'Doctor-oh, please, Sir-will you come to my mother? she is so very bad. She sends you this,' offering the money; ' and please, she is so very ill, she will die.'

The earnestness, the sobbing utterance, touched the kind Doctor's heart.

Where does your mother live?' said he gently.

'Oh, please, Sir, I will show you.' And the boy had nearly started. 'Not now, my little fellow,' looking curiously into the dark face, contrasting so strangely with the large blue eyes. The child's countenance fell. How he longed to seize the Doctor's hand, and lead him away at once.

'Oh, please, let me show you, Sir; if you do not find her she will die.' 'Very well then, wait a minute.' He went into the surgery to give and receive his messages. Now, my boy, get up there, quick, and show me.'

The round of visits had been long, the very late dinner was ready, but the gentleman'assisting' was not in, and Dr. Ryder would not resist those beseeching eyes.

'Where did you say?' said he, turning round again almost sharply after making his inquiries as to the locality. House down a turning beyond the town, on the Brastings road? I don't know any such

house.'

'Please, it's not a house, Sir.'

'Not a house! Poor woman taken ill in the road?'

"Yes, Sir-no, Sir. Please, I'll show you directly.'

""Yes, no!" What can you mean?' The good man was getting rather

warm.

'It's one of the Gipsies, Sir,' said the Doctor's man, touching his hat. 'That boy's often about here, and a little sister with him.'

'Indeed!' And the Doctor silently mused upon the strange visit he was probably about to make, until a word from Robin caused the man to draw up.

The boy was graver than ever when Dr. Ryder lifted him down from the seat. 'Please, Sir, here's the money; you have not taken it.'

'Keep it for your mother; she will need it if she is ill. What is your name?'

The name was soon told. The van was soon reached. The sick woman was lying exhausted upon her straw pallet, and a little brown face, with blue anxious eyes, appeared by the side of the bed.

"You are the good, the kind Doctor; I know you are. Help me to live another night-just till to-morrow, at least.'

Dr. Ryder approached and laid his fingers upon the pulse, looking into the troubled face for further information concerning his patient. After a few questions-'I will do what I can for you, my poor woman; and I think you will live longer than you expect to do-perhaps to get better,' he added encouragingly. Have you any brandy?'

Annette shook her head.

'Go, Robin, ask the coachman for my case.'

'My case' had done good service upon many a former occasion, where a restorative or an anodyne might be needed at once; and in locations many miles from the surgery, where there might be no messenger to send. It had been the means of soothing much pain, and of raising many from a sinking condition. It did not fail now. Dr. Ryder stayed to observe the good effect of his medicine, and bade Robin come to his house to-morrow for a further supply.

'Are you alone here?' Again a negative gesture.

Then ask them to keep quiet.

Sleep, if you can.

If Mother rests, any gruel?'

you two had better go to bed early.

Can either of you make Robin glanced at the fire. 'I can,' said he. 'And I can help,' said a little voice from beside the bed. 'Very well. Put this into it'-pouring out something. I leave you in good hands, I see. Now don't fret, if you want to get better,' turning to Annette, and speaking in his kindest tones. Then he took up the thin brown hand again, pushed up the sleeve a little, felt the pulse once more; another encouraging word or two, and he was gone.

(To be continued.)

ON SPARE FUEL.

WE profess, in our present enlightened age, to venerate women, and to give them a place in society, and a weight in the world, that has never been so fully accorded to them in other times. We have even seen, thanks to Mr. Stuart Mill, with our mental eye, a vision of some angular sinewy spinsters, who will claim the right to their share in the legislation of our country. There has, perhaps, been no time, when women

