Charles Kingsley ......................................................................................................................................1

WOMAN'S WORK IN A COUNTRY PARISH {1} ..............................................................................1

THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH {2}..........................................................................................................5

THE TWO BREATHS {4} ....................................................................................................................12

THRIFT {5} ...........................................................................................................................................20

NAUSICAA IN LONDON; OR, THE LOWER EDUCATION OF WOMEN....................................29

THE AIRMOTHERS1869Die Natur ist die Bewegung .............................................................34

THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE............................................................................................................45

GREAT CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND EVIL {9}.......................................50

HEROISM.............................................................................................................................................60

THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS {11} ..................................................................................70

"A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." {12} ..........................................................................................73

I have been asked to speak a few words to you on a lady's work in a country parish. I shall confine myself

rather to principles than to details; and the first principle which I would impress on you is, that we must all be

just before we are generous. I must, indeed, speak plainly on this point. A woman's first duties are to her own

family, her own servants. Be not deceived: if anyone cannot rule her own household, she cannot rule the

Church of God. If anyone cannot sympathise with the servants with whom she is in contact all day long, she

will not really sympathise with the poor whom she sees once a week. I know the temptation not to believe

this is very great. It seems so much easier to women to do something for the poor, than for their own ladies'

maids, and housemaids, and cooks. And why? Because they can treat the poor as THINGS: but they MUST

treat their servants as persons. A lady can go into a poor cottage, lay down the law to the inhabitants, reprove

them for sins to which she has never been tempted; tell them how to set things right, which, if she had the

doing of them, I fear she would do even more confusedly and slovenly than they. She can give them a tract,

as she might a pill; and then a shilling, as something sweet after the medicine; and she can go out again and

see no more of them till her benevolent mood recurs: but with the servants it is not so. She knows their

characters; and, what is more, they know hers; they know her private history, her little weaknesses. Perhaps

she is a little in their power, and she is shy with them. She is afraid of beginning a good work with them,

because, if she does, she will be forced to carry it out; and it cannot be cold, dry, perfunctory, official: it must

be hearty, living, loving, personal. She must make them her friends; and perhaps she is afraid of doing that,

for fear they should take liberties, as it is calledwhich they very probably will do, unless she keeps up a

very high standard of self restraint and earnestness in her own lifeand that involves a great deal of

trouble, and so she is tempted, when she wishes to do good, to fall back on the poor people in the cottages

outside, who, as she fancies, know nothing about her, and will never find out whether or not she acts up to the

rules which she lays down for them. Be not deceived, I say, in this case also. Fancy not that they know

nothing about you. There is nothing secret which shall not be made manifest; and what you do in the closet is

surely proclaimed (and often with exaggeration enough and to spare) on the housetop. These poor folks at

your gate know well enough, through servants and tradesmen, what you are, how you treat your servants,

how you pay your bills, what sort of temper you have; and they form a shrewd, hard estimate of your

character, in the light of which they view all that you do and say to them; and believe me, that if you wish to

do any real good to them, you must begin by doing good to those who lie still nearer to you than them. And

believe me, too, that if you shrink from a hearty patriarchal sympathy with your own servants, because it

would require too much personal human intercourse with them, you are like a man who, finding that he had

not powder enough to fire off a pocketpistol, should try to better matters by using the same quantity of

ammunition in an eightyfour pound gun. For it is this human friendship, trust, affection, which is the very

thing you have to employ towards the poor, and to call up in them. Clubs, societies, alms, lending libraries

are but dead machinery, needful, perhaps, but, like the iron tube without the powder, unable to send the bullet

forth one single inch; dead and useless lumber, without humanity; without the smile of the lip, the light of the

eye, the tenderness of the voice, which makes the poor woman feel that a soul is speaking to her soul, a heart

yearning after her heart; that she is not merely a THING to be improved, but a sister to be made conscious of

the divine bond of her sisterhood, and taught what she means when she repeats in her Creed, "I believe in the

communion of saints." This is my text, and my keynotewhatever else I may say today is but a carrying

out into details of the one question, How may you go to these poor creatures as woman to woman?

Your next duties are to your husband's or father's servants and workmen. It is said that a clergyman's wife

ought to consider the parish as HER flock as well as her husband's. It may be so: I believe the dogma to be

much overstated just now. But of a landlord's, or employer's wife (I am inclined to say, too, of an officer's

wife), such a doctrine is absolutely true, and cannot be overstated. A large proportion, therefore, 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 labour. The greater proportion of these are in the hands of your men relatives.

It is a mockery, for instance, in you to visit the feverstricken 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 tells us, has been woman's function in all uncivilised 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 selfsacrifice. Be

sure this method will conquer. Do but say: "If you will not newroof 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. This is in my

eyes the second part of a woman's parish work. I entreat you to bear it in mind when you hear, as I trust you

will, lectures in this place upon that SANITARY REFORM, without which all efforts for the bettering of the

I will suppose, then, that you are fulfilling home duties in self restraint, and love, and in the fear of God. I

will suppose that you are using all your woman's influence on the mind of your family, in behalf of tenants

and workmen; and I tell you frankly, that unless this be first done, you are paying a tithe of mint and anise,

and neglecting common righteousness and mercy. But you wish to do more: you wish for personal contact

with the poor round you, for the pure enjoyment of doing good to them with your own hands. How are you to

set about it? First, there are clubs clothingclubs, shoeclubs, maternalclubs; all very good in their way.

