active, beneficent minds. Shall I tell you what in this noble design has struck me with the deepest emotion, the deepest thankfulness? It is the interest with which men of the working class and professional men have received it. The former, when consulted, "spoke," Mr. Maurice says, " with remarkable freedom and intelligence: we gathered a great many more hints and opinions than we had at all expected." There were differences of opinion in respect to arrangements and details, but "entire unanimity on the main question. There was no indication whatever of the slightest fear that females should know as much as they themselves knew, or more than they knew. There was a manifest wish that they should have the same advantages. There was a distinct and positive call upon us, not to withhold from the one what we were trying to give to the other."

Even

So far the intelligent working men. more fraught with encouragement and hope was the series of Lectures on practical subjects, addressed to a female audience, to educated women, who wished to know what it

was best for them to learn before they were fitted to help and to teach. I was not present, being abroad at the time; but, as I was informed, the audience collected was not so large as might have been expected. That was not surprising; but what was surprising, and delightful too, there were found ready and willing to deliver these lectures to ladies" on practical subjects," eleven distinguished professional men; of these, six were clergymen, three physicians, and two lawyers. The six lectures delivered by clergymen dwelt of course chiefly on the duty of well directed benevolence, in the hospital and in the workhouse, in parish supervision, and district visiting: all excellent in spirit and feeling. One, on the "Teaching by Words," - capital, — as awakening the intellect to the uses and possible abuses of language, as a key to thought as well as an implement of thought. Perhaps, if women were better taught the true value and true significance of words, they would be the less likely to pour them forth on light occasions.

The three lectures by the medical men are

all so excellent, that I felt lifted up in heart as I closed the volume. The two lectures on law, ("Law as it affects the Poor," and "Sanitary Law,") are useful and clear, though technical.

It is not any where indicated in these lectures, that weakness and ignorance are to be accounted as charms in women, by which they are to recommend themselves to intelligent men; or that it is "unfeminine" to study the conditions of health; or that the desire to know something of those divine laws, "through which she lives, and moves, and has her being," is the result of a "depraved imagination;" or that the wish to prepare herself by experience to minister to disease and affliction is to be sneered at as a "taste for surgery." (I beg of you to observe that I am here citing phrases which I have myself heard.) Another spirit animates the writers of these lectures.* Every where the important social

* See particularly the lecture on "The College and Hospital," and the lecture on 66 Dispensaries and allied Institutions," in which the importance, religious and practical, attached to the study of physiology, is the same principle for which the late Dr. Andrew Combe, and his brother Mr. George Combe, have for years past contended.

work which rests on the woman is generally acknowledged and wisely inculcated. She is encouraged to think, and to carry out thought into action.

The training of å better order of women for hospital nurses is that department of social usefulness which is more immediately before the public, and it involves many considerations.

There is no question I have heard more warmly contested, than the question of paid or unpaid female officials. I think there should be both. We should have them of two classes; those who receive direct pay, and those who do not. Consider the qualifications required. There must be force of character of no common kind; the humility which can obey, and the intelligence which can rule; great enthusiasm, great self-command, great benevolence; quickness of perception with quietness of temper; the power of dealing with the minds of others, and a surrender of the whole being to the love and service of God: without the religious spirit

we can do nothing. Now, can we hope to obtain these qualifications for any pay which our jails, workhouses, or hospitals could afford? or indeed for any pay whatever? Yet it is precisely an order of women, quite beyond the reach of any remuneration that could be afforded, which is so imperatively required in our institutions.

The idea of service without pay seems quite shocking to some minds, quite unintelligible; they quote sententiously, "The laborer is worthy of his hire." True; but what shall be that hire? Must it necessarily be in coin of the realm? There are many women of small independent means, who would gladly serve their fellow-creatures, requiring nothing but the freedom and the means so to devote themselves. There are women who would prefer "laying up for themselves treasures in heaven," to coining their souls into pounds, shillings, and pence on earth; who having nothing, ask nothing but a subsistence secured to them; and for this are willing to give the best that is in them, and work out their lives while strength is given them. I believe that