houses which were guiltless of speculation or expense. And so we see on all hands, that, while certain general laws can be discovered which form the moral scheme of Providence, there come up individual questions every day which cannot be settled by reference to any such laws. We know, as a matter of certainty, that the drunken workman will bring his children to hunger and cold;-yet we cannot, therefore, let the children die. We may come to fixed conclusions as to the causes which lie at the root of the difficulty of earning a livelihood experienced by ladies;—yet we none the less have this generation of such ladies to care for, remembering the story of the good Samaritan, who, when he saw that the stranger was wounded, did not stop to speculate on the best way of rendering roads secure from thieves, but went to him and bound up his wounds.

We have entered on this dry explanation of what we conceive to be the right way of viewing large public charities privately administered, because we believe there are many people of firstrate intellect and conscience, alike among the rich and the poor, who recoil from the idea of giving or of receiving any material aid. We believe, with the whole might of our convictions, that for human creatures to help one another freely, when that love which is the bread of life is given together with the bread that perisheth, honours both the giver and the receiver, and can be degrading to none. We have every reason to believe that, in this particular instance of the Governesses' Benevolent Institution, the greatest, the most sisterly tenderness and delicacy has been shown in the transactions between the society (as represented by its lady members) and the teachers, while the remarkable results obtained by the funds placed at their disposal prove the zealous attention which must have been bestowed upon the institution by experienced men; and the mass of facts thus brought to light serve as a wise and efficient basis of argument for those more diffusive efforts which will tend to cut off the evil at its source, by directing the industry of educated women into other and more profitable channels.

Let us now turn to this, after all, most important side of the question, and see upon what point of certainty we can first fix our attention. It is the opinion of the gentleman who has for years acted as honorary secretary, (a post which has in this instance been anything but a mere name,) and under whose observation all the accumulated details of the various connected institutions have fallen, -it is his decided opinion that the number of first-class governesses is not greater than the demand for their services, and that, although, taking this for granted, the salary of a woman of unusual professional ability and attainment cannot rise higher than that of a small Government clerk, at from 100l. to 200l. a year, still this sum can be secured, and absolute penury avoided. But this supposes the governess to be highly accomplished according to the standard now insisted upon by the "nobility and gentry," to be well conversant

with two or more foreign languages, and to be marked in dress and manner by all the elegance of a highly-bred lady. Such a woman, capable of teaching Horace to little Lord Edward, and of reading Dante and Schiller with young Lady Isabella, will probably secure what is considered to be relatively, if not absolutely, a "good salary." Where then falls the strain? The question is easily answered; it falls upon the hundreds and thousands of women who, born in the middle class, live by its instruction; upon the daughters of professional men, who, educated themselves in the conventional degree of knowledge and accomplishments, suddenly, at the death of a parent, or the failure of an investment, rush into the Profession of the Teacher, and discharge its duties in all probability with honesty and thoroughness so far as they are able, but without any of that nicety of acquirement, or peculiar tact and science in imparting, which would enable them to outbid the hosts of sister governesses who are teaching on the same social level, and for equally low pay, The over supply of teachers has moreover reacted on the custom of the employers, who have set their ideas to a certain scale, and, if they educate their children at home, refuse to pay beyond a certain percentage on the whole family income for their instruction.

It remains for us to see what can be done to kill this evil at its root. How much can be done to mitigate its consequences may be read in these reports; but after all the greatest benefit achieved by the group of institutions of which they treat, consists in the degree of attention which they have drawn to the state of the profession at large. One part of the question is already in course of being answered. Every year sees an ever-increasing number of women devoting themselves to the Fine Arts. Their names are scattered about in the catalogue of the Royal Academy, and last spring a special exhibition was opened for the reception of works by female artists. Literature again is followed, as a profession, by women, to an extent far greater than our readers are at all aware of. The Magazines of the day are filled by them; one of the oldest and best of our weekly periodicals owes two-thirds of its contents to their pens. Even the leaders of our newspapers are, in some instances, regularly written by women, and publishers avail themselves largely of their industry in all manner of translations and compilations. In the reading-room of the British Museum, that magnificent abode of learning, the roving eye may any day detect the bowed heads and black silk dresses of ladies who come there for references on every subject under heaven; searching out obscure hints concerning the ways and words of defunct princesses, or well-nigh forgotten manipulations of antediluvian trades.

But the number of women who are adopting pursuits connected with literature and the arts must not blind us to the fact that they will always constitute the minority among even "skilled

labourers." For the smallest aptitude with the pen, and what would appear to be a very average power of arranging ideas in sequence, is not a very widely diffused intellectual gift. Among men, how small is the comparative number of artists and authors!—the hacks may perhaps be reckoned by thousands, the average writers by hundreds, the geniuses by tens. But when we speak of unemployed women, it is a question of tens of thousands. What then will

the arts do for them, when every other woman one meets is ready to assure one that she could not write for the press "to save her life"?

And here we would remark on what we consider to have been very undeserved ridicule cast upon a sentence in Miss Leigh Smith's little pamphlet entitled 'Women and Work.' The sentence, which has been regarded as the ne plus ultra of wild arithmetic, runs thus -it occurs at the close of some remarks on female destitution :

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Apprentice 10,000 to watchmakers; train 10,000 for teachers for the young; make 10,000 good accountants; put 10,000 more to be nurses under deaconesses trained by Florence Nightingale; put some thousands in the electric telegraph offices all over the country; educate 1000 lecturers for mechanics' institutions; 1000 readers to read the best books to the working people; train up 10,000 to manage washing-machines, sewing-machines, etc. Then the distressed needle-women would vanish; the decayed gentlewomen and broken-down governesses would no longer exist."

