whose doors are never closed against a wanderer, is distinguished by a lamp bearing the message, "God is Love." Lured by that friendly light, the gift to the Mission of the workers connected with it, more than a hun. dred friendless and sin-stained girls have passed into the night shelter in the course of twelve months. The work is managed with rare tact, and although no constraint whatever is put upon the inmates, a relapse to the old life is most unusual. Many wanderers are attracted by the small pink card, distributed in the streets by the deaconesses, bearing the invitation: "If you want to find a friend and wish to begin a new life, come to the mission room on Wednesday evenings between seven and nine. A cup of tea and a kind welcome. God says, Why will ye die? Turn, live ye." Passing through the work-rooms of the Shelter into the Training Home at a short distance, a new life opens for these poor girls, who are henceforth placed in respectable positions. One young servant showed her gratitude by offering the whole of her first wages for the work.

Among the various missions more or less closely affiliated to the centre of Mildmay, we may name in passing the Bible Flower Mission, which does so much to brighten the cheerless lives of the inmates of our workhouses and hospitals. All through the summer months the gay posies, each with its Scripture motto neatly attached, are given out week by week to bands of ladies, who by means of their little errands of kindness gain access to the perplexities and troubles of many sorrowful hearts. The mission to the shoemakers of Northampton has also been greatly blessed. But perhaps amongst the outer circle of Mildmay operations no work has been more specially owned of God than the Mildmay Mission to the Jews, conducted since 1876 by the Rev. John Wilkinson, who had for many years been an honoured agent

of the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews. In company with Mr. Adler, the son of a Polish Rabbi, Mr. Wilkinson has gained the ear of thousands of London Jews by open-air and mission services in Hebrew, German and English, the initial attraction being given by a huge placard bearing in Hebrew the whole of Isaiah liii. In various parts of Great Britain, in Sweden, the United States, Germany, Austria and Hungary, in North Africa, and recently amongst the emigrant Russian Jews of New York, as well as in Palestine and Egypt, marvellous results have been achieved by itinerant missionaries. Mr. Wilkinson's scheme of work includes "a wide and free distribution of Hebrew New Testaments throughout the world."

"The doors of the world," writes Mr. Wilkinson, "are opening to us amongst Israel; so by God's help and blessing we shall pursue this work with new energy and speed until every pound is spent, and then trust the Lord for more until He come." For many striking cases of conversion amongst Jews, who have suffered the loss of all things that they may win Christ, we refer the reader to the monthly report headed Trusting and Toiling, which appeared in the Mildmay magazine, Service for the King.

A recent number contains a touching account of the Public-House Mission.

"Had you been in Bethnal Green one night between eleven and twelve o'clock, you might have met a strange-looking procession. In front some one with a large lamp, followed by a group of men and women pretty well laden; for one has a chair which he carries with the four legs sticking up into the air, while others help the harmonium to move along, or shoulder the stand upon which the lamp is to be placed. What does it mean? Just this-we do not leave caring' for the publicans, and so our Vicar, the Rev. R. Loveridge, has organized a quarterly service for their special benefit, and we

are going the round of the public-houses in the district to invite all we find therein to the church at twelve o'clock. If you will fall in behind for a moment you shall see what we do. Here is our first stand. A ring is quickly formed, the chair and the harmonium find their proper level, our lamp is fixed, and we are ready. The Vicar gives out a hymn, and into the midnight air strikes out the message, 'Sinners Jesus will receive.' Solos, choruses, texts, short, bright testimonies, a few verses from God's Word, some brief, hearty exhortations, another hymn, and we move on, but not before the public-house door has opened, and many heads, both male and female, have been thrust out. Those whose duty is to visit the bars have been inside and come out again, leaving some little books and a hearty invitation to the service. The response is generally perfectly civil.

"One promise is worthy of mention as an honourable exception to the piecrust rule. 'Yes, I'll come, when we close.' And the publican did so, bringing with him fourteen men who happened to be in his bar when the usual 'Time's up, gentlemen,' sounded at the closing hour.

"A cold little hand is laid in ours, and a childish voice says pleadingly, Teacher, let me come along with you.' 'It's time you were in bed, and fast asleep, little woman,' we reply, as stooping down we look into the bonny blue eyes of an eight or nine-year-old lassie, and shudder as we think of the early acquaintanceship with evil such a childhood must involve.

