will act in the spirit Bishop Armstrong describes, and, moved by the memory of the past, will found almshouses for the refuge of the deserving poor.
"Where, I often ask, are the modern almshouses; where that old spirit of love for the poor, which those who have risen in the world ought to feel for those who are at the bottom of the hill? Where are those grateful offerings of the thriving tradesman, the prosperous merchant, who has carved out his own fortune, and by a good strong head has made his way upwards in the world? Where the love of the village, or the native town, and any goodly proofs of care for the worn-out, the infirm, the decrepid, who have now to be dragged from their old haunts and homes, and crowded into the dismal unions? Alas! it is but here and there, few and far between, that modern almshouses rise up, or that successful men think of providing for the last days of the destitute. It is more common to see the 'villas,' and the 'mansions,' and the 'places in the country,' absorbing the wealth amassed in the shop or the merchant's office, and the poor are left to boards of guardians and relieving officers, to that legal provision which, however well managed on the whole, does not pretend to do more than keep body and soul together in the cheapest way.
"It always strikes me as a very sad thing, to see old folks packed off from the place where they have spent their lives; and a quantity of old people from a multitude of places, each uprooted and torn from his accustomed home, huddled together, with all the physical and mental infirmities of age, strikes me as one of the most painful spectacles in the land. A place stripped of its old folks is a melancholy place, and a place filled with them equally melancholy. A park filled with nothing but young trees is but a poor concern to look at, and one filled with nothing but old and decayed ones equally wanting in excellence. What one likes is the mixture of the two; here and there the old oak, with its topmost branches bare, and its trunk hollow, and then some stalwart timber, middle aged trees, rich in foliage, spreading their broad shadows over the grass. So with towns or villages. We want all sorts among us, young cheeks and wrinkled ones, the curly-headed lads and white-haired old men. This makes up the goodly picture of human life. But to weed out the old, to rend away all the hoary heads of the poor, to pack off the stooping forms of the aged, to bundle them into one great workhouse, as if they were so much waste material, choking up the way of younger life, to tell them, in so many words, we have no reverence for them, no care, no love or compassion, but that they are in the way, and must be done for as cheaply as can be, is sad, sad work, which will make, at last, trade wither, and our wealth turn into poverty, and all our commercial successes to be without a blessing.
"We want a different state of things from this; and those thriving men, who have well-filled purses tinkling in their pockets, who have got on in life, who have risen from being shopmen to be shopkeepers, who have the highest stool in merchants' offices, and are now sitting in bankers' parlours, and have become partners in good substantial firms, whose name is worth so much money, and who 'stand high' among