But do not fancy that they are the greater part of your parish work. Rather watch and fear lest they become

substitutes for your real parish work; lest the bustle and amusement of playing at shopkeeper, or

pennycollector, once a week, should blind you to your real poweryour real treasure, by spending which

you become all the richer. What you have to do is to ennoble and purify the WOMANHOOD of these poor

women; to make them better daughters, sisters, wives, mothers: and all the clubs in the world will not do that;

they are but palliatives of a great evil, which they do not touch; cloaks for almsgiving, clumsy means of eking

out insufficient wages; at best, kindly contrivances for tricking into temporary thriftiness a degraded and

reckless peasantry. Miserable, miserable state of things! out of which the longer I live I see less hope of

escape, saving by an emigration, which shall drain us of all the healthy, strong, and brave among the lower

classes, and leave us, as a just punishment for our sins, only the cripple, the drunkard, and the beggar.

Yet these clubs MUST be carried on. They make life a little more possible; they lighten hearts, if but for a

moment; they inculcate habits of order and selfrestraint, which may be useful when the poor man finds

himself in Canada or Australia. And it is a cruel utilitarianism to refuse to palliate the symptoms because you

cannot cure the disease itself. You will give opiates to the suffering, who must die nevertheless. Let him slip

into his grave at least as painlessly as you can. And so you must use these charitable societies, remembering

all along what a fearful and humbling sign the necessity for them is of the diseased state of this England, as

However, the work has to be done; and such as it is, it is especially fitted for young unmarried ladies. It

requires no deep knowledge of human nature. It makes them aware of the amount of suffering and struggling

which lies around them, without bringing them in that most undesirable contact with the coarser forms of evil

which housevisitation must do; and the mere business habits of accuracy and patience to which it compels

them, are a valuable practical schooling for them themselves in afterlife. It is tiresome and unsentimental

drudgery, no doubt; but perhaps all the better training on that account. And, after all, the magic of sweetness,

grace, and courtesy may shed a hallowing and humanising light over the meanest work, and the smile of God

may spread from lip to lip, and the light of God from eye to eye, even between the giver and receiver of a

penny, till the poor woman goes home, saying in her heart, "I have not only found the life of my handI

But there is another field of parish usefulness which I cannot recommend too earnestly, and that is, the

school. There you may work as hard as you will, and how you willprovided you do it in a loving, hearty,

cheerful, HUMAN way, playful and yet earnest; two qualities which, when they exist in their highest power,

are sure to go together. I say, how you will. I am no pedant about schools; I care less what is taught than how

it is taught. The merest rudiments of Christianity, the merest rudiments of popular instruction, are enough,

provided they be given by lips which speak as if they believed what they said, and with a look which shows

real love for the pupil. Manner is everythingmatter a secondary consideration; for in matter, brain only

speaks to brain; in manner, soul speaks to soul. If you want Christ's lost lambs really to believe that He died

for them, you will do it better by one little act of interest and affection, than by making them learn by heart

whole commentarieseven as Miss Nightingale has preached Christ crucified to those poor soldiers by acts

of plain outward drudgery, more livingly, and really, and convincingly than she could have done by ten

thousand sermons, and made many a noble lad, I doubt not, say in his heart, for the first time in his wild life,

"I can believe now that Christ died for me, for here is one whom He has taught to die for me in like wise."

And this blessed effect of schoolwork, remember, is not confined to the children. It goes home with them to

the parents. The child becomes an object of interest and respect in their eyes, when they see it an object of

interest and respect in yours. If they see that you look on it as an awful and glorious being, the child of God,

the coheir of Christ, they learn gradually to look on it in the same light. They become afraid and ashamed

(and it is a noble fear and shame) to do and say before it what they used to do and say; afraid to illuse it. It

becomes to them a mysterious visitor (sad that it should be so, but true as sad) from a higher and purer

sphere, who must be treated with something of courtesy and respect, who must even be asked to teach them

something of its new knowledge; and the school, and the ladies' interest in the school, become to the

degraded parents a living sign that those children's angels do indeed behold the face of their Father which is

Now, there is one thing in schoolwork which I wish to press on you; and that is, that you should not confine

your work to the girls; but bestow it as freely on those who need it more, and who (paradoxical as it may

seem) will respond to it more deeply and freelyTHE BOYS. I am not going to enter into the reasons WHY.

I only entreat you to believe me, that by helping to educate the boys, or even (when old enough), by taking a

class (as I have seen done with admirable effect) of grownup lads, you may influence for ever not only the

happiness of your pupils, but of the girls whom they will hereafter marry. It will be a boon to your own sex as

well as to ours to teach them courtesy, selfrestraint, reverence for physical weakness, admiration of

tenderness and gentleness; and it is one which only a lady can bestow. Only by being accustomed in youth to

converse with ladies, will the boy learn to treat hereafter his sweetheart or his wife like a gentleman. There is

a latent chivalry, doubt it not, in the heart of every untutored clod; if it dies out in him (as it too often does), it

were better for him, I often think, if he had never been born: but the only talisman which will keep it alive,

much more develop it into its fulness, is friendly and revering intercourse with women of higher rank than