have been more constant themes of admiration and notice than the present; albeit that there are few who sing her praises, with the touching delicacy and chivalrous reserve of a Herrick or a Wither. Our Royal Family, in which the feminine element is so predominant, gives a tinge of loyalty to the enthusiasm so widely felt for our softer sex. Our literature receives no mean or meagre contributions from female pens; and our novels—that is, the novels which distinctively belong to our present day-owe their chief charm and interest to the detailed portraiture of feminine life and character. The heroes sink into comparative insignificance by the side of such life-like creations as Lily Dale, Molly Gibson, and Catherine George. If we are to believe all we read, which we hope is not required of us, we seem also to be compelled to award to our modern ladies, a skill and audacity in crime, which is quite unparalleled in the history of masculine iniquity. And

yet, in spite of all this, we must confess that in the quiet round of common life, in the upper middle classes of English society, there is a very large proportion of women, from the ages of early youth up to a somewhat willingly protracted maturity, whose position is little considered, and whose difficulties are still less understood. The twenty or thirty young ladies who are to be found in all our smaller wateringplaces, or our provincial towns; and the much larger numbers of the same class, who congregate in the streets and public gardens, and dwell in the comfortable or luxurious homes of our large towns; these are all classed together in thought as well as in language, as a collection of easily-circumstanced, well-to-do, and consequently happy people, whose most laborious task is the erection of a massive chignon, or the regulation of ever-diminishing skirts, whose arduous duties are morning calls, an hour's practice, or a very short half hour with Frederika Bremer, or the simpler sonnets of Petrarch, and whose most imperative engagements are an impending croquét party, or some more distant pic-nic expedition.

But this is, in fact, a very cursory view of the subject, and one taken essentially ab extrâ. Our young ladies (for we must use the objectionable term in spite of its savour of the servants' hall and its inhabitants) are in fact very widely different one from another, not only in character and taste, which would be a too obvious fact to require comment; but in occupations, pursuits, and above all-for here is the intrinsic differencein aims; and it is doing an injustice to think of them, en masse, as beings whose smaller points of distinction are merged in their larger points of resemblance. It is true that they have no way open to them, for making to themselves a special path in life, and we are by no means of the number who desire it for them; externally they present, especially in the present style of dress, a very similar appearance, their habits and occupations are at first sight apparently the same, they all wear the aspect of a quiet well-satisfied life, free from great cares or absorbing interests but we must remember that the present age has made them, and requires them to be, au courant with all the chief public and literary interests of the day, and we must be prepared to find, that they are no longer the ductile womanly material of which the wives and mothers of fifty years ago were made. Far be it from us to detract from our sisters; we do but claim for them a trifle of consideration, and at least a tender and loving condemnation, for the errors of self-opinionativeness and arrogant self-assertion, which it must be confessed are but too common among the class under discussion. And it must be remembered that we are not speaking of that Upper Ten Thousand, whose daughters are not so many in number, as to encumber and overfill their recognized place; which is in a degree the case with our very large numbers of unoccupied women and girls. We are speaking of the daughters of our clergymen, of officers in the army or navy, and of professional men in general, who are living on an income generally within, often very far within, eight or nine hundred pounds a year; who have received a good English educa

tion, with foreign languages, music, &c., and who hear, probably, more intelligent conversation in a week, than the girls in the classes above or below them do in a month; and it is for this class of girls that we claim a moment's thought.

The first type that suggests itself is that of the pleasing-looking, bienmises, amiable, not overwise, girls, who are perfectly content with their happy easy lot: and who will open their blue eyes with a gentle surprise at the idea of any difficulty in their position, and who are indeed so perfectly well-placed, and so eminently happy, and useful too, in their quiet passive way, in their round of harmless amusements, unexciting occupations, unconsciously-performed little duties, and very slender use of their intellectual powers, that we are glad to leave them where they are, under the shade of the thorn trees on the lawns of their pretty homes, anticipating the afternoon game of croquét, fearful of no disaster more serious than an impending shower, and wholly unconscious that they are not fulfilling to the last iota the end of life.

