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

WORKING FOR HIRE AND WORKING FOR LOVE.

The training of a better order of women for hospital nurses is that department of social usefulness which is more immediately before the public, and it involves other considerations besides those I have touched upon.

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,

* See particularly the lecture on "The College and the Hospital," and the lecture on " 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, contended during the whole of their useful lives.

"The labourer 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 such service is especially blessed. I believe that such service does not weary, is more gracious and long-suffering than any other, blessing those who give and those who receive. I believe it has a potency for good that no hired service can have.

The idea in this country that everything has a money value, to be calculated to a farthing, according to the state of the market, is so ingrained into us, that the softest sympathies and highest duties, and dearest privileges of Christians, are never supposed to be attainable unless sold and paid for by the week, or month, or year. This is so much the case, that those who visit the poor people can hardly banish from their minds the conviction that there is some interested motive, some concealed, selfish object in doing so. Yet if once brought to believe that there is really only the wish for their good, how beautiful and how blessed becomes the intercourse! The two meanest forms of sensuality and selfishness in our lower classes, the love of money and the love of drink, are best combated by the combined religious and feminine influence. A strong barrier to this vulgar greediness would be produced, I think, by the presence and employment of women officially authorised, yet not hired, and doing their duty from pure love of God and man. * It would give a more elevated standard

"The profound consolation which one derives from the remembrance of Miss Nightingale's services in the war is that they entirely confound the notion that only paid jobs are done effectually; that work undertaken from love must be performed in a slovenly, unbusiness-like way. That has been the conviction of our English public: it has been put again and again into solemn maxims; and all acts not assuming them for their foundation have been laughed to scorn. Miss Nightingale has turned the laugh in the other direction. There has been slovenliness

to many minds, to be brought into relation with such

women.

I find the admixture of voluntary and unpaid labour with hired labour, thus advocated in an excellent article in the "Quarterly Review" for Sept. 1855. "Many there doubtless are, who, without neglecting duty, may engage in this office of charity, and thus shun the dangers of the world they dread, or find a refuge from the hardness of a world which has lost its power to please though not to wound them; and thus far at least is clear, that whether they sacrifice its pleasures, or seek a shelter from its vexations, their presence at the sick-bed will diffuse the zeal of love and the charm of refinement over an office which has hitherto, at the best, been executed with the cold regularity of routine."

But to render the hired labour efficient and reliable, it must be placed at the disposal of the voluntary and unpaid labour, and be in all respects subordinate; as is the case in King's College Hospital. The want of this regulation produced some mischief in the Crimea, which I shall have to revert to further on.

Then, as to whether the women who devote themselves to these services should or should not be associated into a community, is a question hotly debated, to be settled I think by the individual vocation.

One says, "I cannot work with other people; I must go on in my own way." Well, let her go on in her own way, let her go on working single-handed as is good in her own eyes; and God forbid that I should undervalue the good done simply and religiously by some excellent women I know working in their own way! But another says, "I feel the need of a bond of sympathy; it strengthens and sustains me. I should like to have my work cut out and appointed for me, and to labour in association both with men and women." And this is well also. There is room, there is work, for both. I think a community might be formed on a broader principle than that which is contemplated, I believe, by the council of the Nightingale fund, for the mere preparation of hospital nurses; but am too

enough in many departments. The tasks that have been done most thoroughly have been done from a divine inspiration."— Lectures to Ladies on Practical Subjects, p. 17.

well aware of the difficulties from within and without not to hail a beginning, though it fall far short of that which is required: only we must keep our eyes fixed on the larger views.

Where the objects are of great importance, and have to do with our own deepest, innermost life, it requires an especial training of the mind and habits to preserve, in the subjection of the individual will, all the freshness and energy of the mental powers. To resign the highest privileges of individual action, and yet preserve the highest privileges of the individual conscience, this may be difficult, but it has been proved not to be impossible. But, I repeat, the individual inclinations and gifts must settle this.

RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES.

I am sure that my Roman Catholic friends are sincere in their belief that such a community can take root and succeed only in their Church. At all events, it is the interest of the Roman Catholic priesthood to persuade us that the power of working a public charitable institution by a due admixture of the religious and feminine element with the masculine directing will, belongs to them only. This is very natural on their part, and wise, and quite intelligible; but is it wise of our most influential clergymen to play into their hands, to act and preach as if this plea were true? As if this privilege of the woman to pervade our human institutions with a more tender and more moral power, to work openly with a species of religious sanction, like the Deaconesses of the primitive Christian Church, were really and inseparably interwoven with the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, so that we cannot have Sisters of Charity without accepting also an infallible pope, transubstantiation, the immaculate conception, and Heaven knows what besides, the terror and abomination of our evangelicals? Surely it is an injury to the cause of religious freedom and human progress, an insult to their own peculiar form of faith, for any sect to acknowledge that what they allow to be good and desirable, and even necessary in itself, is inextricable from what they believe to be false and ensnaring.

These views are every day driving distinguished, and gifted, and enthusiastic women, into the pale of that Church, which stretches out its arms, and says, "Come unto me, ye who are troubled, ye who are idle, and I will give you rest and work, and, with these, sympathy, and reverence, the religious sanction, direction, and control !" Can we find nothing of all this for our women? Why should they thus go out from among us? I, for my part, do not understand it.

In England it is not the form of Christianity we profess which is against such an organisation of feminine aid in good works as I would advocate;—God forbid ! Yet some of our greatest difficulties may be ascribed to the deeprooted puritanical prejudices bequeathed to us by our ancestors. It is worth considering that the first effect of the Calvinistic reaction against the dominant Church, and against the errors, and exaggerations, and gross materialism which had been connected with the worship of the Virgin Mother, was not favourable to women. In the earlier times of the Christian Church, whenever certain women distinguished themselves by particular sanctity or charity, or exercised any especial moral or intellectual influence, the Church absorbed them, claimed them, held them up to reverence during life and canonised them after death; and still their beautiful images shine upon us from our cathedral windows, or stand out in sculptured forms in all the dignity of their hallowed office and venerable religious attributes. But after these fair superstitions had been abrogated by the severity of the early reformers, and were succeeded by the strongest prejudice against women exercising any kind of open and authorised religious or spiritual influence, still there were women who did exercise such influence the natural power of strong intellect, or strong enthusiasm. The superiority could not be denied; but as it could no longer be referred to a larger measure of heavenly gifts, it must be derived from demoniac power. Men had repudiated angels and saints, but they still devoutly believed in devils and witches. The benign miracles of female charity were the inventions and impositions of a lying priesthood; but woe unto him who doubted in the power of an old woman to ride on a broomstick, or of a young woman to entertain Satan as her emissary in mis