entertained that in that neighbourhood at least the slave trade would soon cease to be. Soon, however, the whole aspect of affairs was changed. The Ajawa were committing greater depredations than ever. A party sent by the bishop to find a short route down. the Shire, were misled by their guides to an Anguro slave-trading village; retreating, they were attacked and their goods and carriers captured, the others barely escaping with their lives. The wives of the captured carriers came to Mackenzie, imploring him to rescue their husbands from slavery, and it seemed to him a duty to endeavour to effect this object. He therefore went, on Christmas Day, with an armed party to the village. "If it is right to do it at all, it is right to do it on a holy day," he said. Shots were fired, the village was burned, and the prisoners liberated.

Just before this took place the bishop had taken a fatiguing walk of seventy miles in thirty hours to visit Livingstone, and welcome Mr. Burrup. During the time of the conflict with the Ajawa heavy rains were falling, and wet, hunger, and exposure brought on an attack of diarrhoea. While both were suffering from the effects of illness, they set forth on another long journey to keep an appointment with Livingstone, who was to bring Miss Mackenzie and Mrs. Burrup to the Ruo on the Shirè.

Through swollen streams and in constant rain they made their way down the river until they obtained a canoe, then, going on by night to escape the mosquitoes, which were most annoying, they came upon a projection in the river, where the canoe was upset by one of the strong eddies, and clothing, medicines (including all the quinine, which was essential to life), tea, coffee were lost. Still they pressed on to the meeting-place, and then to their dismay learned that Livingstone had gone down the stream in the Pioneer, but the natives could give no clear account of how long a time had elapsed since he left.

The fever seized on the bishop, and for days he lay in a hut on an island called Malo, in the mouth of the Ruo. He told the Makololo who had accompanied him that Jesus would soon come to take him away, and soon the prediction was verified.

On the edge of a dark forest his grave was dug; and in the dusk his body was removed from the native hut, the wretched shelter of which was grudged by the owner, and laid to rest by his four faithful attendants, while Mr. Burrup, suffering fearfully from dysentery, staggered out and repeated all that he could remember of the burial service.

Faint and weary, a mere shadow of his former self, Mr. Burrup reached Magomero to bear the terrible news, and hear the bitter wailing of the bereaved natives, and then to lie down and die.

Deprived of its leader, the mission fled from the highlands down to the lower Shirè valley, where it lost more of its chief members by fever, always prevalent there. Eventually it was found that the country was altogether unsuited for a missionary experiment such as that projected by the Universities.

Thank God for the lives and deaths of such men as Williams, Martyn, Gardiner, Patteson, Goodenough, and Mackenzie, who sacrificed themselves for the good of others, and laid down their lives nobly in the cause of the Gospel, for "they demonstrate to an age. which worships the material and the sensible, the power and presence of the Invisible."

THE MARTYR-SPIRIT OF THESE DAYS.

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We have in the lives and deaths of these men proofs that the old martyr-spirit still lives in our own times. That they were heroes we think no one will deny, for each exhibited daring, sacrifice, and endurance: daring, in which they exposed themselves so that though they had escaped they must the more have suffered; sacrifice, in which by their own acts they deprived themselves of enjoyments and honours-willing to suffer that others might enjoy; endurance, so that they submitted cheerfully to perils and hardships which they might have escaped. A man who voluntarily dares, voluntarily sacrifices, voluntarily endures, is a hero; and, as we have said, the highest titles that can be given to man are "martyr, hero, saint "-these titles we claim for these brave men.

John Pounds and Ragged Schools-Dr. Guthrie-Sheriff Watson-An Obscure Hero, James Davies, of DevaudenRobert Raikes and Gaols-Sunday Schools-Rev. Thomas Stock-Progress of the Sunday School MovementPhilanthropy and Beneficence-Miss Johanna Chandler-Disease and Death in a Poor Man's Home-The National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic-Miss Adeline Cooper-The Slums of Westminster-Some Rough Customers-The Costermongers' Club-The Quakers- Joseph Sturge-Anti-Slavery Labours-The First Oyster-Eater and the First Umbrella-Jonas Hanway-The Foundling Hospital-The Marine Society-The Slaughter of the Innocents-Chimney-Sweeps-David Nasmith-The City Mission-Young Men's Christian Associations-Edward Dennison-In the East End-The Ideal Philanthropist.

