both sides. It is striking how an instinct makes these girls cling to their homes, when one sees what homes they have. Though the fathers be drunken, the mothers rough slatterns, and the children their miniatures, yet the godlike is not dead in them; they still have "the human form divine," and with it, they give and take the fruits of its divine instincts, amongst which filial and domestic love are chief. One finds that one gains a double power over these girls, and a much larger share of their confidence, if one knows the colour of the baby's hair, the progress Susan makes at school, and the wages father gets. Personally speaking, too, it is good to visit these homes. It is wholesomely humbling to wonder how, amongst such dirt and din, outward and inward, these girls have grown up as tolerably pure as they have-these parents have kept one spark of natural affection; for one knows how much worse one would have been oneself under the same circumstances-oneself that poor shame-faced thing that cannot look at its own image without blushing even now, surrounded as it is by all that should make it good and beautiful.

Natural affection is a great help in the training of these poor children. It keeps them, if played on by the right fingers, from running wild, and growing reckless. It is a large factor in the work of ennobling them, and giving them principle to live on. How to set about this task is the great

question.

Many think it is to be effected by personal love alone,--by first gaining affection, and then saying, "Do this for my sake." But this, it has always seemed to us, is a means, not an end, and, when regarded as the latter, becomes harmful. It is no morality, no religion, only a collection of emotions, and as such, cannot be relied on. Supposing oneself and one's personal influence cut away from them, they would soon be left with nothing, for their memories and powers of abstraction are weak, and an influence over them depends on frequent sight of the influential person. First teach them to love you, and then through that feeling already realized, teach them to love Something above you. Anything beautiful, such as pictures, which can be explained to them, or music, which they usually love, is a step in the right direction. Their visitors can often take them out for a holiday, either sight-seeing, or even into Kensington Gardens, an unknown paradise to them. They are perfectly simple and natural, and have a genius for enjoyment. We remember a certain small Elizabeth at Madame Tussaud's who could only gasp, "Oh my, it is beautiful!" in a frightened ecstasy, and who, when told by her visitor that the originals of some

of the figures had lived four hundred years ago, asked that allexperienced oracle of twenty-two whether she had "known any of them."

Tea parties at home are, as we have said, the most desirable form of treat, because they bring a notion of home into pleasure, a hint of rest, a something sacred from the brawling streets. But whether such parties are given or no, it must not be forgotten that pleasure is a need of humanity, especially of uneducated, and therefore resourceless humanity. It should be remembered, particularly in dealing with a class whose failing is too continually the undue love of pleasure and excitement, that the evil will not be conquered by withdrawing the pleasure and excitement, but by raising their tone. Instead of trying to wean a pleasure-loving nature from pleasure, it should be given as many small treats as possible to which to look forward.

It will be seen that the visitor's task is not always as easy as it is interesting. She gets letters from angry mistresses, begging interviews, and has to cope with the prejudices of the girl's parents. Then there are frequent entries in the book, of "A. B., so dishonest, or so dirty, or so impertinent, that nobody will keep her," and A. B. has to be carried off to a Home where she can be trained, and where, when you think you have solved your problem, she dements you by picking up an odious friend of her bosom who leads her on from giggling to bartering her clothes. In the last case of the kind that we know, the intercourse, to our joy, came to a sudden and quarrelsome end, because the friend of her bosom ran off unbidden with A. B.'s "Buff;" and to this day we have never discovered the nature of that article.

But such trials teach patience and tolerance, and wider sympathies, and above all, the ready answer to small claims. from which grows moral strength, and that most excellent gift of charity.

Naaman's leprosy of old was cured through the little maid; and we to-day have thousands of little maids who will heal us of the worse leprosy of hardness, selfishness, and worldliness, till our flesh come again unto us, even as the flesh of a little child.

And if the heart be satisfied by the work, neither is the head left out of the question. The intellect is kept active over continual character-study, and there is never-ending food for that product of heart and brain which we call our sense of humour. Space fails, but examples abound, from the voluble Mrs. M. (mother of a certain Louisa), who begins every phrase with, "My dear," and assures you, baby in one hand and teapot in the other, that "all females like tea," to

the sentimental mistress, spouse of the pork butcher, whose long, oily ringlets, puffed sleeves, drooping eye, and mellow "Cockney," insinuate a secret sorrow, cankering her heart, and an infinite capability for romance, further attested by a portrait of herself in youth, ringlets and all, in evening dress, and with a highly-coloured pink rose at her neck. Then there is the typical mistress with the hard voice, who says, "I'm that unsuspectin'; I'm too trustful, that's what I am; and too indulgin' to 'em," and then follow complaints ad infinitum.

Nor is there wanting nourishment for our sense of the picturesque and beautiful. All about there are odd little crannies, like queer old thoughts, that look absolutely lovely when the sun finds its way to them. There are gabled houses and old court-yards as dusty and forgotten as the names and fames of their quondam owners. To think that Fashion once kept her coach-and-four here! More than one wayward thought, half tearful, half tender, dims our vision of Goodman's Fields, where the theatre once stood which knew Peg Woffington, a lonely little Irish girl, and Triplet as its manager; or, if you would soar to higher heights, you can have a sunset over Wapping-Old-Stairs. You can all of a sudden behold a fire in the west, and the tall masts of the ships in the docks standing out black against it, like ghosts that stretch forth their arms to the land of their dreams and their youth, till, as you wait silent and watchful on the bridge, the black toil hushed and mellowed, and the quiet river a sheet of liquid flame, great banks of deep purple cloud cross the glow, and in their turn yield to grey.

One word more as to the way in which this work should be taken up. It is sometimes begun from the mere liking and talent for it; sometimes as an outlet for superflous leisure; but oftener for other reasons. As with other arts, we may be sure that if we seek it with no love of it, but only as a "spiritual dram," to stem our thirst for excitement, as a mere self-indulgence, it will bring no blessing, but only harm to ourselves and others. Sensational spasms of "slumming," wilfully insisted on, at the expense of home ties and duties, bring no peace of mind, only fever.

But there is another use of such work, as an opiate, which does bring rest, which is not only advisable, but good. When our old faiths and loves have broken beneath us, and our ancient idols have fallen on their faces, when we stretch forth groping hands, and meet but the dead fingers of old memories, when above us we can see but dimly, for tears, and below us gaze but into the bottomless abyss, where our dreams lie buried, then, sick of what is personal, we turn away, and

let our feelings diffuse themselves over a wider space, spreading into a love for human beings the feeling that was centred on the individual. Against this opiate we will not struggle. There is every reason to obey a law which turns our passion into gentleness, and our dust and ashes into the milk of human kindness.

There is no need for the disappointed to grow harsh or sour. It is for them, and not for the happy owners of hearth and home, that the poor exist; "for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband."

E. S.

"TRA

CLEM.

BY MRS. COMPTON READE.

RA-LA, TRA-LA-LA!" sings the bright fresh voice of a young girl, as, darning-needle in hand, she bends over the not too easy task of repairing what she would doubtless call "a ladder " in a pair of don't be shocked, my good friends, such things are worn, and, what is more, looked at without any very great display of blushes on the cheeks of an ingenuous public, a pair-then-of silk rose-coloured tights, which have seen use. "Tra-la, tra-lala!" warbles this oddly occupied young personage, and in

and out darts the long needle blithely, as though there were no cares, no tears, no wearisome rehearsals, and no irascible despotic ballet-masters to mar the serenity and cloud the visages of industrious young women in this world. Clem darns away at her finery bravely. It must last her full another fortnight; so the needle flies.