"Vanguard of Liberty, ye Men of Kent,

Ye children of a soil that doth advance
Her haughty brow against the coast of France,
Now is the time to prove your hardiment!
To France be words of invitation sent!

They from their fields can see the countenance
Of your fierce war, may ken the glittering lance,
And hear you shouting forth your brave intent.
Left single, in bold parley, ye, of yore,
Did from the Norman win a gallant wreath;
Confirmed the charters that were yours before;-
No parleying now! In Britain is one breath,
We all are with you now from shore to shore:-
Ye men of Kent, 't is victory or death!"

In this age of cosmopolitanism, when we are, forsooth, too much philanthropists to be patriots; when any deep and strong emotion of love to our country is reckoned as nothing more than the sacredness of the schoolboy's affection; when our young people who have travelled can find no words more capable of expressing their contempt than these "It is so English;" it does the heart good to read these firm and pure, and true and manly words, issuing from the lips of one who was not ashamed to love his country with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind, and with all his strength: a man whose every word, and every thought, and every act, were the words, and thoughts, and acts, of a manly, true-spirited, highninded Englishman!

NOTES OF A LECTURE,

&c., &c.

め

NOTES OF A LECTURE

Delivered at Hurstper-point, in 1851, to the Members of a Working Men's Reading Room.

I AM here to-night through the invitation of your kind friends, with no right but that of unfeigned interest in every institution like yours.

The subject I had proposed was the Progress of Society. I changed it for that of the Working Classes. But even this is too full of pretension.

Nevertheless, the mere fact of my standing here to night is full of significance.

More so than railways or electric telegraphs. That so many of the Working Classes should come here after a hard day's work is very significant.

It proves the growing victory of the spirit over

the animal: That the lower life of toil and animal indulgence is getting to be reckoned as not the all of man.

It shows, too, that the Working Classes are becoming conscious of their own destinies.

Any Society is in an advanced state when it begins to contemplate itself, and asks, "Whither do we tend ?"

Three thousand years ago, the centre of the World's civilization was in Eastern Africa.

The monuments of this civilization still remain. The Pyramids.They are the wonder of travellers, whose report of their measurements excites in turn our astonishment and surprise.

But to one considering the progress of the race, these Pyramids tell a different tale. They were built by the Working Classes, under coercion. They were built for Royal ostentation.

Herodotus speaks of hundreds of thousands degraded into serfs.

In the Metropolis of the World's present civilization, a structure stood this year almost as marvellous as these pyramids.

Remarkable not for gigantic massiveness.But for punctuality and order.

Built, too, under Royal auspices, and built by the Labouring Classes.

But not built, like the pyramids, for Royal splen