Fortunately many of these unfilled places are of quite average attractiveness, and there is no apparent reason why the class of unplaced or unattached persons should not be encouraged in the custom of choosing a place for themselves out of the list of vacancies; il y en a pour tous les goûts, and providing the choice is equally free and pleasant, there is no great hardship in having to choose upon grounds one degree more abstract than those which regulate the thoughtless decisions of the contented majority. Men and women of the world are satisfied when the ordinary relations of life enable them to render and receive, in about equal proportions, those social services which build up the fabric of civilized life. The few whom accident has left without particular, so to speak, localized attachment, to a single set of duties or any one definite function, will also be satisfied if these steps are lighted, by the lantern of a general rule, to fresh regions where the indulgence of their best natural inclinations will be transformed into the offer of an acceptable service. fered. There is no class injustice in this. enough of themselves; but there are a It is true that a young man is not at certain number of unfilled places and present expected to be guided in the unplaced persons left over to disturb our choice of a profession by considerations | faith in universal adaptation. of general utility; it is enough if he sees a prospect of doing the work he undertakes with average ability, and such success as may enable him to meet the claims of private or family relationship. But the very root and origin of the complaints made, say, by this young man's sisters, is just that they are free from any material claims, in the direct or indirect discharge of which their whole time might be engaged. Some merely desire the distraction of sustained employment; others have a moral aversion from a useless life, and both are willing to compound with society for leave to do something by consenting to do only such things as society is prepared to sanction. We are getting disabused of the notion that all women who do not marry are (or ought to be) born sisters of mercy, and, if they want to do anything, will want to do nothing but good, in some form or other, to their fellow-creatures. But the "data of ethics," as they present themselves to us nowadays, no longer seem to warrant a sharp line of demarcation between religious good works and indifferent secular action. We are prepared to recognize as good, i.e. as ministering to the fulness of normal vitality and growth, every manifestation of personal energy, every gratification of personal desires which is proved by the spontaneous course of things to be compatible with the development of similar animation in other parts of the social body. A woman who marries from inclination into a rank of life suited to her tastes, is obliged, like a professional man, to do many things which are not in themselves pleasurable; but they are among the natural and necessary conditions of an acceptable whole, and therefore they are done without any sense of sacrifice or constraint. Our object should be, if possible, to create conditions of equally pleasurable necessity for the life and action of the unattached residuum. Society must arrange itself, upon the whole, pretty much to the satisfaction of the majority of its members, or the majority would insist on a rearrangement; but it is rank optimism to contend that no improvement on the spontaneous combination of independent interests can be suggested by self-conscious reflection. The majority of men and women shake into place readily Leaving out of account those women who have definite original ambitions of their own, and those who are fully satisfied with such forms of feminine benevolence as have been generally sanctioned since the Evangelical revival which succeeded Methodism (district visiting and similar "work amongst the poor"), we should find that there is still a real, a felt, and an unsatisfied demand for social ministrations of a secular kind, such as our unoccupied young ladies, and perhaps nobody else, could adequately meet. Mr. Ruskin has written very prettily about the place and use of girls in their own homes; but among townsfolk who live in an atmosphere of daily papers, whose domestic instincts are smothered by the necessity of being "at home" to their equals by the hundred, it is often true that the demand for the homely domestic graces of "Fors Clavigera" may be most felt a few hundred doors off. Third-rate accomplishments are at a discount in the society which can afford to amuse itself by the help of the first professionals, but accomplishments that are third-rate in the West End may without undue arrogance hope to embellish the lives of those who have learned to associate the idea of amusement with prov and of ke De re 門 vulgar debauchery and excess. More | want oiling here and there, that the ecothan one society has been formed for nomical mechanism of supply and demand providing cheap concerts for the people, needs a helping hand from time to time to and many girls who "don't see the use supply the gaps of incomplete evolution. of keeping up their music for home con- and imperfect adaptation. The opportu sumption when better can be had nities here are much the same for men and would feel it a pleasant duty to cultivate women, only there are rather more women their voices to the utmost if chorus sing- in proportion who may find a purpose for ers are wanted for an oratorio in White- their life in seizing them. Philanthropists chapel. In like manner the missing|have tried to go into trade, and have impetus to study in the sister arts may purged themselves of the suspicion of be supplied by the vision