He'll die at any rates, He God and conscience hates, And calls it holy." Why does not evil die out? Why do not the fittest alone survive? Is it natural to be unnatural, to be hideous, perverted, distorted? What is Nature, that men should work to change her, and transform the present state of God-given harmony and beauty into a scene of confusion and ugliness? "Alas!" says Charles Dickens, "are there so few things in the world about us most unnatural, and yet most natural in being so? Hear the magistrate or judge admonish the unnatural outcasts of society; unnatural in brutal habits, unnatural in want of decency, unnatural in losing and confounding all distinctions between good and evil; unnatural in ignorance, in vice, in recklessness, in contumacy, in mind, in looks, in everything. But follow the good clergyman or doctor, who, with his life imperilled at every breath he draws, goes down into their dens, lying within the echoes of our carriage wheels and daily tread upon the pavement stones. Look round upon the world of odious sights-millions of immortal creatures have no other world on earth-at the lightest mention of which humanity revolts and dainty delicacy, living in the next street, stops her ears, and lisps, 'I don't believe it!' Breathe the polluted air, foul with every impurity that is poisonous to health and life; and have every sense, conferred upon our race for its delight and happiness, offended, sickened and disgusted, and made a channel by which misery and death alone can enter. "Those who study the physical sciences, and bring them to bear upon the health of man, tell us that if the noxious particles that rise from vitiated air were palpable to the sight, we should see them lowering in a dense black cloud above such haunts, and rolling slowly on to corrupt the better portions of a town. But if the moral pestilence that rises with them, and, in the eternal laws of outraged Nature, is inseparable from them, could be made discernible too, how terrible the revelation! Then should we see depravity, impiety, drunkenness, theft, murder, and a long train of nameless sins against the natural affections and repulsions of mankind, over hanging the devoted spots, and creeping on, to blight the innocent and spread contagion among the pure. Then should we see how the same poisoned fountains that flew into our hospitals and lazarhouses, inundate the jails, and make the convict ships swim deep, and roll across the seas, and over-run vast continents with crime. Then should we stand appalled to know, that where we generate disease to strike our children down and entail itself on unborn generations, there also we breed, by the same certain process, infancy that knows no innocence, youth without modesty or shame, maturity that is mature in nothing but in suffering and guilt, blasted old age that is a scandal on the form we bear. Unnatural humanity! When we shall gather grapes from thorns, and figs from thistles; when fields of grain shall spring up from the offal in the bye-ways of our wicked cities, and roses bloom in the fat church yards that they cherish; then we may look for natural humanity, and find it growing from such seed. "Oh, for a good spirit who would take the house-tops off, with a more potent and benignant hand than the lame demon in the tale, and show a Christian people what dark shapes issue from amidst their homes, to swell the retinue of the Destroying Angel as he moves forth among them! For only one night's view of the pale phantoms, rising from the scenes of our too-long neglect; and from the thick and sullen air where Vice and Fever propagate together, raining the tremendous social retributions which are ever pouring down, and ever coming thicker! Bright and blest the morning that should rise on such a night; for men, delayed no more by stumbling-blocks of their own making, which are but specks of dust upon the path between them and eternity, would then apply themselves, like creatures of one common origin, owing one duty to the Father of one family, and tending to one common end, to make the world a better place. "Not the less bright and blest would that day be for rousing some who never have looked out upon the world of human life around them, to a knowledge of their own relation to it, and for making them acquainted with a perversion of nature in their own contracted sympathies and estimates, as great and yet as natural in its development when once begun, as the lowest degradation known." Some outcroppings of society, while not vicious, are really contemptible. Dr. Chalmers used to refer to what may be denominated "prim people." "There is a set of people," he said, "whom I cannot bear-the pinks of fashionable propriety-whose every word is precise, and whose every movement is unexceptionable; but who, though well versed in all the categories of polite behavior, have not a particle of soul or of cordiality about them. We allow that their manners may be abundantly correct. There may be elegance in every question, and gracefulness in every position, not a smile out of place, and not a step that would not bear the measurement of the severest scrutiny. This is all very fine; but what I want is the heart and the gayety of social intercourse the frankness that spreads ease and animation-the eye that speaks affability to all, that chases timidity from every bosom, and tells every man in the company to be confident and happy." Pride and exclusiveness sometimes manifest themselves in a most disagreeable kind of way. It is reported of the proud