I have left to the last the most important subject of all; and that is, what is called "visiting the poor." It is an

endless subject; if you go into details, you might write volumes on it. All I can do this afternoon is to keep to

my own keynote, and say, Visit whom, when, and where you will; but let your visits be those of woman to

woman. Consider to whom you goto poor souls whose life, compared with yours, is one long malaise of

body, and soul, and spiritand do as you would be done by; instead of reproving and faultfinding,

encourage. In God's name, encourage. They scramble through life's rocks, bogs, and thornbrakes, clumsily

enough, and have many a fall, poor things! But why, in the name of a God of love and justice, is the lady,

rolling along the smooth turnpikeroad in her comfortable carriage, to be calling out all day long to the poor

soul who drags on beside her over hedge and ditch, moss and moor, barefooted and weary hearted, with

halfadozen children at her back: "You ought not to have fallen here; and it was very cowardly to lie down

there; and it was your duty, as a mother, to have helped that child through the puddle; while, as for sleeping

under that bush, it is most imprudent and inadmissible?" Why not encourage her, praise her, cheer her on her

weary way by loving words, and keep your reproofs for yourselfeven your advice; for SHE does get on her

way, after all, where YOU could not travel a step forward; and she knows what she is about perhaps better

than you do, and what she has to endure, and what God thinks of her lifejourney. The heart knoweth its own

bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with its joy. But do not be a stranger to her. Be a sister to her. I do

not ask you to take her up in your carriage. You cannot; perhaps it is good for her that you cannot. It is good

sometimes for Lazarus that he is not fit to sit at Dives's feastgood for him that he should receive his evil

things in this life, and be comforted in the life to come. All I ask is, do to the poor soul as you would have her

do to you in her place. Do not interrupt and vex her (for she is busy enough already) with remedies which she

does not understand, for troubles which you do not understand. But speak comfortably to her, and say: "I

cannot feel WITH you, but I do feel FOR you: I should enjoy helping you, but I do not know howtell me.

Tell me where the yoke galls; tell me why that forehead is grown old before its time: I may be able to ease the

burden, to put fresh light into the eyes; and if not, still tell me, simply because I am a woman, and know the

relief of pouring out my own soul into loving ears, even though in the depths of despair." Yes, paradoxical as

it may seem, I am convinced that the only way to help these poor women humanly and really, is to begin by

confessing to them that you do not know how to help them; to humble yourself to them, and to ask their

counsel for the good of themselves and of their neighbours, instead of coming proudly to them, with

nostrums ready compounded, as if a doctor should be so confident in his own knowledge of books and

Therefore, I entreat you to bear in mind (for without this all visiting of the poor will be utterly void and

useless), that you must regulate your conduct to them, and in their houses, even to the most minute

particulars, by the very same rules which apply to persons of your own class. Never let any woman say of

you (thought fatal to all confidence, all influence!): "Yes, it is all very kind: but she does not behave to me as

she would to one of her own quality." Piety, earnestness, affectionateness, eloquenceall may be nullified

and stultified by simply keeping a poor woman standing in her own cottage while you sit, or entering her

house, even at her own request, while she is at meals. She may decline to sit; she may beg you to come in, all

the more reason for refusing utterly to obey her, because it shows that that very inward gulf between you and

her still exists in her mind, which it is the object of your visit to bridge over. If you know her to be in trouble,

touch on that trouble as you would with a lady. Woman's heart is alike in all ranks, and the deepest sorrow is

the one of which she speaks the last and least. We should not like anyoneno, not an angel from heaven, to

come into our houses without knocking at the door, and say: "I hear you are very ill offI will lend you a

hundred pounds. I think you are very careless of money, I will take your accounts into my own hands;" and

still less again: "Your son is a very bad, profligate, disgraceful fellow, who is not fit to be mentioned; I intend

to take him out of your hands and reform him myself." Neither do the poor like such unceremonious mercy,

such untender tenderness, benevolence at horseplay, mistaking kicks for caresses. They do not like it, they

will not respond to it, save in parishes which have been demoralised by officious and indiscriminate

benevolence, and where the last remaining virtues of the poor, savage selfhelp and independence, have been

exchanged (as I have too often seen them exchanged) for organised begging and hypocrisy.

I would that you would all read, ladies, and consider well the traits of an opposite character which have just

come to light (to me, I am ashamed to say, for the first time) in the Biography of Sidney Smith. The love and

admiration which that truly brave and loving man won from everyone, rich or poor, with whom he came in

contact, seems to me to have arisen from the one fact, that without perhaps having any such conscious

intention, he treated rich and poor, his own servants and the noblemen his guests, alike, and ALIKE

courteously, considerately, cheerfully, affectionatelyso leaving a blessing and reaping a blessing

Approach, then, these poor women as sisters, and you will be able gradually to reverse the hard saying of

which I made use just now: "Do not apply remedies which they do not understand, to diseases which you do

not understand." Learn lovingly and patiently (aye, and reverently, for there is that in every human being

which deserves reverence, and must be reverenced if we wish to understand it)learn, I say, to understand

their troubles, and by that time they will have learnt to understand your remedies, and they will appreciate

them. For you HAVE remedies. I do not undervalue your position. No man on earth is less inclined to

undervalue the real power of wealth, rank, accomplishments, mannerseven physical beauty. All are talents

from God, and I give God thanks when I see them possessed by any human being; for I know that they, too,

can be used in His service, and brought to bear on the true emancipation of womanher emancipation, not

from man (as some foolish persons fancy), but from the devil, "the slanderer and divider" who divides her

from man, and makes her live a lifelong tragedy, which goes on in more cottages than in palacesa vie e

part, a vie incomprisea life made up half of illusage, half of unnecessary, selfwilled, selfconceited

martyrdom, instead of being (as God intended) half of the human universe, a helpmeet for man, and the one

bright spot which makes this world endurable. Towards making her that, and so realising the primeval

mission by every cottage hearth, each of you can do something; for each of you have some talent, power,

knowledge, attraction between soul and soul, which the cottager's wife has not, and by which you may draw

her to you with (as the prophet says) human bonds and the cords of love: but she must be drawn by them

alone, or your work is nothing, and though you give the treasures of Ind, they are valueless equally to her and

to Christ; for they are not given in His name, which is that boundless tenderness, consideration, patience,

selfsacrifice, by which even the cup of cold water is a precious offeringas God grant your labour may be!