HAT man is an honour to humanity, and deserves the tallest monument ever raised on British shores!"

So said the celebrated Dr. Guthrie when he stood one day in the parlour of an inn in an obscure burgh on the shores of the Frith of Forth, and gazed on a picture of a cobbler's room, in which the cobbler sat with an old shoe between his knees, and his eyes directed with a gleam of gladness upon a group of poor children, some sitting, some standing, but all busy at their lessons around him. Beneath the picture was an inscription, recording that the cobbler was John Pounds of Portsmouth, a poor man, who had taken pity on the ragged children whom ministers and magistrates, ladies and gentlemen, had left to run wild and go to ruin on their streets; who, like a good shepherd, had gone forth to gather in these outcasts; who had trained them up to virtue and knowledge; and who, looking not for fame or reward from man, had, single-handed, and while earning his bread by the sweat of his brow as a cobbler, rescued from ruin and saved to society no fewer than 500 children.

John Pounds, the cobbler, was the founder of Ragged Schools, not with the aid of big committees and high-titled names and long purses, but by the simple exercise of his

own strong love for the uncompassionated multitude, and especially for the homeless children who knew so little of love or tenderness. Dr. Guthrie says of him: "John Pounds was not only a benevolent man. He was a genius in his way; at any rate he was ingenious, and if he could not catch a poor boy in any other way, like St. Paul he would win him by guile. He was sometimes seen hunting down a ragged urchin on the quays of Portsmouth, and compelling him to come to school, not by the power of a policeman, but a potato. He knew the love of an Irishman for a potato, and might be seen running alongside an unwilling boy with one held under his nose, with a temper as hot and a coat as ragged as his own."

Simply plodding on, gathering together the most neglected and ragged, and teaching them what he knew, he was able to demonstrate the possibility of what might be done for those who had been regarded as outcasts. When John Pounds died there was found no successor for some time, until, north of the border, Sheriff Watson took up the work the cobbler did not lay down till death, and the first public ragged school of the present order was established by him in the city of Aberdeen. The "Ragged School movement" spread with extraordinary rapidity; "princes, prelates, dukes, earls, and ladies and gentlemen were proud to walk at the old cobbler's heels;" and now there is not a town within, our shores with a population of a few thousands that has not its ragged school, sending out light in the midst of courts and alleys dark with the degradation of evil.

Among obscure heroes who did a good work and made the best of life, leaving behind them encouragement for those who have no great talents and no great wealth to follow in their footsteps and help to make the world better, was James Davies, of Devauden, in Monmouthshire. His first start in life was as a weaver, and to better his condition he became a pedlar, and wandered through the country with his pack on his back and his eyes open. He saw wherever he went that sin and ignorance, sorrow and disappointment, were the common lot, and he saw that facilities to do evil abounded, while aids for well-doing were few. Deeply as he commiserated those who were grown up and used to the rough ways of life, it grieved him beyond expression to see little children following in the same paths of ignorance and sin, left to themselves to run wild and grow up in neglect. The question that forced itself upon his mind was not what the State should do, or the wealthy, but how he personally could help them. It seemed to him that the only remedy for the evil would be by providing schools, and making them nurseries of virtue, and as he saw no other way to obtain the services of a teacher, he qualified himself for the office. At the age of forty-eight he was appointed schoolmaster in the little town of Usk, at a salary of £30 per annum. He had not been established long at Usk, however, before he found that in an outlying district there was no provision whatever for the education of the young, who were growing up in the midst of every kind of unchecked wickedness, for there was no church there, and the nearest church service was performed only once a month in a building used in the interim as a sheepfold. His sympathies and active efforts were enlisted in the cause of these neglected ones, and when at length a clergyman was appointed to the parish, James Davies offered his co-operation, assisted in procuring funds for the erection of a school-house, and