from Walsall, but from the surrounding districts and the cathedral city. Nearly every house was closed as the motley procession took its slow way to the cemetery. The dense crowds kept order for themselves, only ignoring the vain attempt of the police to keep them back from the open grave. Four pauper coffins were brought in from the workhouse at the same time, and the service was read over all five at once - "Just as Sister Dora herself would have wished," said one of the nurses - and the flowers brought for her grave were shared with these nameless poor.

the Cottage Hospital eleven men were | concealed up to within the last few weeks brought in scalded with molten metal by even from the nurses, from her family and an explosion; nine died, and some con- friends till the last. In September she ception of the physical horrors of the was in London attending Mr. Lister's opaccident may be formed from the fact that erations, and studying his method with a soon afterwards the hospital had to be view to introducing the same treatment at closed, in consequence of the hopelessly Walsall. "When all human efforts for tainted condition of the ward where the her relief had been exhausted, she said as victims of the explosion had been treated. they stood watching her, I have lived Temporary premises had to be provided, alone, let me die alone,' repeating 'let me and meanwhile Sister Dora threw herself die alone,' till they were forced to leave into the work of a parochial "mission." her, one friend only watching through the At midnight, in the worst slums of Wal-half-open door." She was carried to her sall, the clergy followed her into houses grave by eighteen of the railway servants of ill-fame, and saw with amazement the she had nursed, and her wish for a quiet lowest ruffians and prostitutes kneel down funeral could not prevent the assemblage at her bidding in their own haunts, and, of all classes and professions, not only after listening to her prayers, follow meekly to the mission service. She knew them all by name, and all had, for themselves or another, owed something to her care and skill. A few lives were mended for good, but the lasting results seemed small in proportion to the energy spent upon them. In the Middle Ages such an influence would have filled convents and hermitages with ci-devant robbers and courtesans, but in the absence of such easy refuges against the rebound to unbroken habits, little trace of the wonderful personal ascendency then exercised remained except in the memories of witnesses. But the unreasoning classes It is hardly surprising that legends are less apt to insist upon tangible utilita- verging on the miraculous should have rian results; to the Walsall populace grown up about so marvellous a life, and Sister Dora was none the less adorable there may be two opinions about the wisbecause of the imperfection of her wor-dom of Miss Lonsdale's reserve in withshippers; she was to many of them the sole embodiment of poetry and religion, harmless mirth and womanly beauty; and it is significant of the purely spiritual character and force of her influence, that while middle-class admirers proposed (most rightly) to honor her memory by the foundation of a convalescent hospital, the very class to whom such a hospital would be of use do not care so much for this, and, as the biographer well says, "it is worth recording, that amongst all the proposed monuments to the memory of Sister Dora, the working members of the population most desire to raise a statue in her honor." A railway servant expressed the general feeling why: "Nobody knows better than I do that we sha'n't forget her no danger of that; but I want her to be there, so that when strangers come to the place and see her standing up, they shall ask us,' Who's that?' and then we shall say, 'Who's that? Why, that's our Sister Dora.'

She died in December, 1878, of cancer,

holding all stories of which the truth could not be guaranteed. What is believed about such persons is a part of the truth about them, and it is not often that we are able to see legends of the saints in the act of growth. But no doubt most of the marvels might be explained by the magical insight and quick intuitions of her sympathetic genius. It seemed mysterious to a patient that she should know him to be a bricklayer without being told, though his clothes smelt of mortar and she had removed a small fragment of brick from his eyes; and it is easy to imagine cases of the same kind that passed without explanation. With due reservations there could be no objection to putting on record some of the pretty inventions of popular faith in the sister.

After reading, not this brief abstract, but the biography itself, we need surely not be afraid of facing the question, Was this wonderful life equally perfect in every respect? Was there no flaw, no shadow anywhere, and if not, whence