Whether the British race is improving or degenerating? What, if it seem probably degenerating, are the causes

of so great an evil? How they can be, if not destroyed, at least arrested? These are questions worthy attention,

not of statesmen only and medical men, but of every father and mother in these isles. I shall say somewhat

about them in this Essay; and say it in a form which ought to be intelligible to fathers and mothers of every

class, from the highest to the lowest, in hopes of convincing some of them at least that the science of health,

now so utterly neglected in our curriculum of socalled education, ought to be taughtthe rudiments of it at

We talk of our hardy forefathers; and rightly. But they were hardy, just as the savage is usually hardy,

because none but the hardy lived. They may have been able to say of themselvesas they do in a State paper

of 1515, now well known through the pages of Mr. Froude: "What comyn folk of all the world may compare

with the comyns of England, in riches, freedom, liberty, welfare, and all prosperity? What comyn folk is so

mighty, and so strong in the felde, as the comyns of England?" They may have been fed on "great shins of

beef," till they became, as Benvenuto Cellini calls them, "the English wild beasts." But they increased in

numbers slowly, if at all, for centuries. Those terrible laws of natural selection, which issue in "the survival of

the fittest," cleared off the less fit, in every generation, principally by infantile disease, often by wholesale

famine and pestilence; and left, on the whole, only those of the strongest constitutions to perpetuate a hardy,

At last came a sudden and unprecedented change. In the first years of this century, steam and commerce

produced an enormous increase in the population. Millions of fresh human beings found employment,

married, brought up children who found employment in their turn, and learnt to live more or less civilised

lives. An event, doubtless, for which God is to be thanked. A quite new phase of humanity, bringing with it

new vices and new dangers: but bringing, also, not merely new comforts, but new noblenesses, new

generosities, new conceptions of duty, and of how that duty should be done. It is childish to regret the old

times, when our sootgrimed manufacturing districts were green with lonely farms. To murmur at the

transformation would be, I believe, to murmur at the will of Him without whom not a sparrow falls to the

The old order changeth, yielding place to the new, And God fulfils himself in many ways, Lest one good

Our duty is, instead of longing for the good old custom, to take care of the good new custom, lest it should

The rapid increase of population during the first half of this century began at a moment when the British

stock was specially exhausted; namely, about the end of the long French war. There may have been periods

of exhaustion, at least in England, before that. There may have been one here, as there seems to have been on

the Continent, after the Crusades; and another after the Wars of the Roses. There was certainly a period of

severe exhaustion at the end of Elizabeth's reign, due both to the long Spanish and Irish wars and to the

terrible endemics introduced from abroad; an exhaustion which may have caused, in part, the national

weakness which hung upon us during the reign of the Stuarts. But after none of these did the survival of the

less fit suddenly become more easy; or the discovery of steam power, and the acquisition of a colonial

empire, create at once a fresh demand for human beings and a fresh supply of food for them. Britain, at the

At the beginning of the great French war; and, indeed, ever since the beginning of the war with Spain in

1739often snubbed as the "war about Jenkins's ear"but which was, as I hold, one of the most just, as it

was one of the most popular, of all our wars; after, too, the once famous "forty fine harvests" of the

eighteenth century, the British people, from the gentleman who led to the soldier or sailor who followed,

were one of the mightiest and most capable races which the world has ever seen, comparable best to the old

Roman, at his mightiest and most capable period. That, at least, their works testify. They createdas far as

man can be said to create anythingthe British Empire. They won for us our colonies, our commerce, the

Year after year, till the final triumph of Waterloo, not battle only, but worse destroyers than shot and

shellfatigue and diseasehad been carrying off our stoutest, ablest, healthiest young men, each of whom

represented, alas! a maiden left unmarried at home, or married, in default, to a less able man. The strongest

went to the war; each who fell left a weaklier man to continue the race; while of those who did not fall, too

many returned with tainted and weakened constitutions, to injure, it may be, generations yet unborn. The

middle classes, being mostly engaged in peaceful pursuits, suffered less of this decimation of their finest

young men; and to that fact I attribute much of their increasing preponderance, social, political, and

intellectual, to this very day. One cannot walk the streets of any of our great commercial cities without seeing

plenty of men, young and middle aged, whose whole bearing and stature shows that the manly vigour of our

middle class is anything but exhausted. In Liverpool, especially, I have been much struck not only with the

vigorous countenance, but with the bodily size of the mercantile men on 'Change. But it must be remembered

always, first, that these men are the very elite of their class; the cleverest men; the men capable of doing most

work; and next, that they are, almost all of them, from the great merchant who has his villa out of town, and

perhaps his moor in the Highlands, down to the sturdy young volunteer who serves in the haberdasher's shop,

countrybred men; and that the question is, not what they are like now, but what their children and

grandchildren, especially the fine young volunteer's, will be like? A very serious question I hold that to be,

