does she extract it, without the smallest consciousness on your part. The fact is, she crawls over you, Nelly; and as for talking, it is my firm belief she would talk a letter out of a letter-box. She is exceedingly neat and clean, with not a single hair out of bounds; and somehow, her dresses do not rustle, nor her shoes creak, as other persons do. She is down upon upon you, like a shower at the horticultural fête, before you have time to run for it. What with her crawling, and her sleek appearance, and her gliding so noiselessly about the room, she looks like a big lizard, or some slippery serpent, that was advancing towards you; and I always feel inclined to scream, or to put up my parasol, when she comes near me, to frighten her away. "Nor is she much a favourite with the remainder of the school. The little girls bribe her with oranges and cakes, and lend her small sums of money, to pre vent her telling. But the big girls know it's no use, and waste nothing upon her; they know well enough she will take the bribe one minute, and go and blab the next. The governesses even are afraid of her, and begin talking of the weather whenever she approaches. "But what shocks me the most, Nelly, is, that she is righteous, and is always inveighing against 'the shameful wickedness' of the school. Then she reads hymns, and is embroidering a prie-dieu for her godpapa, who is something in the Church, and exceedingly rich; and she writes such insufferably long sermons, twice the length of anybody else's; and after service she begs to see Mrs. Rodwell, pour confier son cœur as she calls it, but we all know what that means, for, as sure as plum-pudding on Sundays, some one is sure to be punished that same afternoon! I only wish we could find her out in anything. I really believe the entire school would rush up to the Lady Principal, and tell of her. But Miss Carney is far too cautious to be caught tripping! They tell me she even sleeps with her eyes open." Such suppers as the one which follows, far surpass Rogers's "breakfasts," for no one is expected to be "very clever" at them; and the guests are not compelled to listen politely to stories they have heard a dozen times before. As "P.S.-I don't mind telling you, Nelly, we are going to have a supper to-night; not a common supper with the governesses-of stale sandwiches and small beer-but a snug little supper up stairs in our own bedroom-sweets smuggled in a fright, and eaten in a tremble. The excitement is the best part of it, though I must confess justice is generally done to the sausage-rolls, the banbury-puffs, and the other dainties provided. We wait until Blight has gone her visiting rounds. When everything is quiet, Lucy Wilde or Rosy Mary begins telling some horrible story, often reciting an entire novel in a quarter of an hour. soon as we are sure all spies are asleep, and that there's not even a mouse stirring, the wax-ends, stuck into pomatum-pots, are lighted (unless the moon graciously gives us the light of her countenance), and the feasting begins. There are only six girls in our room -Wilde, Mary, Sharpe, St. Ledger, Embden, and my worthy self. Fraulein sleeps in a little closet, about as big as a china-cupboard, called a dressingroom; but she is a good hard sleeper, and never wakes or hears anything of our midnight revels. Once, however, I thought I heard her giggling under the bedclothes, when Sharpe was telling a frightful German tragedy. Perhaps she was enjoying the fun quietly by herself, though why she should laugh, when every one else was shivering with fear over the frightful love incidents, is more than I can tell. Well, Nelly, the banquet is spread on one of the girl's beds, round which we all sit, somewhat in tailor-fashion. There is not much variety in our entertainments, as we can only send to the confectioner's; but it does not matter. If we had roasted peacocks, or sweetmeats prepared by nuns, or all the rich things in the Lord Mayor's larder, we could not enjoy them more. It is such rare fun, and worth any of the grand dinners you go to Nelly. Sometimes an alarm is given, and, quicker than any conjuror's trick, the wax-ends are extinguished, the goodies disappear no one knows where, and in less than a minute every one is fast asleep. It's very strange, but Blight, call as loud as she will, never can wake us. This, trick, however, is sometimes sadly annoying. The rapidity of the change crumbles the light pastry all into nothing and in the quickness of the transformation one cannot always recollect whose turn it is to be helped next. Besides, there is the danger, as you jump into bed in the dark, of falling upon half a dozen turnovers,' which, in the hurry of the surprise, have been swept in between your sheets to get them out of the way. On one occasion I saw St. Ledger smeared all over with jam, until she looked like a large 'rolly-polly pudding.' How we did laugh to be sure! As our suppers are rather rich, we generally have a little eau de Cologne sprinkled on a lump of sugar-just sufficent to scare away the nightmare-though we prefer the essence of peppermint (when we can get it) mixed with a little water. You can't think now nice and warming it is! To-night Embden has got a cucumber and some maids-of-honour, and we expect a rare treat. By-the-by, Nelly, when you come and see me, remember our supper-table. Bring something rich and sweet with you, and put into your pocket some waxends. Our stock of chandlery is rather low at present. Come soon, there's a dear pet." Mr. Horace Mayhew has our best thanks for his volume. Will he give us a series of young gentle. men's letters next year?