There ain't nobody in; mother's got the key, and she's round the corner at the Flowerpot; father I seen at the Black Dog; Polly's out with her young man at the theatre, and it's so cold on the doorstep.' This is the sort of picture that little one would give of her home-life; not an overdrawn one either, as we who live and work in Bethnal Green can testify. The church bell has ceased ringing, and the procession passes through the door, having gathered on its march about thirty or forty friends who have come, some out of curiosity, some with a true wish for better things. We can thank God for pledges taken after these midnight services, which have been, indeed, the first step on the right way; and for some whom we first saw there, who have afterwards joined our meetings. A few have become regular members of our Men's Institute."

As we read from time to time the records of calmly fervent zeal in every department of social and spiritual philanthropy, we realize with thankfulness that, however great is the loss entailed by the withdrawal of the personal presence of Mr. and Mrs. Pennefather, there is a stability about the institutions of Mildmay which will continue to give a hundred fold increase to its labours of love.-Wesleyan Methodist Magazine.

66

THIS book offers to our gaze the portrait of two fair, high-born sisters in the full radiance of youthful loveliness, severely sweet; simplest robes of antique design follow the flowing lines of each young figure, and reveal the curves of the stately neck on which each young head is poised lightly as a flower on its stem; and flower-like in unstudied grace of pose and unconscious beauty of aspect are both these gentle creatures, whose large, candid eyes look forth softly and steadily from under their shadowy eyelashes. Bright, consummate flowers," indeed, last and loveliest of their ancient line, Charlotte and Louisa Stuart look what they were, the fair embodi ment of its best qualities-grace, goodness, rare intellectual power, harmonized with that "unaffected dignity" which made the younger sister "something almost to worship" -as Thackeray put it-in her ripened womanhood. Full forty years have passed away since the painter drew these two long-sundered sisters for us, but it is only the other day since the younger of the twain departed from our midst in the fulness of years and honours, beautiful until the very last, with the beauty shining forth from a pure and noble heart and soul, as the touching picture testifies which shows her to us, at more than threescore and ten, " Waiting for the End." "She has been," said one who loved and survived her, "a priestess of the Most High, leading one upward along the paths of beauty and goodness." Strong words, but, as trust to show, not too strong in reference to this calmly fervent servant and follower of the Christ whom she confessed and rejoiced in,

we

and whom her beloved elder sister served and followed also, through the whole of her life.

With something more of truth than often accompanies the use of a once very significant phrase, it might be said of Charlotte and Louisa Stuart that they were "born in the purple"; it was theirs to breathe all through infancy and early womanhood womanhood the rare and difficult air of courts; children of an old illustrious house that had long been noted for political ability, they first saw the light in Paris, where their father was acting as English Ambassador; thrice he was charged with that office, and each time he performed his difficult functions with a success well merited by his tact and integrity, and much enhanced by the social powers of his wife, who, though "undistinguished and plain in appearance," reigned a real queen of society by virtue of the singularly "captivating manners and the unequalled conversational charm" which in her were united to much practical wisdom, fine spirit, and honesty. We shall look in vain through all the numerous letters written by Lady Canning and Lady Waterford for any florid eulogy, rich in superlatives, of their mother's admirable qualities; but both gave her always, with free, ungrudging hand, the better homage of true daughterly love, confidence, and obedience; she was ever in full intelligent sympathy with their pursuits and interests, and in every time of doubt and difficulty their trust was constant in her; in the hour of darkest distress it was her presence that was longed for and that brought the only possible earthly comfort;

and, when all had been done and borne that there was to do and bear, when she had long entered into rest, it was still her sweet old face, with its soft, loving eyes and the gentle benignity of its smile, that hovered, a comforting vision, before the dying eyes of her last surviving daughter, herself an aged saint, who was tranquilly and hopefully fording the dark river where it runs shallowest.

In addition to rank and wealth and power, the Stuart sisters were endowed with every dangerous natural gift; with the rare, dazzling loveliness, at once lofty and splendid, that inspires instant romantic affection; with poetic imagination; with a keen sense of humour; with the power of vivid and graceful literary expression; with so much of the painter's faculty as might be said to constitute a real genius for the art; and, in Lady Waterford's case there were added unusual musical powers that, united to a rich and thrilling voice, constituted yet another charm and another peril"a spell of powerful trouble.' All these lavish endowments, the least of which has sometimes proved the ruin of an unwise possessor, not only were harmless to the daughters of Lord Stuart de Rothesay, but became in their hands a source of pure delight and unmixed good to the many whom they could influence; and we never can detect in them undue elation on account of the powers that they held in trust from God; there is even a certain inclination to underestimate their own gifts. It would seem as if only the persistent adoring homage of the husband to whom she gave herself with full, free, lifelong devotion had made Louisa Stuart, Marchioness of Waterford, fully aware of the most obvious of her attractions--the transcendent personal beauty which, though changed and toned down by the leveller Time, was still with her as a winning charm in the late