Duke of Somerset, that he never stopped to speak to a servant, but signified his wants by signs. His children were not allowed to sit in his presence. In his afternoon nap, one of his daughters was required to stand by him as he slept. Lady Charlotte Seymour having once, when very tired, violated this etiquette, he left her in his will £2000 less than her sister. His second wife once gave him an affectionate and familiar tap with her fan. "My first duchess," said the august noble, drawing himself haughtily up, "was a Percy, and she never would have taken such a liberty." The only titled and noble-blooded fool that ever excelled the Duke, as far as our knowledge extends, was that Spanish hidalgo who, having once fallen down, indignantly exclaimed, "This comes of walking on the earth!" People who can never overlook or forget anything are social nuisances. Dr. Huntington has truthfully suggested that it is almost frightful, and altogether humiliating, to think how much there is in the common on-going of domestic and social life which deserves nothing but to be instantly and forever forgotten. Yet it is equally amazing how large a class seem to have no other business but to repeat and perpetuate these very things. That is the voca tion of gossips-an order of society that perpetuates more mischief than all the combined plagues of Egypt together. You may have noticed how many speeches there are which become mischievous by being heard a second time; and what an army of both sexes are sworn to see to it that the fatal repetition shall be had. Blessed is that man or woman that can let drop all the burrs and thistles, instead of picking them up and fastening them to the next passenger! Would we only let the vexing and malicious sayings die, how fast the lacerated and scandal-ridden world would get healed and tranquilized! It The impudent-eyed folks are a bore in society, and everywhere else. Few observant persons can have failed to notice what one has described as the supercilious manner in which one woman, who is not perfectly well-bred, or perfectly kind-hearted, will eye over another woman, who she thinks is not in such good society, and above all, not at the time being in so costly a dress as she herself is in. It is done everywhere, at parties, at church, in the street. is done by women in all conditions of life. The very servant girls learn it of their mistresses. It is done in an instant. Who can not recall hundreds of instances of that sweep of the eye which takes in a glance the whole woman and what she has on from topnot to shoe-tie. It cannot be a new fashion of behavior; but the daily increasing pretense of people to superiority, because they can afford to spend more money upon their backs than others can, makes it at once more common and more remarkable even than it was ten or fifteen years ago. Men are never guilty of it, or with such extreme rarity, and then in such feeble and small-souled specimens of their sex, that it may be set down as a sin not masculine, or at least epicene. But women of sense, of some breeding, and even of some kindliness of nature, will thus endeavor to assert a superiority upon the meanest of all pretenses, and inflict a wound in a manner most cowardly, because it can not be resented and admits of no retort. If they but only knew how unlovely, how positively offensive they make themselves in so doing, not only to their silent. victims, but to every generous-hearted man who observes their manœuvre, they would give up a triumph at once so mean and so cruel, which is obtained at such a sacrifice on their part. No other evidence than this eyeing is needed that a woman, whatever be her birth or breeding, has a small and vulgar soul. MANNERS. Manners must not be confounded with the observance of social laws, which are more or less arbitrary and various. Good manners are founded upon common sense and kindness of heart, and are the same the world over. "Manners are not idle, but the fruit Of noble nature and of loyal mind." The fashion. of manners never changes; the fashion of social laws changes constantly. Social laws are framed by the unanimous consent of men. The best of them are the outgrowths of religion and morality. The manners of barbarous nations are not manners at all. The Chris tian principles of brotherly love and self-denial are so much wanting in savages that the first law of politeness-to be agreeable to others even at the sacrifice of selfish ease and comfort-is well nigh unknown. People in Christian lands may indeed be polite without being religious; but not religious without being polite. To be well bred, we need only to forget ourselves in behalf of others; to be Christians, we must be self-denying. Good breeding comports entirely with Christianity, but does not necessarily make one religious. Religion, on the other hand, makes one unselfish, humble, pleasant and more or less expressive of these excellent traits. The true Christian is the highest style of man. It is the heart that makes the true gentleman and the good Christian. Greatness of intellect combines naturally with both of these. Look how full of sympathy and consideration for the feelings of others are the masterly writings of St. Paul. With him charity was the bond of perfectness. His epistles are splendid chapters in the rudiments of etiquette. He had learned of Him whose sympathy extended even to the greatest of sinners. The ten commandments are substantial rules for a man's conduct. Aside from their obligatory character in a moral sense, they have a |