off. Only think of a poor mother of a family having all that unnecessary trouble, in addition to all her other cares and toil! And think how that acts. Her children do not get washed enough. Their clothes do not get washed enough. It is impossible for them to be cleanly under such circumstances. We must not go idly talking and complaining of the poor being dirty. What must be done is, to influence the proper authorities to attend to the water supply. Well, here, as I said before, the medical officers of health should be applied to. District visitors should be aware of the stringent provisions of the law with regard to these matters, because I believe that if it were more stringently enforced, it would be the means of effecting an immense improvement in the sanitary condition of the poor." The third lecture of the course, on 66 Healthy Dwellings and prevailing Sanitary Defects in the Houses of the Working Classes," was delivered by Henry Roberts, Esq., F.S.A. From this lecture, which was the longest, most complete and valuable in the whole course, limited space permits only a few short extracts. With regard to the influence of bad dwellings on the moral and spiritual condition of the poor, Mr. Roberts quoted the following passage from the writings of the Bishop of Ripon: "The physical circumstances of the poor paralyze all the efforts of the clergyman, the schoolmaster, the Scripture reader, or the city missionary for their spiritual or their moral welfare. . Every effort to create a spiritual tone of feeling is counteracted by a set of physical circumstances incompatible with the exercise of common morality. Talk of morality amongst people who herd men, women, and children together, with no regard to age or sex, in one narrow, confined apartment! You might as well talk of cleanliness in a sty, or of limpid purity in the contents of a cesspool!" And the following from a speech of Lord Palmerston's : "When a cottage is in such a ramshackle state that it is impossible for the wife to keep it clean, she becomes a slattern, everything goes to ruin, and the man is disgusted and flies to the beer-shop. If, on the contrary, the wife feels she can, by a little exertion, make the cottage decent and respectable, she does so, and the man enjoys the comfort and happiness of his home, stays away from the beershop, and the money he would spend in liquor goes to the benefit of his wife and children. I had an example of that in a double cottage of my own. It was in a dreadful state, the walls were not air-tight, it had a brick floor, a bad roof, and everything uncomfortable. The people who occupied it were slovens and slatterns, and quarrelsome, bad neighbors. At a small expense it was made tidy; boarded floors were put down, a little porch erected, with a wood-house and other conveniences, and from that time these people altered entirely their character, altered entirely their conduct, and became well conducted people, and good neighbors." Dividing the means of improving the dwellings of the poor into the three following classes :-first, Government measures; second, the action of public bodies, of voluntary associations, and of employers of labor; and third, personal influence, Mr. Roberts assigned a large portion of the last to women, as follows: "Although the power of aiding directly in the removal of existing structural defects in the dwellings of the poor is not very generally possessed by ladies, their influence may be exerted with the greatest benefit in pointing out to others, and in persuading them to carry into operation, those remedial measures which have already been referred to.* There is a wide field here for the exercise of ladies' influence. They can impart instruction, can exhort, encourage, stimulate, and, above all, can manifest that sympathy which shines with such attractive lustre in the crowning grace of Christian charity.. "Ladies can exercise a personal influence by either teaching or causing to be taught, the benefits resulting from a free admission of pure air and from personal and household cleanliness. They can facilitate the attaining of such articles as whitewash brushes and ventilators, as well as the mending of broken windows. They may also enforce, more especially on wives and mothers, a careful attention to the many details which conduce so much to health and domestic comfort, and render home attractive rather than repulsive to husbands and sons. They can likewise be instrumental in promoting those habits of temperance which enable husbands to expend on home comforts the fool's pence,' whereby the publican is enriched to the impoverishment and incalculable injury of the laboring classes. "Ladies have, by the bestowment of premiums and rewards for the best kept cottages, greatly conduced to the health and the comfort of their occupants." * The following very beautiful words, from the Rev. Charles Kingsley's lecture on woman's parish work, bear so directly and forcibly on this point, that they may be fitly quoted here : "A large proportion of your parish work will be to influence the men of your family to do their duty by their dependants. You wish to cure the evils under which they labor. The greater part of these are in the hands of your men relatives. It is a mockery for you to visit the fever-stricken cottage while your husband leaves it in a state which breeds that fever. Your business is to go to him and say, 'Here is a wrong, right it!' This, as