of endless blank economical heresies by collecting rents walls and panels, where amateur decorat- and paying dividends on the capital inors may work their will to the delight of vested in coffee-taverns. Those who like schoolchildren; and in all this it must to deal with generalities may further the be remembered that the privilege of ad- work of such companies; those who predressing a larger, if less critical public fer dealing with John and Mary in the than that of the artist's home, has to be flesh may follow in the wake of Miss earned, and is pretty sure to be willingly Octavia Hill,* and restore the lost perpaid for, by better work than would be sonal relationship between landlord and done without some external stimulus. tenant in our towns. Those, again, who We are coming back to the old Greek wish to know John and Mary first, as a faith in music and gymnastic as the preliminary step to being able to help groundwork of civilized education, and them to realize their own wishes if they any number of young ladies with a natu- happen to have some ready, must seek an ral enthusiasm for the ordinary drawing- introduction from some guide with local room accomplishments of singing and knowledge,† and dropping idle airs of patdancing, might be profitably employed as ronage gradually discover where a new missionaries for the spread of such ac- club would have a chance of success; complishments amongst the children and whether the members of the existing club operatives of large towns. Waltzing goes are friendly enough to work together on under difficulties round a hurdy-gurdy about a co-operative store; whether the outside a corner public-house; but it existing store can spare funds to invest in would be pretty to see a young lady fid- buildings for its members; and so on dling say on the roof-playground of the from each exhausting problem to its big school of some poor neighborhood-neighbors. To many it comes as a disto a hundred or so of the most exemplary covery that the majority of the workingscholars. The more serious-minded classes do not think of themselves at all members of such a mission might insti- in a guise answering to the "charitable tute inquiries as to the proportion of men lady's" conception of the "poor." had up for beating their wives who had is difficult to meddle with any schemes of ever learned to dance, and so close is the improvement without coming across cases connection between moral and physical of more or less crying need for directly discipline and self-restraint that we should charitable assistance, and many, thereexpect the statistical argument to be fore, will be glad to co-operate with the strongly on the side of such gymnastic. society for organizing such relief, which is But many of our young friends have a much in need of intelligent volunteer assoul above accomplishments; they them-sistance to carry out its admirable princiselves don't care for pictures, have no ear for music, and "hate dancing," and thus might rebel with some reason against a theory of "woman's mission" which did not go beyond the spread of graceful accessories; their sympathies are more with the stern realities of life, and it annoys them to be reminded of their sex at every turn. Well, men and women have had to agree that the wheels of the social order • Members of the Kyrle Society have supplied charming decorations to some infant schools in the East End of London. But it ples, now perhaps somewhat outweighted by the proportion of formal machinery and routine to the actual range of work attempted. It is possible, again, that for some even the Charity Organization Society may not go sufficiently near to the root of the matter, and the relations of capital and labor with all the varied phases of modern industry may attract explorers. Here, also, the last few years Homes of the London Poor. By Octavia Hill. Macmillan & Co. † E.g. the writer of "Work about the Seven Dials.' iver tellig Fized chers bea have witnessed changes. Miss Marti- many that the one is enabled, as from a er Br neau's "Tracts on Political Economy" vantage-ground, only in part of his own were widely popular among middle-class creation, to survey the battlefield of huLiberals, but they were little fitted to man effort, and bear down with overcapture the attention of the operatives, whelming reinforcements to the rescue of and until quite lately many distinguished a threatened outpost, or the support of an leaders of the working-classes would have advancing column. The general must been inclined to echo Mr. Crawley's have soldiers, but the heaven-born gen"Woman, mind your distaff," if stray eral most often makes his appearance in feminine sympathy had ventured to ob- an orderly camp, and the better the distrude upon the serious business of a trade cipline among the rank and file, the more dispute. But there can be no indiscre- chance we have of such illustrations of tion in women concerning themselves the poetry of spiritual combat as Sister about the industrial employment of wom- Dora's life would still have given, though en, and as the conditions of industry are it had been shaped a thought more hapsubstantially the same for both sexes, pily. EDITH SIMCOX. understanding and sympathy will not be expected to narrow themselves unnaturally. It would be impossible, as well as tiresome, to attempt in a few pages to give an exhaustive list of all the harmless ways in which the unoccupied classes may earn their salt" in a busy world. It is enough if the general principle can be accepted, that as the salt and savor of life lies in the motived continuity of effort, all those who are not forced into effort by the unsought urgency of love or hunger must have a tasteless existence, unless they are enabled to bring