War is, without doubt, the most hideous physical curse which fallen man inflicts upon himself; and for this

simple reason, that it reverses the very laws of nature, and is more cruel even than pestilence. For instead of

issuing in the survival of the fittest, it issues in the survival of the less fit: and therefore, if protracted, must

deteriorate generations yet unborn. And yet a peace such as we now enjoy, prosperous, civilised, humane, is

In the first place, tens of thousandswho knows it not?lead sedentary and unwholesome lives, stooping,

asphyxiated, employing as small a fraction of their bodies as of their minds. And all this in dwellings,

workshops, what not?the influences, the very atmosphere of which tend not to health, but to unhealth, and

to drunkenness as a solace under the feeling of unhealth and depression. And that such a life must tell upon

their offspring, and if their offspring grow up under similar circumstances, upon their offspring's offspring,

till a whole population may become permanently degraded, who does not know? For who that walks through

the bystreets of any great city does not see? Moreover, and this is one of the most fearful problems with

which modern civilisation has to dealwe interfere with natural selection by our conscientious care of life,

as surely as does war itself. If war kills the most fit to live, we save alive those wholooking at them from a

merely physical point of vieware most fit to die. Everything which makes it more easy to live; every

sanitary reform, prevention of pestilence, medical discovery, amelioration of climate, drainage of soil,

improvement in dwellinghouses, workhouses, gaols; every reformatory school, every hospital, every cure of

drunkenness, every influence, in short, which hasso I am toldincreased the average length of life in

these islands, by nearly onethird, since the first establishment of life insurances, one hundred and fifty years

ago; every influence of this kind, I say, saves persons alive who would otherwise have died; and the great

majority of these will be, even in surgical and zymotic cases, those of least resisting power, who are thus

Do I say that we ought not to save these people if we can? God forbid. The weakly, the diseased whether

infant or adult, is here on earth; a British citizen; no more responsible for his own weakness than for his own

existence. Society, that is, in plain English, we and our ancestors, are responsible for both; and we must fulfil

the duty, and keep him in life; and, if we can, heal, strengthen, develop him to the utmost; and make the best

of that which "fate and our own deservings" have given us to deal with. I do not speak of higher motives still;

motives which, to every minister of religion, must be paramount and awful. I speak merely of physical and

social motives, such as appeal to the conscience of every manthe instinct which bids every humanhearted

man or woman to save life, alleviate pain, like Him who causes His sun to shine on the evil and on the good,

But it is palpable that in doing so we must, year by year, preserve a large percentage of weakly persons who,

marrying freely in their own class, must produce weaklier children, and they weaklier children still. Must, did

I say? There are those who are of opinionand I, after watching and comparing the histories of many

families, indeed of every one with whom I have come in contact for now fiveandthirty years, in town and

country, can only fear that their opinion is but too well founded on factthat in the great majority of cases,

in all classes whatsoever, the children are not equal to their parents, nor they, again, to their grandparents of

the beginning of the century; and that this degrading process goes on most surely and most rapidly in our

large towns, and in proportion to the antiquity of those towns, and therefore in proportion to the number of

This and cognate dangers have been felt more and more deeply, as the years have rolled on, by students of

human society. To ward them off, theory after theory has been put on paper, especially in France, which

deserve high praise for their ingenuity, less for their morality, and, I fear, still less for their common sense.

For the theorist in his closet is certain to ignore, as inconvenient to the construction of his Utopia, certain of

those broad facts of human nature which every active parish priest, medical man, or poorlaw guardian has to

Society and British human nature are what they have become by the indirect influences of long ages, and we

can no more reconstruct the one than we can change the other. We can no more mend men by theories than

we can by coercionto which, bythebye, almost all these theorists look longingly as their final hope and

mainstay. We must teach men to mend their own matters, of their own reason, and their own freewill. We

must teach them that they are the arbiters of their own destinies; and, to a fearfully large degree, of their

children's destinies after them. We must teach them not merely that they ought to be free, but that they are

free, whether they know it or not, for good and for evil. And we must do that in this case, by teaching them

sound practical science; the science of physiology as applied to health. So, and so only, can we cheekI do

not say stop entirelythough I believe even that to be ideally possible; but at least cheek the process of

degradation which I believe to be surely going on, not merely in these islands, but in every civilised country

It is still a question whether science has fully discovered those laws of hereditary health, the disregard of

which causes so many marriages disastrous to generations yet unborn. But much valuable light has been

thrown on this most mysterious and most important subject during the last few years. That lightand I thank

God for itis widening and deepening rapidly. And I doubt not that in a generation or two more, enough

will be known to be thrown into the shape of practical and provable rules; and that, if not a public opinion,

yet at least, what is more useful far, a widespread private opinion will grow up, especially among educated

But, as to the laws of personal health: enough, and more than enough, is known already, to be applied safely

and easily by any adults, however unlearned, to the preservation not only of their own health, but of that of

