of sickness undergone by males, even still more remarkable effects might have been expected to appear in the quantum of sickness undergone, by females engaged in various employments." It would also have been extremely interesting to note, if possible, whether the difference existing between the constitution of either sex presented any influence in relation to the different amount of sickness undergone by women, and if there were, in fact, any material excess of sickness suffered by them during the period of working life, and onward, so as to place them on unequal terms with the male contributors to Benefit Societies.

There can be no doubt that the demands made on the funds are greater among women than among men, but this may be contributed to in various ways. The Report goes on to say :

"The more precise determination of the amount of real sickness undergone by the female members of Friendly Societies, therefore, is still a desideratum. It can only be brought about effectually, perhaps, by the growth and encouragement of funds for allowances in sickness, which shall be formed for the benefit of females exclusively, and in which careful record of the age, occupation, and other necessary particulars will be made in respect of each member, and from which trustworthy statements of this information can be obtained. The distinction of sex also should be carefully observed in framing any returns from School Friendly Societies formed among children; but in the absence of better data than is now possessed in reference to the female sex, and to the very youthful contributors to the above Associations, there exist insuperable difficulties in the way of constructing tables of contributions precisely applicable to the amount of risk incurred. It is to future observation, therefore, that the community must look for the means of more accurately providing those benefits in sickness which are as requisite to the relief of the industrious females and the parents among the working classes who may be suffering under a calamitous source of expense, as they are necessary to the wants of the provident males of the same order of society."

We are anxious to draw particular attention to this passage, as it points to a practical effort of the most useful kind.

Why should not Friendly Societies be formed by women, and for women, in every district where a body of independent female workers are gathered? Let a few ladies form a committee to inaugurate the scheme, uniting with them for its future management some of the most intelligent and good young women whom they may find willing to enter on it. Before starting permanently, by way of experiment they might establish a yearly society on something like the rough basis of the one whose principal features we have sketched. It might combine, like it, provident investment with provision for sickness and death. At first it should enroll women only. The ladies would have to give their time and intelligence to the keeping of the books, to the necessary calculations, and to the visiting; for working women have seldom the same amount of leisure as even the limited hours of freedom owned by the working-man. Home duties claim a large share of their free time. And it must be owned with regret, that they are not on a level as regards intelligence with their fellow workmen. It rests then we think with women of the

middle and higher class, to carry out on behalf of their humbler sisters, an effort which is free from all the objections which may be urged, and not without reason, against charitable schemes, and which would form a valuable means for the promotion of that union between class and class, which the great social movements of the last generation or two have so much and dangerously loosened.

XLII.-NOTICES OF BOOKS.

My Life, and What shall I do with It? A Question for Young Gentlewomen. Longman & Co.

THE aim of this little book, in the author's own words, is "to point out the practicable ways in which young gentlewomen who have leisure may make that leisure conduce to the good of those lower than themselves in the social scale." This, in our opinion, has been ably done. The work itself is well pointed out, and a great deal there is of it. The way in which the work must be done is shown with accurate knowledge and clear judgment.

A very high standard is raised for our Christian gentlewomenunselfish endeavor being the golden background of every picture: the pictures themselves most saint-like, yet not at all impossible for any who will but follow to accomplish.

We trust this earnest book may bring many out to the battle of life.

The writer tells us in the conclusion that these are the three points she has sought to establish :—

"1st. That the works assigned popularly to 'Sisters of Charity' are no special works of any set or portion of women, but are equally the work of every professing Christian woman, just so far as she has received the power and can obtain the opportunity of carrying them on."

We do not believe there are many well constituted minds that would attempt to controvert this first proposition of a fact, but with most gentlewomen it would raise the practical question of, "How can I, under my circumstances, obtain the opportunity referred to in the above extract, and what are my powers for this duty ?"

