ngth exhausted.'

'How very simple,' said one of the others, as if giving expression
rather to the reflection that the remark suggested, than speaking in
reply,--'how exceedingly simple now it seems to trace to their causes
the decline and fall of Britain! The ignorance and the irreligion of
the land have fully avenged themselves, and have been consumed in turn
in fires of their own kindling. How could even mere men of the world
have missed seeing the great moral evil that lay at the root of'--

'Ay,' said a well-known voice that half mingled with my dreaming
fancies, half recalled me to consciousness; 'nothing can be plainer,
Donald. That lawyer-man is evidently not making his smart speeches or
writing his clever circulars with an eye to the pecuniary interests of
the railroad. No person can know better than he knows that the company
are running their Sabbath trains at a sacrifice of some four or five
thousand a year. Were there not a hundred thousand that took the
pledge? and can it be held by any one that knows Scotland, that they
aren't worth over-head a shilling a year to the railway? No, no;
depend on't, the man is guiltless of any design of making the
shareholders rich by breaking the Sabbath. He is merely supporting a
desperate case in the eye of the country, and getting into all the
newspapers, that people may see how clever a fellow he is. He is
availing himself of the principle that makes men in our great towns go
about with placards set up on poles, and with bills printed large
stuck round their hats.'

Two of my nearer neighbours, who had travelled a long mile through the
storm to see whether I had got my newspaper, had taken their seats
beside me when I was engaged with my dream; and after reading your
railway report, they were now busied in discussing the various
speeches and their authors. My dream is, I am aware, quite unsuited
for your columns, and yet I send it to you. There are none of its
pictured calamities that lie beyond the range of possibility--nay,
there are perhaps few of them that at this stage may not actually be
feared; but if so, it is at least equally sure that there can be none
of them that at this stage might not be averted.

THE TWO MR. CLARKS.

Among the some six or eight and twenty volumes of pamphlets which have
been already produced by our Church controversy, and which bid fair to
compose but a part of the whole, there is one pamphlet, in the form of
a Sermon, which