The value of healthy habitations, of personal cleanliness, of pure air and pure water, of various kinds of food,

according as each tends to make bone, fat, or muscle, provided onlyprovided only that the food be

unadulterated; the value of various kinds of clothing, and physical exercise, of a free and equal development

of the brain power, without undue overstrain in any one direction; in one word, the method of producing, as

far as possible, the mentem sanam in corpore sano, and the wonderful and blessed effects of such obedience

to those laws of nature, which are nothing but the good will of God expressed in factstheir wonderful and

blessed tendency, I say, to eliminate the germs of hereditary disease, and to actually regenerate the human

system all this is known; known as fully and clearly as any human knowledge need be known; it is written

in dozens of popular books and pamphlets. And why should this divine voice, which cries to man, tending to

sink into effeminate barbarism through his own hasty and partial civilisation: "It is not too late. For your

bodies, as for your spirits, there is an upward, as well as a downward path. You, or if not you, at least the

children whom you have brought into the world, for whom you toil, for whom you hoard, for whom you

pray, for whom you would give your lives, they still may be healthy, strong, it may be beautiful, and have

all the intellectual and social, as well as the physical advantages, which health, strength, and beauty

give."Ah, why is this divine voice now, as of old, Wisdom crying in the streets, and no man regarding her?

I appeal to women, who are initiated, as we men can never be, into the stern mysteries of pain, and sorrow,

and selfsacrifice;they who bring forth children, weep over children, slave for children, and, if they have

none of their own, then slave, with the holy instinct of the sexless bee, for the children of othersLet them

Let my readers pardon me if I seem to write too earnestly. That I speak neither more nor less than the truth,

every medical man knows full well. Not only as a very humble student of physiology, but as a parish priest of

thirty years' standing, I have seen so much unnecessary misery; and I have in other cases seen similar misery

so simply avoided; that the sense of the vastness of the evil is intensified by my sense of the easiness of the

Why, thento come to practical suggestionsshould there not be opened in every great town in these

realms a public school of health? It might connect itself withI hold that it should form an integral part

ofsome existing educational institute. But it should at least give practical lectures, for fees small enough to

put them within the reach of any respectable man or woman, however poor, I cannot but hope that such

schools of health, if opened in the great manufacturing towns of England and Scotland, and, indeed, in such

an Irish town as Belfast, would obtain pupils in plenty, and pupils who would thoroughly profit by what they

hear. The people of these towns are, most of them, specially accustomed by their own trades to the

application of scientific laws. To them, therefore, the application of any fresh physical laws to a fresh set of

facts, would have nothing strange in it. They have already something of that inductive habit of mind which is

the groundwork of all rational understanding or action. They would not turn the deaf and contemptuous ear

with which the savage and the superstitious receive the revelation of nature's mysteries. Why should not, with

so hopeful an audience, the experiment be tried far and wide, of giving lectures on health, as supplementary

to those lectures on animal physiology which are, I am happy to say, becoming more and more common?

Why should not people be taughtthey are already being taught at Birminghamsomething about the

tissues of the body, their structure and uses, the circulation of the blood, respiration, chemical changes in the

air respired, amount breathed, digestion, nature of food, absorption, secretion, structure of the nervous

systemin fact, be taught something of how their own bodies are made and how they work? Teaching of

this kind ought to, and will, in some more civilised age and country, be held a necessary element in the

school course of every child, just as necessary as reading, writing, and arithmetic; for it is after all the most

necessary branch of that "technical education" of which we hear so much just now, namely, the technic, or

But we can hardly stop there. After we have taught the condition of health, we must teach also the condition

of disease; of those diseases specially which tend to lessen wholesale the health of townsfolk, exposed to an

artificial mode of life. Surely young men and women should be taught something of the causes of zymotic

disease, and of scrofula, consumption, rickets, dipsomania, cerebral derangement, and such like. They should

be shown the practical value of pure air, pure water, unadulterated food, sweet and dry dwellings. Is there one

of them, man or woman, who would not be the safer and happier, and the more useful to his or her

neighbours, if they had acquired some sound notions about those questions of drainage on which their own

lives and the lives of their children may every day depend? I saywomen as well as men. I should have said

women rather than men. For it is the women who have the ordering of the household, the bringing up of the

children; the women who bide at home, while the men are away, it may be at the other end of the earth.

And if any say, as they have a right to say"But these are subjects which can hardly be taught to young

women in public lectures;" I rejoinof course not, unless they are taught by womenby women, of course,

duly educated and legally qualified. Let such teach to women, what every woman ought to know, and what

her parents will very properly object to her hearing from almost any man. This is one of the main reasons

why I have, for twenty years past, advocated the training of women for the medical profession; and one

which countervails, in my mind, all possible objections to such a movement. And now, thank God, we are

seeing the common sense of Great Britain, and indeed of every civilised nation, gradually coming round to

that which seemed to me, when I first conceived of it, a dream too chimerical to be cherished save in

secretthe restoring woman to her natural share in that sacred office of healer, which she held in the Middle

I am most happy to see, for instance, that the National Health Society, {3} which I earnestly recommend to

the attention of my readers, announces a "Course of Lectures for Ladies on Elementary Physiology and

Hygiene," by a lady, to which I am also most happy to see, governesses are admitted at halffees. Alas! how

much misery, disease, and even death might have been prevented, had governesses been taught such matters

thirty years ago, I, for one, know too well. May the day soon come when there will be educated women

enough to give such lectures throughout these realms, to rich as well as poorfor the rich, strange to say,

need them often as much as the poor doand that we may live to see, in every great town, health classes for

women as well as for men, sending forth year by year more young women and young men taught, not only to

take care of themselves and of their families, but to exercise moral influence over their fellowcitizens, as

There may be those who would answeror rather, there would certainly have been those who would have so

answered thirty years ago, before the socalled materialism of advanced science had taught us some practical

wisdom about education, and reminded people that they have bodies as well as minds and souls"You say,

we are likely to grow weaklier, unhealthier. And if it were so, what matter? Mind makes the man, not body.