many a beautiful middle-age legend tell us, has been woman's function in all uncivilized times; not merely to melt man's heart to pity, but to awaken it to duty. But the man must see that the woman is in earnest that if he will not repair the wrong by justice, she will, if possible (as in those old legends), by self-sacrifice. Be sure this method will conquer. Do but say, 'If you will not new-roof that cottage, if you will not make that drain, I will. I will not buy a new dress till it is done; I will sell the horse you gave me, pawn the bracelet you gave me, but the thing shall be done.' Let him see, I say, that you are in earnest, and he will feel that your message is a divine one, which he must obey for very shame and weariness, if for nothing else." The fourth lecture of the course, on "Dress and Social Habits in relation to Deformity and Disease,” was delivered by Ernest Hart, Esq. The subject of this lecture is so specially interesting and important to women, that a fuller report of it will be given in a future number than the present space permits. The fifth lecture, on "The Arithmetic of Life," was delivered by Dr. William Farr, M.D., of this lecture also a report will be given in a future number, and the entire course will shortly be published by the Association. S. R. P. VIII.—NOTICES OF BOOKS. The Oldest of the Old World. By Sophia Mary Eckley. R. Bentley, New Burlington Street. EGYPT and Palestine, the Great Desert and the Red Sea, have long lost the mysterious charm with which, as perilous places, inaccessible save to a few intrepid adventurers, they used to rise before our youthful imaginations. If we have not been in those remote regions ourselves, our friends and acquaintances have; and not merely from some hardy scientific explorer, or zealous missionary, or professed traveller, have we heard details of Eastern life; but the pursuit of health or pleasure now leads many a family party and many a delicate invalid to go down the Nile, or to make a tour in the Holy Land, with as much composure, and almost as little fear of peril or discomfort, as they would have felt some twenty years since at the project of a tour in Germany or a visit to Naples and Palermo. And truth compels us to add, that we have heard and read so much of Eastern travel; we know, or fancy we know, so much about it, that we rather shrink from descriptions and details which we have a conceited foreboding can tell us nothing we have not already heard over and over again. With something of this feeling we took up "The Oldest of the Old World," and can honestly beg our readers to anticipate a very pleasantly written volume. Without any very striking power of word-painting, and certainly without any pretence or apparent effort, Mrs. Eckley has contrived to give us a series of pictures of which we instinctively feel the reality and truth. We were somewhat inclined in the first chapter or two to object to a short historical summary of dates and "remarkable events with which the travels were intersected. Besides our natural propensity to rebel at "useful knowledge" in any form, there seemed a slight pedagogue air, which we were determined to resent by skipping the obnoxious paragraph, and by a mental assurance that every schoolgirl knew such things." However, we will be candid enough to confess, that before we had got half through the volume we could see and appreciate the author's intention, and that we were not sorry to have here and there a few sentences reminding us of the great facts connected with the different localities. Facts, too, which in spite of ourselves we were compelled to acknowledge, may be known and remembered by schoolgirls, but have left but a very dim and vague recollection in the minds of older readers. There are few of those personal allusions to the author herself, and to her party, their peculiar sensations of comfort or discomfort, their meals, &c., with which some travellers favor us so largely. In fact, here they seem almost studiously avoided, and while we recognise and respect the feeling which has omitted them, we are inclined to respect any details from so graphic and agreeable a writer. The art of knowing what to tell, and how to convey to another the peculiar characteristics of new scenes and a strange life, is rather rare. Just those one or two slight circumstances which make the freshness of a first impression, very often by familiarity having ceased to strike us, we do not see that it is those, rather than a more elaborate description, which embody and would best convey to another the peculiarity of what we are trying to describe. For this reason it is that a few words dropped by the way, an allusion or reference which is not intended to tell anything, very often impress one more than the careful elaboration of a long description. Mrs. Eckley has this art, as we think her readers will readily allow, and therefore it is that they will read with pleasure her accounts of Eastern life, even though they have again and again gone over the same ground with many other travellers. We give a few passages, taken almost at random. "Who that has seen can ever forget a sunset on the Nile? The peculiar After-Glow, when the sun has declined,-the deep crimson sky reflecting its golden light upon the river, and burnishing every object within its range; and then, when night draws her dark mantle over the picture, we look upward, for there is nothing to attract the eye