themselves within the ranges of some sufficient attraction or instigation. All that the modest majority of mankind require to content them is something to do, that they can do sufficiently well to feel moderately well pleased with themselves for doing it; and instead of discouraging the craving after such wholesome functional activity, society should even be at some pains to foster its development, with a special view to the improved nutrition, if we may keep up the physiological figure, of those parts of the organism which are not yet fully adapted to the surrounding conditions. After all there is not very much either to fear or to hope from the development of feminine energies in the immediate future, and perhaps the most certain and considerable gain from a larger toleration of feminine aspirations will be the security that future heroines will have less to cool and sad den their generous ardor than Miss Carpenter or Sister Dora. Coming back to the point from which we started, the only possible conclusion seems to be, that for men as well as women- the complete and unimpaired realization of any widely admirable ideal implies the complicity of society. It is only by the favor and countenance of the From The Nineteenth Century. IN these days of reduction of rents, or of total abstinence from rent-paying, it is, I am told, the correct thing to be "a little pressed for money." It is a sign of connection with the landed interest (like the banker's ejaculation in "Middlemarch ") and suggests family acres, and entails, and a position in the county. (In which case I know a good many people who are landlords on a very extensive scale, and have made allowances for their tenants the generosity of which may be described as Quixotic.) But as a general rule, and in times less exceptionally hard, though Shakespeare tells us "how apt the poor are to be proud," they are not proud of being poor. the Poverty," says the greatest of English divines, "is indeed despised and makes men contemptible; it exposes a man to the influences of evil persons, and leaves a man defenceless; it is always suspected; its stories are accounted lies, and all its counsels follies; it puts a man from all employment; it makes a man's discourses tedious and his society troublesome. This is the worst of it." Even so poverty seems pretty bad, but, begging Dr. Jeremy Taylor's pardon, what be has stated is by no means "the worst of it." To be in want of food at any time, and of firing in winter-time, is ever so much worse than the inconveniences he enumerates; and to see those we love-delicate women and children perhaps want of them, is worse still. The fact is, the excellent bishop probably never knew what it was to go without his meals, but took them "reg'lar" (as Mrs. Gamp took -in It her Brighton ale) as bishops generally do. | thinking and low living by restricting Moreover, since his day, luxury has so their pocket-money to two shillings a day, universally increased, and the value of out of which it was understood they were intelligence has become so well recog- to find their own meals. I don't know nized (by the publishers) that even philos- whether the spirit in their case was willophers, who profess to despise such ing, but the flesh was decidedly weak, for things, have plenty to eat, and good of its one of them, on this very moderate allowkind too. Hence it happens that, from all ance, used to contrive to always have a we hear to the contrary from the greatest pint of dry champagne with his luncheon. thinkers, the deprivation of food is a The fact is, that of the iron grip of poversmall thing: indeed, as compared with ty, people in general, by no means exceptthe great spiritual struggles of noble ing those who have written about it, have minds, and the doubts that beset them as had very little experience; whereas of to the supreme government of the uni- the pinch of it a good many people know verse, it seems hardly worth mentioning. something. It is the object of this paper In old times, when folks were not so -and the question should be an interest"cultured," starvation was thought more ing one, considering how much it is talked of. It is quite curious, indeed, to con-about-to inquire briefly where it lies. trast the high-flying morality of the present day (when no one is permitted, either by Evolutionist or Ritualist, however dire may be his necessity, so much as to jar his conscience) with the shocking laxity of the holy Scriptures. "Men do not despise a thief if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry," says Solomon, after which stretch of charity, strange to say, he goes on to speak of marital infidelity in terms that, considering the number of wives he had himself, strike one as se vere. It is certain, indeed, that the sacred writers were apt to make great allowances for people with empty stomachs, and though I am well aware that the present profane ones think this very reprehensible, I venture to agree with the sacred writers. The sharpest tooth of poverty is felt, after all, in the bite of hunger. A very amusing and graphic writer once described his experience of a whole night passed in the streets; the exhaustion, the pain, the intolerable weariness of it, were set forth in a very striking manner; the sketch was called "The Key of the Street," and was thought by many, as Browning puts it, to be "the true Dick ens." But what are even the pangs of sleeplessness and fatigue compared with those of want? Of course there have been fanatics who have fasted many days; but they have been supported by the prospect of spiritual reward. I confess I reserve my pity for those who have no such golden dreams, and who fast perforce. It is exceedingly difficult for mere worldlings such as most of us