"Gay Life."

THIS is the term which a charitable etiquette applies to a life of crime and dissipation. It is the mild phrase behind which are hidden some of the coarsest and most brutalising vices of mankind. When we see a young man whose whole existence is consumed in debauchery and reckless self-indulgence, whose every thought is absorbed in the gratification of his heated and overweening passions; and who lives, moves, and has his being in the temple of lust; we throw over him the veil of gentle toleration and say, he is only a little gay. When we speak of our casinos and saloons, which are crowded with harlots and abandoned women, thronged with the harpies who prey upon the vitals of our moral and social life, we draw the same gentle screen across the spectacle and describe it as a company of gay women." And when we wish to designate a career of the direst and most headlong ruin a race of drunkenness-a whirl of folly-a round of unbending and unwavering licentiousness-when we wish to describe the excesses of those who spill the sulphur of hell upon the surface of the earth, and blister the very complexion of society by flinging its fires abroadwe find no harsher term in which to wrap up all this villany

than that which is comprised in the two words of our title to-day, "Gay Life." One would have imagined that gay life must have reference to the happy light-hearted frolic of children; to the gladness of the village green; or to the scenes where lads and lasses are maying in the morning sunshine. The phrase-apart from the application which conventional usage has given to it—would carry our thoughts far away from the crowded city and the dusty street, and lead them to the hayfields; or to the lanes where the youngsters pluck up violet and primrose, and cowslip, and twine them in wreaths to hang among their hair. It would fill the ears with the music of young laughter, and paint before the fancy pictures full of smiles. Bright eyes and ruddy lips, and flowing tresses tangled by the wanton breeze, these are the objects that would seem to start before the mind and fill Imagination's canvas, when we think of what ought to be known by this innocent name of gay life. But how different the truth! The phrase, as we are taught to use it, brings us into the city's busiest and most crowded streets; to the hard pavements, where neither hayrick nor violet lend fragrance to the air; where the swarthy reaper, bronzed by the sun, plies not the sickle and piles up no golden sheaf. It fills the ear with music and with laughter truly, but it is the music of the mouthing mountebank, and the forced laughter of unhappy hearts. The brightness of the eyes it paints for us, and the redness of the lips it shews us, is the brightness of evil passion, and the artificial smear of a counterfeit charm; and the tresses which we see are dishevelled not by the playful zephyr of the field, but by the dalliance of vice, or the clutch of violence.

The evil which is connected with this gay life affects both sexes, and pervades all classes of society. But the great burden of the blame of it rests with two parties,—a certain class of men, and a certain class of women. This kind of life has become methodised and arranged until it has grown as much into a regular trade as cotton spinning or shoemaking.

Now the blame of the introduction of this trade, as well as the blame of its continuance rests upon the shoulders of men. The curse of its adroit and clever execution hangs over a certain class of women, of whom we shall have a word to speak before we close.

But although I believe, as a general rule, it is a principle of good breeding to attend to the ladies first, I propose, in this case, to dismiss the gentlemen first, because it is they who lay the foundation of the evil. When we speak of the men who lay the foundation of this curse, we do not refer to those who simply, in an evil moment, yield to the fitful impulses of passion; but to our monied men who patronise and support the matter as a trade, and who, by a sustained and systematised course of debauchery, render it a profitable calling for unprincipled women to institute establishments for the pursuit of this unholy commerce. It is upon the shoulders of these men that the first weight of the responsibility rests. There are comparatively few of our rich men, I know, who frequent the more public and vulgar places of resort in our city—it is not often that we see municipal grandees dancing at the Egyptian Hall, or meet town councillors tippling at the Dog. On the contrary, the majority of these gentlemen would set their faces against all such establishments, and would rigorously denounce all the company, both male and female, who frequent them. Yet still it is very possible for the man who is loudest in his anathemas against these places to have been the most active agent in laying their foundation stone. The very parties to whose patronage such haunts owe their support,—I mean the women who frequent them most habitually,—are often the cast off victims of these identical gentlemen, who keep at such a chaste and respectful distance from them now. There are grades in vice, and it is not all at once that young women plunge into gay life. There are rich and pursy profligates who carry on their vices far behind the scenes. There are men in Manchester, chaste and proper enough when they are at home,

who have a sort of little harem up in London dependent u on their wealth, which is freely spent in return for a tender welcome on their occasional visits. Upon some rare occasions the man outlives his lusts, and far oftener the women outlive their charms, and fail to suit his fancy. They must live still by the same trade which has kept them hitherto. If it cannot be carried on in the same genteel and quiet way as formerly, it must obtrude itself more garishly before the public eye; and, accordingly, the unhappy creature who was wont to live in ease and in seclusion on her paramour's bounty, comes strutting forth into the open streets, a marked and ticketed harlot, vending in the great auction room of lust, her virtue and her self-regard as a marketable commodity. Gradually, as age steals on, and beauty steals off-as the face begins to wane and the eye fades in its light as death begins to whet his scythe, and time breathes with his blighting blast upon the roses on the cheek— even this mode of life grows profitless. There are two courses open then. Either to go on, drinking away the life, and precipitating its dark close by drowning it in brandy-spurring along to the grave and the fell realities beyond it, through the union, the hospital, the jail, or the madhouse; or leaping into its bosom straight from the bridge wall into the rolling river. There is this alternative on the one hand, or there is another, which is temporally better but spiritually worse, namely, to become the matron of one of these accursed dens, where innocent young girls are caught and trained for lives of vice, and are poisoned in mind and heart in order to supply the demands of the lust market. There are hundreds here who will not know precisely what I mean by this. But there are rich men in our city-carriage men, influential men, important men, who will know what I mean, and who will know that my description is a true one. Well now, supposing that these things are so, supposing that there are girls to be found slipping from one grade of misery to another; supposing that it is true that there are women driven from the position of being the com