upon persons or things with an abandon | ence held at Birmingham the same year, that she thought to be wrong and felt to "she took no part in the discussions; to be painful, as the objects of her affection have lifted up her voice in an assembly turned out to have affections of their own of gentlemen would have been, as she set in quite other directions. This com- then felt, tantamount to unsexing hermon, not to say universal, experience of self;" but to find her own ideas accepted affectionate girls is not brought into un- in the outer world, and to be herself weldue prominence, and by five-and-twenty comed on the broad platform of social Mary's private ambitions had begun to reform without reference to her unorthowander from her own school towards dox dissent, was the greatest possible schemes for reclaiming the children of relief and encouragement. When the the vicious poor. In 1835 a small society cause claimed her it was impossible to was formed for district visiting, and a stand upon points of decorum, and she year or two later this assumed a more dis- was soon in correspondence with Cabinet tinctly missionary character; but this ministers, criticising and drafting bills, period and the next ten years—twelve or giving evidence before committees, prefifteen out of the best years of an ordi- paring papers of her own to be read before nary life. were spent in waiting, with societies; and at last, alas! "unsexed" more or less conscious impatience, for to the point of reading them herself to freedom to enter on a wider field of work. applauding audiences. Miss Carpenter had no quarrel with her Her mother's death in 1856 broke up family or surroundings, it simply did not the habits of years, and the reaction, after occur to her or them that it could be right a long course of dependence and selfor possible for one of her age and sex to suppression, could not but take the form take the initiative in a new scheme of of fresh craving after freedom and indepublic utility. Translated into secular pendence, scope for action, together with prose, the confessions of her journal im-near objects of affection. In 1858, when ply that the energies thus forcibly re- at length settled in a house of her own, pressed tended to break out again in the she writes with unspeakable thankfulness less useful form of irritability; so that "for the sense of freedom I have now. her conscience had enough to do in morI have lived in so very cramped a tifying innocent ambitions on the one condition, that in many ways I feel as hand, and on the other reproaching herself if- now past fifty I were only just for not being the better for the mortifica- emerging from childhood. So this puts tion. me back at times; but on the whole I In 1846 a ragged school was success- feel more 'myself and nobody else,' or fully opened in one of the poorest courts rather that I shall soon be so." Henceof Bristol; in 1848 the home teaching was forward at least there were no external given up; and in 1849 Miss Carpenter checks to her activity, except such as are published the results of her long_proba- common to all reformers, and the intertion in a little book entitled "Ragged ludes of depression and discouragement Schools: their Principles and Modes of which still recur occasionally are suffiOperation," by a Worker. She was now ciently explained by her own special diffiforty-three, and though only just begin- culties. The two or three schools which ning the work to which she owes her she had established in Bristol in accordfame, her mind was made up on all the ance with her own ideas, while they were points subsequently made familiar by her still new and her time otherwise unoccuadvocacy. Ragged schools, industrial pied, still required to be looked after in schools, reformatory schools, later on detail; and this task became burdensome prison discipline in general, and finally as distant and more general problems the education of women in India these claimed an increasing share of attention. are the subjects which occupy the re- At the same time the ideal home relations mainder of the memoir. We need only were still unformed; and, on the whole, follow Miss Carpenter in her public life we cannot conceal from ourselves that to in order to see how far it succeeded or begin life at fifty is to begin it at a disadfailed in supplying the blanks felt in the vantage. This remark does not apply in two earlier periods of youth and maturity. any way to her public work, which was as In 1851 she writes, "It is a very curious quietly and, if one may say so, as amiably feeling to me when I think about it, to influential as could be wished or desired. give out my opinion with a certain degree All Miss Carpenter's letters, even of confidence, and to have it received as somewhat burning questions, are so unworthy of consideration." At a confer-failingly clear, courteous, and diplomati

on

en.

It

cally impersonal, that we understand their and the gaols of Bombay and Montreal freedom from offence, and read without reformed, than that one more Nonconsurprise the official letter of introduction formist minister should have an exemwhich accompanied her to India, stating plary wife; it is more important that as "that Miss Carpenter's opinion has for many as are sick or sorry in Staffordshire many years past been sought and listened should have Dora for their sister, than to by legislators and administrators of all that she should be happy (if she could) in shades of political opinion in England, brightening a single home. But the very and that his Excellency in Council looks question that we wish to raise, is begged forward to her visit to Bombay as likely by this way of stating the alternative. to be of great public benefit." Miss Car- is not in sane human nature to feel perpenter was fond of quoting an American manent regret because things mutually lady agitator to the effect that she did not exclusive cannot be possessed together. ask for her rights, she "took them;" and Women as well as men can find genuine she had been able to take so nearly all happiness in the "best possible" life; the part she wished in affairs, that it was they are not condemned by nature to natural for her to hesitate about demands spend their strength in yearning after for the political enfranchisement of wom- some composite impossibility; and it may Was it desirable to give the suffrage be that if our two sane and sensible heroto women who could not be trusted to ex-ines fail to find content in the best possiercise all desirable influence without it? bilities open to themselves, the fault may It took a long and calmly argumentative lie not with them, but in the arbitrary letter from Mr. Mill to persuade her (in external limits of the possibility. 1867) that qui veut la fin veut les moyens, We are apt to speak of women as if the and that, if it is a woman's business to quality belonging to them as such were try and induce ministers to bring in a one and indivisible, in which case it would good Education Bill, it must also be their be hard to explain the variety of womanly business to help, if they can, to provide types; but in fact the substratum of all a majority to carry the same to a third character is neutral or rather common, reading. Miss Carpenter was convinced; and the especially feminine finish, so to public speaking in all its forms she had speak, is seldom equally elaborate and already had to resign herself to, but it is conspicuous at every point. If we adopt pleasant to find that the gentle old lady the popular classification of the faculties still found it possible to draw the line as active, passive, and intelligent, we somewhere. In 1873 she was asked to should find little that is specifically fem"take the chair" in some mixed assem-inine in Miss Carpenter's practical reablage, and tells a friend that she "declined, of course, as I always keep within my own womanly sphere."

son. She is a reformer of the same order as her friend Mr. Hill, and it is only in the personal affections that she is a thorough woman. In Sister Dora, again, the mind is feminine; there is genius, but it is the genius of a woman; the passions and impulses, on the other hand, are broadly human; she needed to feel her own nature in forcible contact with her fellows, she could not but live intensely; but in another age, among other conditions, her life might have been anything but unmixedly beneficent. It is generally allowed that there are the makings of a sinner in most great saints, and Sister Dora's temptations would not have been towards narrowly feminine transgressions.

