then democracy will gain its grandest triumphs. From all this, let us gain deeper faith in those great principles which inspire our enterprise on behalf of political and religious liberty. We hear much high-flown rhetoric, about our "glorious British Constitution;" let us always remember that every element which makes it glorious is a democratic element, and that its glory can only be retained and transmitted to posterity by carrying out to their natural conclusion those principles of progress which are written, often in blood, on every page of English history. The British Constitution is sacred in as far as it upholds the sacred rights of every English man, and woman, and child. That is the true conservatism, the conservation of the principles of liberty and progress. We are living in a day when the undercurrent of democracy is rising into greater strength than ever; and it is our privilege to do something to extend its healing waters to every class of the community. The principles we advocate are bound up with the constitution of humanity; and the end for which we work is the noblest welfare of the people,-the people for whom alone governments and institutions have a right to exist, the people who abide for ever while thrones and dynasties rise and fall.

"When wilt thou save the people?

O, God of mercy, when?

Not kings and lords, but nations;

Not thrones and crowns, but men.
Flowers of thy heart, O God, are they;
Let them not pass like weeds away;
Their heritage a sunless day.

God save the people.

Shall crime bring crime for ever,
Strength aiding still the strong?
Is it thy will, O Father,

That man shall toil for wrong?
'No' say thy mountains; 'No!' thy skies;
Man's clouded sun shall brightly rise,
And songs be heard instead of sighs.
God save the people.

When wilt thou save the people?
O, God of mercy, when?
The people, Lord, the people;

Not thrones and crowns, but men.
God save the people; thine they are,
Thy children, as thy angels fair;
Save them from bondage and despair.
God save the people."

CREMATION,

BY

H. BRIMFIEld.

CREMATION.

THE brute creation, after death, lie on the surface of the earth to be eaten by birds and beasts. There might be no difficulty in granting that the first impulse of the human race was to cover the remains of their departed relatives with earth, which may be called burying them, for the simple purpose of saving them from the attacks of carrion; but the very earliest records on the subject connect even the slightest performance of this duty with what are called funeral rites, which bear upon the views of mankind regarding the relative position of the body and soul and the welfare of the latter after death; and the question of interest lies in the manner of disposing of human remains as connected with these. Even the British Government, which refuses to deliver the bodies of executed criminals to their friends for burial, in opposition to the constant practice of the Roman Republic and Empire, both heathen and Christian, from the earliest to the latest periods, can scarcely be supposed to act thus without some reason; for, after all that can be said on the subject has been said, the proceeding cannot be explained without a reference to views regarding future existence. Mankind has never willingly referred the question of funeral rites to the intellectual lucubrations of the living, but always, wherever they could or dared, to the positive interests of the dead.

The supposition sometimes made, that all the nations who buried, conquered all who burned the