-they would be quite as funny. WHILE TIS DAYTIME LET US WORK. EVERY mortal has his mission He it is, who now fulfilling Every duty day by day, Life's a bark upon the ocean Tossed and rocked by every gale; Now with rent and tattered sail. Of the storm that o'er us lowers. Life's the chord of silver, binding Man in contact with his kind; Death is but that bond unwinding, Setting free the earth-bound mind. Life's the pitcher at the fountain Whence immortal rills descend; "Tis the fragile wheel surmounting Cistern where pure waters blend. Life's the day for deed and action; Death's the rest, the time of night; He who works with satisfaction Works while yet the hour is light. Forward then! the day is waning; STRENGTH OF INSECTS. The common flea, as every one knows, will, without much apparent effort, jump two hundred times its own length, and several grasshoppers and locusts are said to be able to perform leaps quite as wonderful. In the case of the insect they scarcely excite our notice, but if a man were coolly to take a standing leap of three hundred and eighty odd yards, which would be an equivalent exertion of muscular power, perhaps our admirers of athletic sports might be rather startled at such a performance. Again, for a man to run ten miles within the hour would be admitted to be a tole rably good display of pedestrianism; but what are we to say to the little fly observed by Mr. Delisle, "so minute as almost to be invisible," which ran nearly six inches in a second, and in that space was calculated to have made one thousand and eighty steps? This, according to the calculation of Kirby and Spence, is as if a man, whose steps measured only two feet, should run at the incredible rate of twenty miles in a minute. Equally surprising are the instances of insect strength given by Mr. Newport. The great stag-beetle (lucanus cervus), which tears off the bark from the roots and the branches of trees, has been known to gnaw a hole, an inch in diameter, through the side of an iron canister in which it was confined, and on which the marks of its jaws were distinctly visible, as proved by Mr. Stephens, who exhibited the canister at one of the meetings of the Entomological Society. The common beetle (geotrupes stercorarius) can, without injury, support and even raise very great weights, and make its way beneath almost any amount of pressure. In order to put the strength of this Insect-Atlas to the test, experiments have been made which prove that it is able to sustain and escape from beneath a load of from twenty to thirty ounces, a prodigious burden when it is remembered that the insect itself does not weigh as many grains; in fact, once more taking man as a standard of comparison, it is as though a person of ordinary size should raise and get from under a weight of between forty and fifty tons. This amount of strength is not, however, confined to the short, thick-limbed beetles. Mr. Newport once fastened a small carabus,-one of the most active and elegantlyformed of the beetle tribe,-which weighed only three grains and a half, by means of a silk thread, to a small piece of paper, upon which the weight to be moved was placed. At a distance of ten inches from its load the insect was able to drag after it, up an inclined plane of twenty-five degrees, very nearly eighty-five grains; but when placed on a plane of five degrees inclination, it drew after it one hundred and twenty-five grains, exclusive of the friction to be overcome in moving its load-as though a man was to drag up a hill of similar inclination a waggon weighing two tons and a half, having first taken the wheels off.-T. Rymer Jones. THE WORLD'S HUZZA: I have seen too much of success in life to take off my hat and huzza to it as it passes by in its gilt coach, and would do my little part with my neighbours on foot that they should not gape with too much wonder, nor applaud too loudly. Is it the Lord Mayor going in state to mince pies and the Mansion House? Is it poor Jack of Newgate's procession, with the sheriff and javelin-men conducting him on his last journey to Tyburn? I look into my heart and think I am as good as my Lord Mayor, and as bad as Tyburn Jack. Give me a chain and red gown, and a pudding before me, and I could play the part of alderman very well, and sentence Jack after dinner. Starve me, keep me from books and honest people,— educate me to love dice, gin, and pleasure, and put me on Hounslow Heath, with a purse before me, and I will take it." And I shall be deservedly hanged," say you, wishing to put an end to this prosing. I don't say no; I can't but accept the world as I find it, including a rope as long as it is in fashion.— Thackeray's "Esmond." Printed by Cox (Brothers) & WYMAN, 74-75, Great Queen Street, London; and published by CHARLES COOK, at the Office of the Journal, 3, Raquet Court, Fleet Street. THE POOR MAN'S SUNDAY. WHAT shall the poor, and not the poor only, but those who work hard all the week without much chance of getting a holiday, do on Sunday? That is a question which is just now agitating what is called the religious world and the circle outside it-a question that must soon practically be settled. It has been raised incidentally by the rebuilding at Sydenham of that fairy glass palace which, in 1851, stood in Hyde Park. After serving its turn as the Palace of Industry, it is to become the Palace of the People-such a palace as the people never had. It is to be stored with works of art culled from the studios of Italy; with the choicest productions of industry wherever they are to be found; with all that can elevate the taste-much that will increase the knowledge of the visitors. Debasing associations are to be shut out, degrading habits to be kept at a distance. In the pure air, in the midst of a beautiful country, surrounded by the lovely sylvan scenery of a park, the structure is to rise like some work of the fabled genii of old; and man, wearied with toil, and woman, pale with wearing work, will walk amid the vegetation of foreign lands, listening to the