Now we are much tempted to ask whether this (happily elastic) theory of the "womanly sphere" is in any way answerable for the undercurrent of melancholy common to the lives of two women as strong, as different, and as successful as Dorothy Pattison and Mary Carpenter. Both were thoroughly sane in body and mind, with well-proportioned, equally developed natures, free from any morbid leanings, and both found their way at last to the work for which they were supremely fitted. And yet, reverenced, adored, and valued as the memory of each and the work of both must be, it is certain It is evident that if the characters of that most old-fashioned believers in the women vary in this fundamental way, they "womanly sphere" will turn from the two cannot all be contentedly provided for by memoirs with a compassionate sigh a common destiny. Marked individual"Poor things! they would have been ities must feel their way towards an indihappier married and with a pack of chil-vidual lot, but the health and happiness

dren!"

Clearly it is more important that the Bristol ragamuffins should be reclaimed,

of the whole nature suffers by the arbitrary repression of the part which hap pens to have taken a line of development

unforeseen by our neat generalities con- | surroundings most congenial to their later cerning the sex. The question which growth, the golden age of first friendships coming generations will have to solve at will be lost and over before the congenial their leisure is virtually this, whether spirits meet, unless they are allowed to women whose genius is not unmixedly enter soon enough each upon their chosen and exclusively feminine will find in the path. miscellaneous relations of life the full satisfaction of their feminine propensities, provided their other aptitudes find average facilities for healthy play; or whether royal alliances will be arranged between the ruling spirits of the future, and genius succeed less rarely than now in finding a mate in independent genius. There can be no general rule for single lives, but it is a safe conclusion that whatever society ends by approving or applauding in its members, the said members should be allowed to undertake with unexhausted strength and spirits unbroken by wanton delay, opposition, and discouragement.

It will be thought, perhaps, that the long ordeal passed through by women like Mary Carpenter was not without its advantages; benevolent purposes that survived so arduous a struggle for existence, brought a guarantee of fitness; and though the ardor of some and the life of other philanthropists might burn out before they emerged from obscurity, all who did so emerge might be trusted to lose no time and alienate no supporters by rash or immature experiments. The price paid for such security might well be thought excessive, but the benefit was real, and it is fortunate that the course of It might almost be said that the last events naturally provides an equivalent three decades have each made a differ- security in the place of this. As the ence of five years in the ages at which it number of young unproved adventurers is possible for a woman with a "mission " is multiplied, they are less and less exto start upon her career. Instead of ap- posed to the dangers and difficulties of pearing as a diffident novice at five-and-absolute innovation. Whatever direction forty, she may venture, as Miss Carpenter may be taken by the ambition of these puts it, "to give out her opinion with a younger women, in almost every direction certain degree of confidence" even at thirty, and may have the pleasurable surprise of seeing it already "received as worthy of consideration;" and this change, of which we have scarcely yet begun to see the fruit, involves much more than the mere saving of so many years for a particular kind of work. Half the pathos of half-spoilt lives lies in the fact, not that he or she have failed to get what they wanted, but that they have got it too late to be of any use. With the majority of mankind the first half of life exhausts the first fresh power of complete absorption in a single interest, pursuit, or affection; the best work of a lifetime is seldom done then, but it is often conceived, literally inspired, by the energetic delight which comes from gratification of the primary impulses. If this delight is once missed, a tinge of "twilight gray is apt to spread even over the successes which life may still have in store; and, without venturing upon doubtful subtleties, it is a plain matter of common sense that the ordinary pleasures of friendship, which it is the tendency of contemporary society to undervalue, are most enjoyable when the friends are held together, in comparative youth, with still fresh zeal, by the further tie of a common pursuit. And as few people are born exactly among the

they have had predecessors, some of whom survive as leaders, and the fatal stumbling-block is removed which excluded women from attempting to do any ostensible kind of work unless they had quite exceptional powers of initiative. In other words, the same gradual change of social feeling which promises to allow women of heroic dimensions to use their powers undelayed, also promises to provide a modest field for the aspirations of the unheroic many. There are only too many girls who resemble Sister Dora in little except the inability to feel that "they have enough to do at home - if they would only think so." They cannot, will not, or at all events do not, think so; and the mere problem how to keep these unemployed energies out of mischief is itself large and pressing enough to call "for consideration.

We have first to distinguish between the women who wish to do some particular thing and those who only wish in general for something to do. The first class need little except fair play; any special vocation may take the place of genius to the extent of fixing the individual destiny; but with regard to the others, the very vagueness of the appeal justifies us in allowing the general convenience to determine what employment shall be of