earthward. No vista of city lamps string their bright balls of light upon long lines of streets. Above, we have the shining fields of stars; and as we watch the various constellations night after night, we do not altogether wonder at the Chaldeans' enthusiasm for these heavenly visitors, or at the passionate fervor of the Sabean worship. The Sabeans' faith was originally pure and spiritual; they did not worship the heavenly bodies, but prayed to their angelic occupants to intercede with God on their behalf. But the Sabeans, as well as the Chaldeans, fell away from their early simplicity, and 'could not by considering the work acknowledge the Work Master?' The opportunity for studying the planetary system is peculiarly favorable in Egypt. The 'lights which elsewhere shine in darkness,' shine clearly in this land, where astronomical science had its birth, and where the observations of the heavens were coeval with the early history of man. We look upon Mars, the red star that fires the autumnal skies,' and learn from the investigations of science that it is probable that our own planet, with its continents and seas, may be seen by the inhabitants in Mars, and at the time of the inferior conjunction of Venus, when she is not more than twenty-six millions of miles removed from us, our globe will exhibit a full orb shining with great splendor through the whole of her night.' 6 "The supposed possibility of divining future events by the appearance of the heavens was another inducement by which the ancient mind was powerfully actuated to observe the sky. The Chaldean priest marked the position of the stars in their courses, and of the moon walking in her beauty, for astrological purposes, and hence inspired prophecy, when denouncing the Divine judgments against Babylon, challenges the "astrologers, the star-gazers, the prognosticators, to try their power to avert them.”* "Whoso turns as I this evening turn to God to praise and pray, "Jupiter is magnificent in these heavens; and a traveller whom we met declared he could discern one of his satellites with the naked eye, so clear and transparent is the atmosphere of these dry nights on the Nile. Neither the moon nor the stars seem set in the sky; but, from the peculiar transparency of the atmosphere, appear to hang like balls from the soft elastic heavens." The following is very real and graphic. "Great was our curiosity as we left Heliopolis to see our first encampment, which was at an old Roman station called El Kanka, memorable at a later period as the scene of Saladin's conquest of the Egyptian governor. Here our white tents were pitched. Speedily the camels were grouped about, the horses placed in their temporary enclosures, and the cook busy preparing our evening meal. For seventeen days a canvas roof was to be our nightly shelter. We had provided ourselves with every portable comfort. Persian rugs deceived us as to our floor of sand; neat iron bedsteads made up with snowy coverlets, folding chairs and tables, were arranged as neatly as if in our own house. Thought, however, soon broke away from the present century, and floated far back into patriarchal times. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Balaam, Sisera, and Gideon, were the moving figures in this mental drama. And we were to lie down to sleep without the defence of walls, bolts, or locks, in a country where Abbas Pasha's goverment, laws, and police cannot always protect the stranger, and with only a thin canvas partition between ourselves and the wild Arab of the desert. The foundations of our portable dwellings were but wooden stakes driven into the moving sands; a curtain for a door, peradventure to let the angels in, if nothing worse, and a canvas roof, through which the pale stars glimmered, and the white moon watched. In civilized countries, of what avail are bolted doors and windows, without the night-police? Here among a lawless race, there is but one watchman that can avail, He who watcheth not in vain. Like the Israelites of old, our faith was to be put on trial. We were to cut the cord of dependence on human power, and now to 'cast all our care upon Him who heareth the ravens when they cry,' and remembereth we are but dust.' How novel the picture of camp-life to denizens of the West! The darkness of the night is relieved by no city lamps. A deadly silence hangs its heavy weights upon the senses, while on the tent-door glimmer the watch-fires, revealing the groups of camels feeding, and all the busy stir of preparation for night, not the least striking feature of the picture being the reflection of the dancing flames on the wild faces of the Arabs, who smoke and sing to keep themselves awake. Now and then the cry of a jackal startles the ear, or a hungry dog, crunching the bones thrown from the cook's tent, breaks the stillness. All this forms a strange wild scene. The morning dawns early upon camp-life, for as soon as the sun rises every one is astir. The shouts of the Arabs, the complaining voices of the camels, the packing of canteens, the rolling up of tents, go on while we are sipping our coffee in empty space. Then we watch camel after camel stalking off into the desert, with our homes upon their backs, leaving nothing to testify of human life, save a ring of stones, that helped to fortify the tents and exclude the night wind, which in a few hours will be all buried by the drifting sands. Then * 666 Gallery of Nature,' by Dr. Milman. |