unmarried, you may be left penniless, and still you complain, in the heyday of health and youth, that you have nothing to do; prepare yourselves for the future, whatever it may be; save yourselves from the life of gossip and scandal, save yourselves from the dulness of frivolity, or worse,-the despair and bitter unrest of sin. Why are women to be mere triflers? Let them take a serious interest in art, let them be guided to some congenial study, let it be a branch of science or history, something which draws them and attracts them—and how soon are women attracted and absorbed if they have an able teacher! Let them write. They can do almost anything they try to do; but they are not encouraged, they are snubbed and laughed at, and they are easily discouraged; they cannot start for themselves, they cannot organise, but they will work if they are set to work.

There is light upon the horizon. Woman has contended with the apathy of her own sex, with the prejudices of society, with the ignorance and brutality of men ; but the time draws near when she shall have her reward. What she can do she will be allowed to do, she will be helped to do-to save her life, to save her soul. She will be helped to education and to employment. She shall not always wander about our streets homeless, because she has found the hunger and dulness of life not to be borne. She shall not starve in garrets, because every gate save the open gate to ruin is barred and bolted. She shall not sit listless and petulant in blooming health in our fashionable drawing-rooms, without an

aim or interest, waiting for some good or evil-she hardly cares which—to come and break up the monotony of a life which has the promise of all things and the possession of nothing.

120. I shall be accused of overstating the case. It cannot be overstated. The worth, the sweetness, the intelligence, the quickness of women as they are, cannot be overstated either; but they are all this, I repeat, in spite of men, in spite of society, and in spite of an unsound and radically defective system of education. But whilst this state of things lasts it is absurd to say that women have nothing to do. And the moral teacher should not only point to the evil, he should point to the remedy, he 'should be a helper of their joy.' He should say, 'Do not rest until you have at least some one interest in life beyond flirtation and gossip, and let it be a solid interest; work at your easel steadily, work at music steadily, take up a branch of science, and learn it well; when you have learnt it try and apply it on however small a scale, try and understand it all round; let it be botany, let it be the structure of the human body, and the laws of health, let it be the ranges of extinct creations, unfolded in geology, and written upon stone with marvellous outline and detail in our museums; or let it be literature, some period of history, some school of poetry, some phase of romance; look out for some teacher who can kindle in you the love of something; there are many able and good men willing to help women in this way, there ought to be seminaries, and colleges, and classes,

and professors accessible to women, for purposes of 'mental guidance and instruction.

121. If you live in a village, if you are connected with a parish, something may be done with schools, with work societies, with the poor; this, perhaps, is the one branch of practical, social usefulness outside the family circle, which is understood and practised largely by women. But it is not enough for all women, and it is not suited to many.

Then we ought to be thankful to those who are opening up new sources of employment for women. They can now go before the School Board and earn their bread, either as teachers, or visitors, or secretaries. And I may here mention an admirable scheme set forth by Louisa M. Hubbard in a pamphlet, entitled 'Work for Ladies in Elementary Schools,' which unfolds with great practical ability a scheme for enabling ladies to become parish school mistresses, and thus get an honourable livelihood, an income and a house. The importance of such efforts cannot be over-estimated. Two facts have now struggled fairly into terrible prominence. The first is that thousands of women rush into sin, or die of disease and starvation for want of work; and the second is that women are fit for a vast number of employments, which have hitherto been kept from them, and which, nerved by misery and hunger, they are slowly wrenching from the apathetic grasp of men. These two facts alone are enough to establish women's claims to the Franchise, and one of the great reasons why thousands

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have perished, and are annually perishing in body and soul, is just because there is no one to plead systematically in Parliament for the education and the employment of women. Idleness, frivolity, ignorance and wantyou will not put these down by Acts of Parliament levelled at physical disease. You must cure the mental malady, and attack the cause not the symptom, and you must do this by educating and employing women. In the last resort the devil always becomes teacher and taskmaster.

122. Whatever excuses there may be at present for an idle and useless woman, there is hardly any excuse for an idle man. If a man has not been educated in his childhood, he is thrown upon his resources; he may seek education-numbers do-but the majority of the people before me have been educated. Yet what do I find? I find men who have been educated hanging about their families, the supernumeraries of their social circles, because they have nothing to do. They are the drones of society. I say such a life is not happy, is not likely to be moral, and there is no excuse for it. Here is a man who goes into a profession that does not suit him. He says, 'I will give up this; I don't think it is my duty to do it;' and before he sees anything else, he gives up what he has got. It was not good enough for him.

But, my friends, if you can take the lowest occupation you will be more noble than you are thus, going about well dressed with nothing to do, making your family

wretched and your own life intensely unsatisfactory. A young man came to me the other day and said, ‘Can you find me something to do?' I said, 'What do you want to do?' He said, 'I think I could take the place of an usher in a school. I can teach. I like teaching.' 'Have you had a place?' 'Oh yes! I have just left one.' I said, 'Why? was the pay bad?' He said, 'No. Good pay.' 'Was it a respectable school?' 'Yes.' 'Did you quarrel with any one there?' 'No.' 'Why did you leave?' 'Because I did not like to get up at half-past six in the morning.' My friends, that man of course went from place to place and could get nothing to do. Nothing was good enough for him. You cannot find anything good enough for you unless you take what you can get; take what you can get, and you will get something better. No one will employ a man who objects to get up at half-past six. There is no servant attending here morning or evening who is not obliged, perhaps every morning, to get up at half-past six; but here was a young man who could not put that amount of self-restraint on himself. What lies at the bottom of ill success and failure, what makes life rotten? In nine cases out of ten it is idleness; and idleness is only another word for selfishness. Young men, you must bring Christianity to bear on your sloth and apathy; upon your headlong tendency to indolence and pleasure; upon your boundless capacity for drifting-drifting down the shallows of life.

123. Look to the Exemplar of life-work. Remember