There is another less pleasing class, who must have a passing noticebefore we come to those whose position suggested this paper-namely, the girls whose avowed aim and object is first to flirt and then to get married. The wedding-day bounds their vision. Each ribbon is tied, each locket arranged, with a view to that, possibly, alas! distant day. Probably no man can know to the full, how the better class of girls turns with loathing and disgust from these, and how little the universallyacknowledged feminine qualities of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, has to do with the repulsion, that their airs and graces, their mean deceits, their lowering arts to attract attention, cause to the upright and high-minded girl. To this class, at least, is no difficulty, beyond that which will always attend such efforts, and which we must suppose, from their persevering continuity, are in the end generally crowned with success.

But there is another class of girls-and we are fain to think, with pleasure, a rather large one-whose claims on our sympathy are real, though unobtrusive and often unseen. The class of intellectual, refined, aspiring natures, whose education has been such as to foster their natural abilities, and who have found leisure for an almost omnivorous reading in the intervals of a quiet life at home; and who wake up frequently, to find their tastes but little esteemed, their pursuits undervalued, and their knowledge, to their own sad discomfiture, not under-rated, but truly rated, at what, in spite of all their reading, it is ever liable to be, a meagre ill-chosen farrago of stray facts, and other men's thoughts, which will bear no examination, and which but too often serves to disgust them with their whole attainments and pursuits. These girls are humblethey know very well that all their efforts will never put them on a level with a man of ordinary ability and culture; but they are often dogmatic and opinionated; their very knowledge makes them conscious of their ignorance. This may strike root downward in the far-reaching roots of

humility, but it bears fruit upward in the sour crudeness of immaturity. They are so well aware that there is something within that longs for more congenial occupation than their unobtrusive duties, that they cannot contentedly abandon their ineffectual studies, or resign themselves quietly to the very limited sphere which is apparently to be theirs for life. It will perhaps be said, that such girls will marry, and then there will be an end of all their difficulties; the household and the nursery, with their sweet duties and cares, will soon absorb them, and give the only true solution to all their half-uttered questions of 'cui bono?' But this is not virtually the case. These are not, as a rule, the girls who marry. They are not unpleasing to men; their sprightly conversation, sometimes even their original thoughts, are a pleasing refreshment to them; but the old prejudice against the 'bas bleu' is not extinct. Men still fear that the literary lady will make the slovenly wife; and perhaps, too, are willing to select for their life-long companion, one whose very ignorance and inexperience are more appealing to their manly power, than the comparative self-reliance of a woman who has learnt to read and think for herself. A German novelist puts this speech into the mouth of a father to his daughter: 'My child, beware lest thou become too much thyself; or thou wilt never be able to become another's;' and this is exactly the result of much thought in a woman, expressed as only our subtile German cousins can express these shades of development of character, which are rather perceived by instinct than distinctly recognized by reason. These women themselves are not slow to perceive the state of the case, and quietly accept their fate, though they may perhaps have a lurking conviction that their hearts are none the less true and tender for the thoughts and aspirations which fill their heads. Such women generally make close female friendships, and it is singular how often these are of the marriage type. A union for mutual support, in which one often seems to be the head of the other, and in which there is a genuine assistance and a close affection. It is said that these friendships diminish the chances of marriage; but it is more reasonable to look on them as effects, rather than causes-effects arising from the absence of, and inability to, form closer and more absorbing ties.

The occupations of these women are a great perplexity to themselves. Their studies are, doubtless, of great personal interest, but they leave a painful sense of insufficiency and inaccuracy, and above all of an entire absence of aim. The man studies for his examinations, his professions, or the furtherance of his already acquired knowledge, for which he has a use; but the woman for her own improvement: and it is an open question in her own mind when she has done so, whether she has not rather injured herself than otherwise, whether in gaining knowledge she does not run the risk of losing wisdom, and above all, whether there must not be some more useful outlet for her faculties and energies. Amusement presents still greater difficulties. Such women are not easily amused. The very absence of stated grave occupations which must be VOL. 5.

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PART 27.