music of bubbling fountains, which spring upward to the blue sky, seen through the transparent dome, and get some glimpses of joy and goodness through the avenue of the beautiful. Shall this be done on Sunday? Those who are concerned in the profits of the undertaking intend to apply to Parliament for a charter, containing, among other powers, the authority to open the palace to the Sunday pleasure seckers, and a loud "no" arises from many who deem that a desecration of the day of rest. They say that those who have invested money in the "speculation" seek to realize profits by drawing man from the house of God to the house of pleasure, and that they ought not to be allowed, for the sake of gain, publicly and under legislative sanction, to divert the institution of the Sabbath from its proper uses. Taking the objection upon this the lowest ground upon which it can be put, we are ready to admit that commercial motives have had a great deal-not all-to do with the project of opening the palace on Sunday; but it strikes us that that objection opens up another and far more important side of the question. We are not concerned to defend the spirit of commerce for itself. We do not think that the desire to heap up wealth is among the noblest of human motives; but we cannot help recognising the fact that to the com [PRICE 14d. mercial spirit we owe most of the benefits we have, and so long as society continues in its present state, upon it we must, to a great extent, rest our hopes of further progress. We may regret it, but we cannot shut our eyes to the truth, that men in the mass will do nothing for their fellows unless it will pay, and that leads us-leaving "the speculators" to take care of themselves-to ask, what does their desire of Sunday opening mean with reference to the public? Obviously it means that they are aware many will come on that day who will not come if the doors be shut on the Sabbath, for the shillings on the one hand will be measured, by the people on the other. That is, no doubt, a correct estimate. Those who know how busy men, and women too, are on the working days of the week, how hard they have to struggle during the hours allotted to labour to keep their places in the world, how early they must rise and how late bend over their toil to prevent their being swept away in the current of life, well know that if the palace be not open on Sunday not a tenth of those who might visit it many times in a year would see it once in that space of time. An eminent divine has lately published a letter, in which he says that men work too hard, too constantly, during the week; that they ought to deduct from their hours of toil a few for relaxation and pleasure, for the enjoyment of life. That is, no doubt, trne, but the answer is patent to every one-is it possible? Work as hard as they may, they do not get too much, often not enough, to procure those comforts which labour ought to bring, and to support their families as they ought to be supported. Cheap as food and clothing are, cheaper as they promise to be, yet men with wives and children, no matter how industrious, cannot get on without pinching and scraping, without such shifts as the better-off know nothing of. The meal does not always come up to the measure of the appetite; the clothes are often ragged; they cannot command such house-room as gives a fair chance of health. The pence which ought to go weekly for education often too greatly reduce the scanty resources of the household to be spared. Few can lay by for contingences. They must not relax, great as their exertions are,--they must keep up to the mark; and unless that happens which is not very likely,-unless they can gain in five days what the labour of six fails to provide them with, or unless employers are inclined to give more for less work, those who are so situated will see the Crystal Palace but once or twice in a lifetime, perhaps not at all. Why, when the Exhibition stood in Hyde Park, when it furnished the stimulant of being a merely temporary show, the opportunity of seeing which once missed could never be regained, there were thousands in London who could never give a day to visit it ;-removed to Sydenham, with a long prospect of chances by-and-by to dull desire, and those thousands would be multiplied by how many? It is plain, then, that to be seen by all who wish to see it, the Crystal Palace must be open on Sunday; but then comes the question, whether there are not higher considerations which demand that it should be closed, although the poor never see it at all. If we had only the mawworms and canters, the pharisees of Christianity, to deal with, we should not think it worth while to waste a word upon them. They might turn up their eyes and vent pious ejaculations, and prophecy of coming judgments for the sin of Sabbath-breaking. We should have no fear either of their feelings being hurt, or of the glass fabric being shattered by an expressly-commissioned thunderbolt in answer to their prayers. But there are fervent, pious, conscientious men engaged in the attempt to restrict the pleasures of the people; men who believe that they are doing God service by making others go to a place of worship for sheer lack of other Sunday occupation. However we differ from their scruples, we must accord them the respect which sincerity always demands; and of them we beg attention to one or two thoughts upon the subject. We do not believe in the efficacy or worth of enforced piety, whether enacted by laws to make men go to church, or by the refusal of laws permitting them to go elsewhere. We do not believe the real religionists set any more store by that sort of devotion than we do. We all, at least all that are worth thinking of or appealing to, hold with Hood that Spontaneously to God should tend the soul, And without that spontaneity