it put good men into office? Does it stop the progress of corruption?

What does it do even to reclaim and convert the vicious and dangerous classes?

"It goes to church itself—it fills up a great many comfortable, a great many magnificent churches every Sunday. But how many places of Christian worship, of the humblest sort, does it provide for the poor and sinful in the quarters where the rulers of the city mostly live? It gives ample incomes a fine house, and five, six, or seven thousand dollars a year-to its own favorite preachers; but how many preachers does it maintain whom one thousand dollars a year would enable with gladness to carry the Gospel, and their own warm hearts with it, down into the damp cellars, and up under sharp-roofed garrets, to thousands who otherwise would never hear its voice ?

"I speak not merely of the Pharisees-the highest class of professors of godliness-the longgarmented and broad-phylacteried, who, with their wives and children, fill up the sumptuous churches in the fashionable streets and squares, and thank God they are not like the publicans and sinners— which is all they care for them. It is not of such that I speak. There are a great many truly good,

loving and gentle-hearted persons, who are really sorry there should be any wickedness or unhappiness in the world, and desirous to do all they can to make everybody as well off and as good as themselves-who yet make a very mistaken use of their goodness; partly because they are more afraid than our Lord was of coming into contact with poor sinners-which they need not be if their love was as great as his, and partly because they have been wrongly guided, and so are very earnest in works of love for the Feejee Island heathen, and overlook the Manhattan Island heathen in the midst of them -are very liberal of their money to build churches in the new western States, and to send missionaries to China, while they forget that there are large districts of their own city-the abodes of filth and vice-where churches and missionaries are at least as much needed, and which it should, at all events, be their first care to supply."

66

But, husband, there are a great many persons of wealth and influence there now fully awake to this need."

"Let them go earnestly to work, then," said the Doctor, "if they would save the city. It is in a bad way now, and universal suffrage and a judiciary elected at short intervals only make things worse.

Why, suppose the Good Lord were to nominate Gabriel for Mayor, and a choice list of other good angels for Aldermen, Common Councilmen, and Judges, and promise the people a good city government without a penny's cost; do you think the ticket would be elected ? "

"Dear me, husband, what a case to put ! But can you doubt it would be ?”

66

I hope it would, my dear, but depend upon it there would be an opposition ticket."

6

"Ha ha!" cried Phil, "imagine the placards headed, 'PURE DEMOCRATIC TICKET; and the inscriptions on the street banners: 'No Theocracy ;' 'No Church and State; A Human Government for Human Beings;' and the speeches made in the Ward meetings on these watchwords and the foul language heaped upon Gabriel and the other good angels in the drinking-shops."

"Stop, Phil," said Mrs. Oldham, "that is shocking; you are worse than your father."

66

"I think we've had enough," said the Doctor. Only this I will say, that unless the goodness that is in the city can get control of the city government and put good men into office, it will no more avail to its salvation, than Lot's righteousness did to Old Sodom's. The good people will be got out

of it in some way-led out by their good angels, like our agreeable neighbors, the Pelhams, who have just come up here to our great delight, or driven out by the violence of the wicked, and the city will inevitably go down to chaos, destruction, and the devil."

CHAPTER XVII.

A SHORT CHAPTER ON JUDGE-MAKING-NOT AMUSING; AND NOT SO LIKELY TO BE INTERESTING TO THOSE WHO NEED, AS TO THOSE WHO DO NOT NEED, THE INSTRUCTION IT CONTAINS.

"You are in favor, then, of our present way of making judges by universal-suffrage ballot-box elections ?" asked the Doctor.

The subject came up between him and Professor Clare, a few days after the talk recorded in the last chapter.

The Professor said he was.

"You go also for a limited term of office-for frequent elections at short intervals, instead of the old tenure?”

The Professor approved of that too. It washe thought-in accordance with the genius of our institutions. That is a phrase he is greatly pleased with, and one he often uses. If any thing falls— or seems to him to fall-within its application, that