We do not want our children to be stupid giants and bravos; but clever, able, highly educated, however

weakly Providence or the laws of nature may have chosen to make them. Let them overstrain their brains a

little; let them contract their chests, and injure their digestion and their eyesight, by sitting at desks, poring

over books. Intellect is what we want. Intellect makes money. Intellect makes the world. We would rather see

our son a genius than a mere athlete." Well: and so would I. But what if intellect alone does not even make

money, save as Messrs. Dodson and Fogg, Sampson Brass, and Montagu Tigg were wont to make it, unless

backed by an able, enduring, healthy physique, such as I have seen, almost without exception, in those

successful men of business whom I have had the honour and the pleasure of knowing? What if intellect, or

what is now called intellect, did not make the world, or the smallest wheel or cog of it? What if, for want of

obeying the laws of nature, parents bred up neither a genius nor an athlete, but only an incapable unhappy

personage, with a huge upright forehead, like that of a Byzantine Greek, filled with some sort of pap instead

of brains, and tempted alternately to fanaticism and strong drink? We must, in the great majority of cases,

have the CORPUS SANEM if we want the MENTEM SANEM; and healthy bodies are the only trustworthy

organs for healthy minds. Which is cause and which is effect, I shall not stay to debate here. But wherever we

find a population generally weakly, stunted, scrofulous, we find in them a corresponding type of brain, which

cannot be trusted to do good work; which is capable more or less of madness, whether solitary or epidemic. It

may be very active; it may be very quick at catching at new and grand ideasall the more quick, perhaps, on

account of its own secret malaise and selfdiscontent; but it will be irritable, spasmodic, hysterical. It will be

apt to mistake capacity of talk for capacity of action, excitement for earnestness, virulence for force, and, too

often; cruelty for justice. It will lose manful independence, individuality, originality; and when men act, they

will act from the consciousness of personal weakness, like sheep rushing over a hedge, leaning against each

other, exhorting each other to be brave, and swaying about in mobs and masses. These were the intellectual

weaknesses which, as I read history, followed on physical degradation in Imperial Rome, in Alexandria, in

Byzantium. Have we not seen them reappear, under fearful forms, in Paris but the other day?

I do not blame; I do not judge. My theory, which I hold, and shall hold, to be fairly founded on a wide

induction, forbids me to blame and to judge; because it tells me that these defects are mainly physical; that

those who exhibit them are mainly to be pitied, as victims of the sins or ignorance of their forefathers.

But it tells me too, that those who, professing to be educated men, and therefore bound to know better, treat

these physical phenomena as spiritual, healthy, and praiseworthy; who even exasperate them, that they may

make capital out of the weaknesses of fallen man, are the most contemptible and yet the most dangerous of

public enemies, let them cloak their quackery under whatsoever patriotic, or scientific, or even sacred words.

There are those again honest, kindly, sensible, practical men, many of them; men whom I have no wish to

offend; whom I had rather ask to teach me some of their own experience and common sense, which has

learned to discern, like good statesmen, not only what ought to be done, but what can be donethere are

those, I say, who would sooner see this whole question let alone. Their feeling, as far as I can analyse it,

seems to be that the evils of which I have been complaining, are on the whole inevitable; or, if not, that we

can mend so very little of them, that it is wisest to leave them alone altogether, lest, like certain sewers, "the

more you stir them, the more they smell." They fear lest we should unsettle the minds of the many for whom

these evils will never be mended; lest we make them discontented; discontented with their houses, their

I should answer, in all courtesy and humilityfor I sympathise deeply with such men and women, and

respect them deeply likewise but are not people discontented already, from the lowest to the highest? And

ought a man, in such a piecemeal, foolish, greedy, sinful world as this is, and always has been, to be anything

but discontented? If he thinks that things are going all right, must he not have a most beggarly conception of

what going right means? And if things are not going right, can it be anything but good for him to see that they

are not going right? Can truth and fact harm any human being? I shall not believe so, as long as I have a Bible

wherein to believe. For my part, I should like to make every man, woman, and child whom I meet

discontented with themselves, even as I am discontented with myself. I should like to awaken in them, about

their physical, their intellectual, their moral condition, that divine discontent which is the parent, first of

upward aspiration and then of selfcontrol, thought, effort to fulfil that aspiration even in part. For to be

discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ and first

upgrowth of all virtue. Men begin at first, as boys begin when they grumble at their school and their

schoolmasters, to lay the blame on others; to be discontented with their circumstancesthe things which

stand around them; and to cry, "Oh that I had this!" "Oh that I had that!" But by that way no deliverance lies.