are not to eat, if it is possible, when we are hungry. I have known a great social philosopher who flattered himself that he was giving his sons an experience of high It is quite extraordinary how very various are the opinions entertained on this point, and, before sifting them, one must be careful in the first place to eliminate from our inquiry the cases of that considerable class of persons who pinch themselves. For, however severely they do it, they may stop when they like and the pain is cured. There is all the difference in the world between pulling one's own tooth out, and even the best and kindest of dentists doing it for one. How gingerly one goes to work, and how often it strikes one that the tooth is a good tooth, that it has been a fast friend to us for ever so many years and never "fallen out" before, and that after all it had better stop where it is! To the truly benevolent mind, indeed, nothing is more satisfactory than to hear of a miser denying himself the necessaries of life a little too far and ridding us of his presence altogether. Our confidence in the average virtue of humanity assures us that his place will be supplied by a better man. The details of his penurious habits, the comfortless room, the scanty bedding, the cheese-rinds on his table, and the fat banking-book under his thin bolster, only inspire disgust; if he were pinched to death he did it himself, and so much the better for the world in general and his heir in particular. Again, the people who have a thousand a year, and who try to persuade the world that they have two thousand, suffer a good deal of inconvenience, but it can't be called the pinch of poverty. They may put limits to their washing - bills, which persons of cleanlier habits would consider unpleasantly narrow; they may eat cold mutton in private for five days a week in order to eat turtle and venison in a spir rever hough ed public (and with the air of eating them the country, where his feelings must l every day) on the sixth; and they may have been very similar to those of Chrisimmure themselves in their back rooms topher Sly. In particular he drew in London throughout the autumn in order to persuade folks that they are still at Trouville, where for ten days they did really reside and in splendor; but all their stint and self-incarceration, so far from awakening pity, only fill us with contempt. I am afraid that even the complaining tones of our City friend who tells us that in consequence of "the present unsettled state of the markets" he has been obliged to make "great retrench-which it seems on inquiry consist in putting down one of his carriages and keeping three horses instead of six -fail to draw the sympathizing tear. Indeed, to a poor man this pretence of suffering on the part of the rich is perhaps even more offensive than their boasts of their prosperity. ments " charming picture of the magnificent at- On the other hand, when the rich become really poor their case is hard indeed; though, strange to say, we hear little of it. It is like drowning; there is a feeble cry, a little ineffectual assistance from the bystanders, and then they go under. It is not a question of pinch with them; they have fallen into the gaping mouth of ruin, and it has devoured them. If we ever see them again, it is in the second generation as waiters (upon providence), or governesses, and we say, "Why, dear me, that was Bullion's son (or daughter), wasn't it?" using the past tense as if they were dead. "I remember him when he lived in Eaton Square." This class of cases rarely comes under the head of "genteel poverty." They were at the top, and hey presto! by some malignant stroke of fate, they are at the bottom; and there they stick. I don't believe in bachelors ever experiencing the pinch of poverty; I have heard them complaining of it at the club, while ordering Medina oysters instead of natives, but after all, what does it signify even if they were reduced to cockles? They have no appearances to keep up, and if they cannot earn enough to support themselves they must be poor crea tures indeed. A philosopher In the investigation of this interesting subject, I have had a good deal of conversation with young ladies, who have given me the fullest information, and in a manner so charming, that, if it were common in witnesses generally, it would make blue-books the most delightful description of reading. i "I consider it to be a pinch," says one, "when I am obliged to put on black mittens on occasions when I know other girls will have long white kid gloves." I must confess I have a prejudice myself against mittens; they are, so to speak, "gritty to touch; so that the pinch, if it be one, experienced by the wearer, is shared by her ungloved friends. The same thing may be said of that drawing-room fire, which is lit so late in the season for economical reasons, and so late in the day at all times; the pinch is felt as much by the visitors as by the members of the household. These things, however, are mere nips, and may be placed in the same category with the hardships complained of by my friend Quiverfull's second boy. "I don't mind having papa's clothes cut up for me," he says, "but what I do think hard is getting Bob's clothes [Bob being his elder brother] which have been papa's first; however, I am in great hopes that I It is the large families of moderate income, who are delicate and have delicate tastes, that feel the twinge: and especially the poor girls. I remember a man, with little care for his personal appearance, of small means but with a very rich sense of am outgrowing Bob." humor, describing to me his experiences A much more severe example of the when staying at a certain ducal house in | pinch of poverty than these is to be found 0 |