ltitudinous billows of life,
rolling down the long, broad, avenue. It is an inspiring lyric, this
inexhaustible procession, in the misty perspective ever lost, ever
renewed, sweeping onward between its architectural banks to the music of
innumerable wheels; the rainbow colors, the silks, the velvets, the
jewels, the tatters, the plumes, the faces--no two alike--shooting out
from unknown depths, and passing away for ever--perpetually sweeping
onward in the fresh air of morning, under the glare of noon, under the
fading, flickering light, until the shadow climbs the tallest spire, and
night comes with revelations and mysteries of its own.

And yet this changeful tide of activity is no mere lyric. It is an epic,
rather, unfolding in its progress the contrasts, the conflicts, the
heroisms, the failures,--in one word, the great and solemn issues of
human life. And a few comprehensive lessons from that "Wisdom which
uttereth her voice in the streets," may prove a fitting introduction,
from which we can pass to consider more specific conditions of humanity
in the city.

Taking up the subject in this light, I observe that the first lesson of
the street is in the illustration which it affords us of the
_diversities of human conditions_. The most superficial eye recognizes
this. A city is, in one respect, like a high mountain; the latter is an
epitome of the physical globe; for its sides are belted by products of
every zone, from the tropical luxuriance that clusters around its base,
to its arctic summit far up in the sky. So is the city an epitome of
the social world. All the belts of civilization intersect along its
avenues. It contains the products of every moral zone. It is
cosmopolitan, not only in a national, but in a spiritual, sense. Here
you may find not only the finest Saxon culture, but the grossest
barbaric degradation. There you pass a form of Caucasian development,
the fine-cut features, the imperial forehead, the intelligent eye, the
confident tread, the true port and stature of a man. But who is this
that follows in his track; under the same national sky, surrounded by
the same institutions, and yet with those pinched features, that stunted
form, that villainous look; is it Papuan, Bushman, or Carib? Fitly
representing either of these, though born in a Christian city, and
bearing about not only the stamp of violated physical law, but of moral
neglect and baseness. And no one needs to be told that there are savage