there be no woman

woman near them, to whisper "this is wrong," or "that is cruel and unreasonable, and in the name of a God of mercy I forbid it;" let there be no cheerful, genial influence there, no gentle voice nor light tread, but drunken viragoes to nurse the sick, and insolent officials to feed the hungry: do this, and you will have something as near as possible to what we can conceive of an earthly Hell, you will have an ill-managed

Parish Workhouse.

But why picture as necessary and inevitable extremes which we may hope are only accidental? Why imagine a "pack of women on one hand, and a "pack of men on the other? Suppose we were to try what might be the effect of neutralizing the mobility, sensibility, and excitability of the women by the firmness and judgment of the men? Would not that be better?

I MUST now conclude with a few last words.

We cannot look around us without seeing that a demand has not only been created, but becomes every day increasingly urgent, for a supply of working women at once more efficient and more effective. I use the words advisedly as distinct in meaning; women and men too are efficient through energy and experience, and effective through higher gifts and sympathies,-higher aims and motives; materially efficient, morally effective. Meantime, with no want of zeal or aptitude, there is such a lamentable deficiency in training, in knowledge, in the means or opportunity of acquiring either, that I should despair,— if I were not too old to despair, if I had not so often counted up the price we have to pay for truth, and the penance we must pay for falsehood too. If, among the hapless women I see struggling to bring their external existence into harmony with their inner life, — or what is harder still, to bring their inner life into subjection to harsh and deteriorating circumstance, one half should go distracted, and

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the other half turn Roman Catholics, I might "even die with pity;" but certainly not yield up one inch of the ground I have taken, nor one iota of the faith that is in me.

I remember that, when speaking on these .subjects to a very benevolent and accomplished man, a clergyman, he said thoughtfully: "I have little doubt that you are right; and yet if there be such a divine law involving all human well-being and progress in its recognition, how is it that it has not been more distinctly revealed to us? how is it that it comes to us now like a novelty to be subjected to the examination of the sceptical and the carping of the foolish?”

I did not answer.

We know that there has existed from the commencement of the creation a law of God, binding the whole universe into one harmonious whole, guiding the planets in their orbits, connecting our own world with far-off worlds of light and life, and at the same time so regulating our least movements on this earth, that we cannot put one foot before the other, but in subjection to it. Yet of the existence

of this law we knew nothing, till, one hundred and fifty years ago, the fall of an apple revealed it to Newton; and to what revelations most important to our well-being has it not since led! And may there not be a law of moral and physical life as universal, as essen-* tial, as eternal, which in its agency has always been felt, and yet in its relation to happiness and progress, is only just beginning to be understood, and not yet fully applied? I do not say it is so; but may it not possibly be so?

In general there is among men, - superior men, a strong, generous sympathy with the cause I advocate. How noble and good I have found them! how raised in their manly power above all vulgar masculine jealousies! Yet some among them, some practical men so called, who start at shadows,- some members of parliament who weigh truth and expediency against each other in their political balance,

some clergymen, bending down from the height of their white neckcloths, half-sympathizing, half-patronizing, — these say to me,

"We really cannot deal with abstract principles, we must work with such material as we have at hand. What is your plan? If we knew what plan you have formed we might help you. What do you propose to

do?"

I must confess I have no plan ready prepared, and so exquisitely contrived to avoid offence that, like a mill-wheel with all the cogs shaved off that it may work smoothly, it will impart no movement, and do neither good nor harm. But if there be vitality in the principle I have placed before you, the communion of love and of labor,-then that which springs out of it will be vital too, not working like a machine, but bearing fruit like the tree.

And "what would I do?" they ask. Nothing more can I do indeed, but that which I am now doing, or rather trying to do, with such small power as God has given me.

I would place before you, this once more, ere I turn to other duties, that most indispensable yet hardly acknowledged truth, that at the core of all social reformation, as a necessary condition of health and permanency