Now, to isolate this sentence so as to make it appear that any one person, or any dozen of committees, is expected thus to parcel out the population by thousands, is an absurdity which we are very sure was never contemplated by the writer of this energetic little pamphlet. It is merely a rapid summing up of the scale on which relief must be afforded before the enormous classes of destitute women, from the refined lady to the

can be raised to the point of prosperous industry.

If, as may be seen in examining the census, forty-three per cent. of women above the age of twenty are either unmarried or widowed ;-if one half of the female population of the country are paid labourers;—if, as the reports at the head of our paper suppose, the number of governesses alone may be assumed at fifteen thousand, and the number of paupers and worse than paupers enormously larger, then it is evident that an ideal distribution of the gross amount into wholesome trades by tens of thousands is merely a forecasting of the results which we must set ourselves to obtain somehow.

To what ends then must we hope to see the intelligent female

labour of this Anglo-Saxon race directed, and how is the current to be turned into new channels?

To the first question we can see but one solution. Every race has its spécialité of function in the great sum total of humanity. While the Hindoo pecks rice, sleeps, bathes, fights, and embroiders coats of many colours, and the Mohammedan Arab sits cross-legged in the sun and plays endless games of backgammon, the AngloSaxon man digs and ploughs, spins and weaves, buys and sells. He is a sturdy sensible fellow, has a square forehead and an active body; he can calculate well, and usually knows how to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market. If he be neither literary nor artistic, and nationally he is surely neither the one nor the other, Mr. Bull has an unusually fair share of what is termed "good common sense." Has Mrs. Bull no feminine counterpart to these fine sterling qualities? We think she has. Mrs. Bull is what is usually termed a "motherly body," and not only looks after the children, but after the storeroom too. She weighs the cheese and bacon, and metes out the flannel. She looks after the farmer's men, and flatters her husband's customers with a certain honest frankness which is delightful to behold. In fine, the Englishwoman in country districts, where many duties lie ready to her hand, and where the mania for rising in life has not turned the best parlour into a boudoir, and the fiddle into a cornet à piston, represents the feminine side of the same active and sterling character which is supposed to mark the Englishman; witness a host of popular songs, tales, and caricatures. Nay, when Punch takes our gracious Queen as the typical lady of the country, what an indescribable air of wholesome activity he communicates to the picture, reminding one of Solomon's good woman! Surely then the daughters of our flourishing tradesmen, our small merchants and manufacturers, who remain single for a few, or more than a few years, may find some occupation more healthy, more exciting, and more profitable than the under ranks of governessing. If women so situated could more frequently assist their fathers and brothers as accountants or clerks, or would enter bravely into all such descriptions of business as are even now open to their sex, cultivating those virtues of order, economy, and punctuality which business demands, they would find themselves far more happily and successfully engaged than by rigidly confining themselves to what they deem the gentilities of private life, and selling themselves to a family but little above their own station for 257. a year. And thus the higher class of governesses, who are fully educated up to the requirements of a higher social scale, would meet with but little competition and more assured pay.

The arts, literature, and tuition might be safely left to provide for the livelihood of clever women, if sensible women would but turn their sense to its many legitimate spheres of action. But

women will not manage washing and sewing machines, work electric telegraphs, keep tradesmen's books, or set up shops, so long as they think, and so long as society enforces the idea, that by so doing they forfeit caste and are rendered unfit to associate with "ladies," though their fathers, brothers, and prospective husbands may each and all be engaged in some form of business.

For in truth a most insane notion seems to prevail that there are only one or two occupations which a woman can pursue and retain the social status of a gentlewoman. A more baseless chimera never weighed like an incubus upon the energies of human creatures. Let any young lady try how far society would support her if she entered a telegraph office, or opened a stationer's shop, or took a place as show-woman in any of our enormous clothing establishments. We can guarantee to any such enterprising individual, if in other respects a cultivated and pleasant woman, the "social suffrages" of a large circle of "ladies" who would eagerly lend the assistance of their private gentility, would invite her to their houses, and applaud

the adventurous she,

Who in the first bark dared the unknown sea;

while if two, three, or a dozen women of the professional ranks took a like course, the fanciful distinction between different grades of occupation for a livelihood would be as little generally perceptible as that between the famous enigmatical sums of "six dozen dozen and half a dozen dozen."

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We can willingly admit, what the slightest experience of different social circles would prove, that these experiments are far easier in London than in the provincial villages and towns. In the latter, where the local strata are better defined, and people care infinitely more about preserving them intact than they do in the metropolis, and don't like to tolerate what geologists would call "a dip" or а fault" in the ground, the young lady who audaciously invaded the desk or the counter, or worked the needles at a local station, might find some little difficulty in maintaining her ground at tea parties. The young gentlemen might refrain for a while from asking her to dance; their mammas might feel a greater dread of a "low connection" than if she had remained a nursery governess. But even in "our village" we believe that the surgeon's eldest daughter might brave and conquer these obstacles and be none the less a Queen of Twelfth Night; and though at first all the neighbours would whisper mysteriously that Miss H. certainly had a "bee in her bonnet," it would be soon found that the said bee made more honey than other people's butterflies, and would be declared quite a respectable and praiseworthy insect.

And if the worst came to the worst, and one were not asked out to tea-why then one might stay at home by the fire of one's own