Our author refers to the fact that there are in London and many other large towns many districts almost perforce unvisited by gentlewomen in consequence of the distance at which the residences of the gentlefolks are, few choosing to live in or very near these degraded neighborhoods, which, of course, become worse and worse from the absence of those who should raise them by their example and help; and to meet the wants of such neighborhoods, this is her proposition:

"Whether called a college, or a home, or a hospital, or nothing at all; there must be, for the real execution of this work, a house where gentlewomen can live together, and arrange their work with each other, and with those who are to work with them or over them: that they may have mutual protection

and counsel; live at less expense, and without the harass and anxiety of housekeeping, of balancing wayward accounts, and vexing their spirits, how by cutting off this and that expense they may raise a little surplus for the boundless wants they meet with; when it is hard perhaps already to make both ends balance, or when their strength to work depends on the comfort that is to be cut off: where they may escape the loneliness and cheerlessness of solitary lodgings, and secure a wise division of labour. And to be effectual, these homes, however private, must be in some sort institutions whose existence is recognised, whose objects are known, and whose management is in a measure guaranteed by the names of those who have the direction of them. Can any one call himself a thorough Protestant, who maintains that conditions necessary for the fulfilment of a plain scriptural duty are only possible in connexion with the Romish apostasy?"

In fact, in every such neighborhood there should be a centre for the works of charity to be carried on in it, and where the ladies themselves may receive instruction and gain experience relating to the work they wish to perform.

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'Again, if instruction is to be given to the workers themselves, (and the necessity of this has been clearly proved by the writers alluded to above,) it is difficult to see how they can avail themselves of it without such a home in which they might live whilst receiving it. They who have time to make these works their business, and not mere play, find at once they must have special instruction for most of them to do them well. The younger they are the more they need this, and the less possible will it be for them to go up to London and live some months in lodgings, in order to attend lectures, workhouses, and hospitals, schools, and classes, as learners. The majority could not afford it; if they could, who would admit such scholars to any charge in public institutions? Yet it is only by practising the work under the eye of those who have already acquired it, that we can really gain the knowledge we want, can learn how to set about it, how to undermine its difficulties, how to carry it on. What can be taught in lectures, might be learnt from books at home, though less compendiously, and though it would be hard to say in what books; but how to apply our rules or principles to each varying individual case, and readiness to meet each as it arises, can only be taught by seeing the thing done, and doing it under the eye of a mistress in the art.

"Without some security, such as these colleges or homes might afford, that the work undertaken by ladies will really be done, that there will be no opposition or interference between the workers themselves, and that those who undertake it are in some measure capable of performing it; it would be unwarrantable, even absurd, for the responsible managers of charities to entrust any portion of their real work to voluntary lady visitors: and still less could Government entrust any of the management of female prisoners to the zeal of the volunteers who chanced to reside in their neighborhood. Though it is true, that our having had no work and no responsibility is a very sufficient reason for the too frequent want of sober common sense and perseverance amongst us, and of our occasional failures in that practical justice which leads a person, whilst doing his own work as well as he can, to acknowledge the right of other people to do their work in their own way; and though the having a real right work to do would be the best, if not the only remedy for changeableness and narrow-mindedness, yet it is no reason at all for giving us the work, until we prove ourselves capable of carrying it on, and are in a position to secure its being permanently carried on, that it may not fall through when its first undertakers drop off.

"Such homes would afford the means of carrying on many of those works which are now almost impossible to us, from the want of places and opportunity for them. The servants needed in them might be mainly those young girls for whom it is now so difficult to find first places, where they will really

be taught to be servants, and where their religious and moral education shall not come to an utter standstill. The burden of teaching young servants can very rarely be (wisely) undertaken by the mistress of a large family, with only a moderate income; and in more affluent houses, it can never be safely attempted, unless the servants are thoroughly well known and trustworthy. In orphan asylums or industrial schools for servants, the expense of which is an insuperable bar to their general application, the girls have not enough house-work to do, and that little is not of the same kind as is needed in a gentleman's family. But in these homes nearly every kind of servants' work would be required, and might be thoroughly taught under the immediate superintendence of one of the resident ladies, with the aid of one or two older and good servants. Each home might afford work for a small cooking school, whilst the best scholars, promoted to be servants, would have abundant opportunity to learn cooking for the family and the sick and poor, house and laundry work, waiting, the care of linen and stores, mending, or attendance on invalids, &c.: and one or two of these arts, well taught, to a well-trained girl, for a couple of years, would fit her to be a useful, handy servant; and as such are never in want of places so long as they keep any sort of character, it would be, humanly speaking, a provision for life for her. And though the actual number so educated might be small, it would be accumulative; by being made a reward for their parents' care, or for their own good conduct at school, its influence would be still further spread; and servants so trained would be on the whole better and more willing teachers of other young servants, in their future situations. Smaller homes of this kind might offer places for those who have been struggling to regain a lost character in our refuges, for whom it is so hard now to find any safe situation at all.”