evening of life. There is a tender pride in her remembered words, when someone recalled to her the exultation of her husband over the extreme beauty of the bride he had won, not without difficulty, and related how, as they drove into the gate of his Irish domain, he had lifted the folds of her long veil to let the crowding peasants see how fair was their new lady. "Yes, my Waterford was proud of me," she said fondly; but her pride was in the remembrance of the exceeding love that had never failed her, not in the attractions which first won it. Her own thoughts at that long-past moment of womanly triumph had been far differently occupied. A cock-fight was in full progress outside Curraghmore gate as Lord Waterford and his newly-wedded wife approached it; squalid hovels disgraced the streets of the villages on the estate; rags, dirt, idleness, and beggary were the order of the day for the inhabitants. "I will never rest till all that is changed, till they have better amusements, better homes, are industrious and prosperous," was the thought in the heart of the girl, fresh from very different scenes in England; and the thought abode with her, and was steadily and successfully carried into practice, through the many years that she dwelt, a humanizing and civilizing influence, among the warm Irish hearts that were not long in learning to love her.

A gift less transitory, which many would consider a more legitimate subject for complacency, was the undoubted early developed power of poetic figure-composition, the skill with the brush first exemplified when at ten years old she made, to please her parents, an excellent copy of a fine Sir Joshua Reynolds, the portrait of a brother they had loved and lost. All her life long she continued the daily practice of this art, not more for her own satisfaction than for the profit of her

neighbours; but numerous other duties debarred her from concentrating herself on this pursuit with the entire devotion that she considered essential to real excellence, and no amount of laudation from others could bring her to claim for herself the great name of artist. "An amateur's work, nothing more --not so very bad for an amateurbut not good," was the quiet verdict she passed on her own work when she saw it publicly exhibited among the works of professional artists who had given to their craft the amount of study she did not think right for herself. "A proprietress has no business to give up her life to art," she once replied to an enthusiastic relative who urged on her such consecration.

Her husband at his death had left to her for life his great domain of Ford on the Border; and there was much to do for it always-not only an old historic home to renovate and hand on to the natural heirs in fitting condition, but schools to build, church and parsonage to rear, a village to be improved into beauty and order, a numerous tenantry to be constantly ministered to, suffering and sorrow in all classes to be soothed and comforted. These things were not compatible with the true artist-life. So, without a murmur of regret, she devoted herself to plain, obvious duty, and practised chiefly as a pastime, or for evident benefit to others, the art that was a living delight to her.

She had the reward she did not work for, in the loving homage of all those to whom she gave her life-service. Love and loving help she had indeed given freely, right on from the time when, a bride of twenty-one, she wished to introduce cleanly habits into the Irish cabins, and would herself "go and make the beds, to show how it should be done, and would give personal lessons in cleaning the rooms."

Louisa Stuart's quiet, practical

endeavour for the uplifting of the six hundred men employed on her husband's Irish estates; the " stable school" she set on foot for the grooms and stable-lads busied about Waterford's numerous stud, by means of which she turned what is too often a hotbed of vice into a nursery for manly virtues; the woollen manufacture which she and her husband, with much expenditure of money, time, and patience, succeeded in fostering into thriving life for the betterment in condition of his numerous tenantry, who originally knew and could practice no other industry but the most inefficient agriculture: and the new churches which the pair built and entrusted to the ministry of a true shepherd of men's souls, as a thankoffering for Louisa's recovery from the effects of an almost fatal accident-one church being reared on the mountain-side at the very spot where two runaway horses flung her senseless from the carriage Waterford had been driving; the other placed at Curraghmore gate, to which he had borne her, still unconscious, down the mountain slopes and through a rapid riveras a knight of old might have done -that help might come to her all the sooner, are noble monuments of a noble life. The hillside church was so placed, not to please a loving fancy merely, but because there it was most accessible and central for the scattered folk dwelling amid the lonely glens, who scarce ever had been able to worship God in His own house before.

Most fitly is the story of her long life of unwearied beneficence closed by an anecdote most touching, preserved by the younger friend who has edited these memorials The dear lady's" small personal possessions were being distributed after her funeral, which took place among her own people at Ford; servants and retainers were allowed to choose this relic and that for a