d tell me I was drawing a
caricature. I don't doubt but what they were most respectable,
well-meaning men; but I do think it is a mistake to send such out into
the highways and byways. The men who go there should be of an engaging
aspect, as in the crowd that pass by you may depend upon it there are but
too many disposed to sneer at and ridicule religion even when it is
placed before them in the most attractive form. How they got on I cannot
tell, as just at that time a host of men very earnest in discussion
attracted my attention. A teetotaller was hard at work, not repeating a
set of phrases parrot-like which he had learnt by heart, but discussing
teetotalism with a crowd evidently well ready to go into the whole
subject. Short and sharp question and answer were flying fast, and all
seemed very good tempered. I don't know whether my friend succeeded in
getting any to sign the pledge, but I could see that he had more success
than the preachers, who seemed to me to make no impression whatever. We
may depend upon it these discussions are better than speeches or
lectures; they require, perhaps, greater gifts, but they will be found to
yield a richer harvest. It is in the streets we find the victims, and in
the streets we must seek to save them. You would not get these loungers
round the Obelisk to take the trouble to come to a temperance lecture,
but they, well fortified in their prejudices as established truths, were
not unwilling to engage in a discussion in which they found themselves
worsted. The temperance orator had an advantage over the divine. The
latter could only speak of a future joy or sorrow, the former could tell
the sot how much better he would have been, how much fresher he would
have felt, how much more money he would have had in his pocket, if he had
kept sober last night; and there stood the sot, all dirty and stupid, yet
repentant, and half influenced by the orator to become a sober man
himself. Such teaching is good in such places; but the speakers must be
prepared to rough it--to give and take, to be ready in repartee, to be
abundant in anecdote and illustration. They must have pliant tongues and
good voices, or they may find their congregation moving off to listen to
a social orator over the way; or, what is worse still, remaining to
confute, and jeer, and laugh.

EXETER HALL.

Lord Macaulay has made all the world familiar with the bray of Exeter
Hall. Exeter Hall, when it doe