the appearance of worship is worse than naught. So that if the churches and chapels would be filled with worshippers because on the leisure day the Crystal Palace was hermetically sealed, no good would be done. But then it is assumed that those who do go to church now would not if the palace were opened. Avoiding the holy fane, it is said they would troop off to Sydenham out of love for the profane. We wonder that the clergy, whose voices are the loudest in denunciation of the proposed innovation, can put forward an argument so degrading to themselves and so slighting to their mission. Ask them who they are and what they have to do, and they will tell you that they are the ministers of the Supreme, engaged in the most holy cause upon earth, cultivating the highest aspirations, and appealing to the most powerful motives which can find place in the heart or sway the human mind. What, then, do they pretend? Do they admit that thus situated, thus invested with power of the most awful character, they can be defeated by a glass palace and works of art? Surely they are putting too low an estimate upon themselves, paying themselves to ill a compliment; or if it be the truth; if, indeed, they have sunk so low from their high estate; if they cannot make the word of God work as powerfully upon minds as the hope of seeing statues and hearing fountains play, surely that ought to prompt self-examination, ought to point to some deficiency in that earnestness, some lack of that power, some want of that fitness necessary for their office, which calls upon them to exalt the spiritual over the temporal. Why, if their assertion be true, if they cannot hold their own followers, cannot retain from one more pleasure those who are already sincere, what hope can they have of winning estranged souls, though all the world should crowd to public prayer? Our own opinion is more just to them than theirs. We do not believe that they would lose one true worshipper.* But many people would go to the Crystal Palace. Assuredly they would, or why should it be opened. Those who would go, however, are mainly those who go elsewhere now. Is it supposed that the clergy have dominion over the mass of the London population? If any one thinks so, let him go to the steamboat wharfs on Sunday, and see the packets swaying too and fro with their overloads to Greenwich or Gravesend, Richmond or Cremorne; let him go to the railway stations, and notice the thousands who swarm out of the dusty city for a breath of pure air; let him go to the suburban tea-gardens and calculate the consumption of liquors there; let him stroll along any of the great highways, north, east, south, or west, and look at the road filled with vehicles, from the humble donkey-cart upward, while dusty pedestrians swarm the side walks. These are people who habitually spend their Sunday in another way than church-going. If the name of the Crystal Palace had never been breathed they would not spend it otherwise. They are already beyond the dominion of the clergyman, if indeed they ever were within it; and those whose office it is to minister to the soul's wants do not show the power to bring them into the fold. It is they who will go to Sydenham on Sunday if the palace be open, and if not they will go somewhere else. Is it better then-seeing that they will put the day to secular rather than religious uses-that they should be left to their own resources, left to find their way to and from the suburban tea-garden or the rural public-house, or the not over-pious recreations of Cremorne, or that they should be led to scenes which, apart from all question as to the way in which the day should be spent, all will admit are elevating and refining. We do not see how any one can hesitate about the answer. If they will have pleasure on Sunday, let that pleasure at least be of the best kind. If they will not worship with the minister, at least guard them from the temptation to wallow with the beast, and allow them to go where some thought of purity and goodness may be called up by the beautiful, and where, perchance, without their lips obeying the accents of prayer, they may, amidst so much to touch the higher faculties of our nature, feel something of that reverential awe for the power which presides over the destinies of the world, which is blended with all real adoration. If the clergy would look at the subject in its true light, and would, at the same time, have faith in the creed they profess and their own earnestness of purpose and fitness to be its advocates, they would say with us-Throw open the Crystal Palace on Sundays, so that purer enjoyments on that day may be available for the many, so that higher aims may be developed and nobler thoughts nurtured; so that in our efforts to make the world better we may have to deal with beings raised above grossness, elevated in point of intellect, and gifted with a perception of the useful and a love for the beautiful. With such materials to work upon, those who labour to improve the public morality, raise the general taste, and minister to the happiness of the many, will have greater opportunities than have ever yet been within their reach. If we cannot make the world all good at once, surely it is worse than folly therefore to refuse to allow it to be better than it is. A LONDON CURATE'S STORY. Just now a young man, a parishioner of mine, has called in to relieve the fulness of his heart, by pouring out his feelings to me. The few obstacles which stood between him and the girl he loves, have been removed, and in the elation of his joy, he is ready to call upon heaven and earth to rejoice with him. Well, I have heard him out. I have listened for more than an hour to the expression of his lover's raptures, of his fears which are past, and of his hopes and expectations which are on the eve of |