Such an Institution, or Maison de Secour, as we might call it, if once well established, would no doubt form a centre most valuable; and it is impossible to limit its work, or to say precisely in what form it would develop itself; this would depend on the lady directress, or on that individual character on whom devolved the general management, and the amount of aid she could depend on from the ladies about her.

A residence for only a part of the year is spoken of as desirable; but as we know "the poor" we "have always with us," we may suppose it might be found well to arrange that some lady or ladies were always to be seen at the Institution, though they might take it by turns to be there.

"The second fact that is to be proved from these pages is, that anything which tends to separate women thus occupied from the rest of their class, not only limits the number of workers, but injures the efficiency of the work; and altogether destroys the reflected benefits which would naturally be derived from the right performance of this part of their duty, by their families and their own class of society."

There are many ways in which this truth is pointed out: it is urged that it is by the greater powers of sympathy that the gentlewoman can often do so much more for her fellow-creatures than her uneducated sister can, that having been used to learn, all the daily experiences of home and work abroad are easily transmuted into practical knowledge of what is wanted and how the want must be met. It is easy to see that a woman living with and loving her mother, father, sister, or brother, would have a broader sympathy for the joys or griefs that belong to these relationships, that she would be

prepared to speak with power through her own feelings when. she saw the duties neglected which these relationships bring; besides, the loves themselves being next to her love of God, they would be the surest well-spring of comfort and support to her own heart, when, as we know too surely would sometimes be the case, all the best efforts out of doors seemed to end in disappointment.

In this respect our Protestant gentlewomen, those who have not and will not entirely renounce these tender God-given ties of home and kindred, surely these ought to be more efficient than the nun in dealing with the natural affections which should underlie all the higher spiritual life, and which are so very much developed either for good or ill in most uneducated people.

We have known women moved by reference to their children, and men touched by questions regarding a mother long since dead, when no other subjects would wake up a spark of feeling; the fine end of a wedge which skilfully driven might return them to the society whose laws they had broken. Surely, then, our Sisters of Charity should be women fresh from a living, loving, human, Christian family, so far as that is compatible with earnest work: and this writer has the wisdom to see it.

The third fact brought forward is, "That the preparation needed for such a life and labor of love is just the preparation which gentlewomen need to fit them for the domestic and social duties of wife and mother."

All that can steady the affections of young women, by letting action follow thought; and the many-sided experience this would bring is just what is needed to change the dreamy, imaginative young woman, whose greatest knowledge of life as yet is derived from books, into one fitted to be a comfort and help at any man's fireside, whether he be husband or father.

Few know the delight of being able to do at the moment those services that are needed by others because this delight is so often willingly given up to servants, in these days of unpractical middle and upper class society. But there is a delight in this power of ever ready activity, which those who have been trained in it know well, and would not readily part with. Parents, husbands, and children will have abundant reason to bless such training as is proposed in this little book as not only possible for, but most incumbent on, all disengaged and leisurely English gentlewomen.

1. Thirteenth Annual Announcement of the New England Female Medical College. Term of 1860-61.

2. First Annual Report of the Clinical Department of the New England Female Medical College. 1860.

3. Introductory Lecture, delivered Wednesday, Nov. 2nd, 1859, before the New England Female Medical College, by Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D., Professor of Obstetrics and the Diseases of Women and Children.

THESE Reports show a steady advance both in the objects for which this College was established and in public support and esti