That discontent only ends in revolt and rebellion, social or political; and that, again, still in the same worship

of circumstancesbut this time desperatewhich ends, let it disguise itself under what fine names it will, in

what the old Greeks called a tyranny; in whichas in the Spanish republics of America, and in France more

than onceall have become the voluntary slaves of one man, because each man fancies that the one man can

But the wise man will learn, like Epictetus the heroic slave, the slave of Epaphroditus, Nero's minionand in

what baser and uglier circumstances could human being find himself?to find out the secret of being truly

free; namely, to be discontented with no man and no thing save himself. To say not"Oh that I had this and

that!" but "Oh that I were this and that!" Then, by God's help and that heroic slave, heathen though he was,

believed and trusted in God's help"I will make myself that which God has shown me that I ought to be and

Ten thousand a year, or ten million a year, as Epictetus saw full well, cannot mend that vulgar discontent with

circumstances which he had feltand who with more right?and conquered, and despised. For that is the

discontent of children, wanting always more holidays and more sweets. But I wish my readers to have, and to

Therefore I would make men and women discontented, with the divine and wholesome discontent, at their

own physical frame, and at that of their children. I would accustom their eyes to those precious heirlooms of

the human race, the statues of the old Greeks; to their tender grandeur, their chaste healthfulness, their

unconscious, because perfect might: and sayThere; these are tokens to you, and to all generations yet

unborn, of what man could be once; of what he can be again if he will obey those laws of nature which are

the voice of God. I would make them discontented with the ugliness and closeness of their dwellings; I would

make them discontented with the fashion of their garments, and still more just now the women, of all ranks,

with the fashion of theirs; and with everything around them which they have the power of improving, if it be

at all ungraceful, superfluous, tawdry, ridiculous, unwholesome. I would make them discontented with what

they call their education, and say to themYou call the three Royal R's education? They are not education:

no more is the knowledge which would enable you to take the highest prizes given by the Society of Arts, or

any other body. They are not education: they are only instruction; a necessary groundwork, in an age like this,

And if they asked me, What then education meant? I should point them, first, I think, to noble old Lilly's

noble old "Euphues," of three hundred years ago, and ask them to consider what it says about education, and

especially this passage concerning that mere knowledge which is nowadays strangely miscalled education.

"There are two principal and peculiar gifts in the nature of man, knowledge and reason. The one"that is

reason"commandeth, and the other"that is knowledge"obeyeth. These things neither the whirling

wheel of fortune can change, nor the deceitful cavillings of worldlings separate, neither sickness abate, nor

age abolish." And next I should point them to those pages in Mr. Gladstone's "Juventus Mundi," where he

describes the ideal training of a Greek youth in Homer's days; and sayThere: that is an education fit for a

really civilised man, even though he never saw a book in his life; the full, proportionate, harmonious

educingthat is, bringing out and developingof all the faculties of his body, mind, and heart, till he

becomes at once a reverent yet self assured, a graceful and yet a valiant, an able and yet an eloquent

And if any should say to me"But what has this to do with science? Homer's Greeks knew no science;" I

should rejoinBut they had, preeminently above all ancient races which we know, the scientific instinct;

the teachableness and modesty; the clear eye and quick ear; the hearty reverence for fact and nature, and for

the human body, and mind, and spirit; for human nature in a word, in its completeness, as the highest fact

upon this earth. Therefore they became in after years, not only the great colonisers and the great civilisers of

the old worldthe most practical people, I hold, which the world ever saw; but the parents of all sound

physics as well as of all sound metaphysics. Their very religion, in spite of its imperfections, helped forward

their education, not in spite of, but by means of that anthropomorphism which we sometimes too hastily

decry. As Mr. Gladstone says: "As regarded all other functions of our nature, outside the domain of the life to

Godwardall those functions which are summed up in what St. Paul calls the flesh and the mind, the

psychic and bodily life, the tendency of the system was to exalt the human element, by proposing a model of

beauty, strength, and wisdom, in all their combinations, so elevated that the effort to attain them required a

continual upward strain. It made divinity attainable; and thus it effectually directed the thought and aim of

Such a scheme of religion, though failing grossly in the government of the passions, and in upholding the

standard of moral duties, tended powerfully to produce a lofty selfrespect, and a large, free, and varied

conception of humanity. It incorporated itself in schemes of notable discipline for mind and body, indeed of a

lifelong education; and these habits of mind and action had their marked results (to omit many other

greatnesses) in a philosophy, literature, and art, which remain to this day unrivalled or unsurpassed."

So much those old Greeks did for their own education, without science and without Christianity. We who

have both: what might we not do, if we would be true to our advantages, and to ourselves?

Ladies,I have been honoured by a second invitation to address you, and I dare not refuse it; because it

gives me an opportunity of speaking on a matter, knowledge and ignorance about which may seriously affect

your health and happiness, and that of the children with whom you may have to do. I must apologise if I say

many things which are well known to many persons in this room: they ought to be well known to all: but it is

generally best to assume total ignorance in one's hearers, and to begin from the beginning.

I shall try to be as simple as possible; to trouble you as little as possible with scientific terms; to be practical;

I should wish to call this lecture "The Two Breaths:" not merely "The Breath;" and for this reason: every time

you breathe you breathe two different breaths; you take in one, you give out another. The composition of

those two breaths is different. Their effects are different. The breath which has been breathed out must not be

breathed in again. To tell you why it must not would lead me into anatomical details, not quite in place here

as yet; though the day will come, I trust, when every woman entrusted with the care of children will be

expected to know something about them. But this I may say: Those who habitually take in fresh breath will

probably grow up large, strong, ruddy, cheerful, active, clearheaded, fit for their work. Those who

habitually take in the breath which has been breathed out by themselves, or any other living creature, will

certainly grow up, if they grow up at all, small, weak, pale, nervous, depressed, unfit for work, and tempted

If you want to see how different the breath breathed out is from the breath taken in, you have only to try a

somewhat cruel experiment, but one which people too often try upon themselves, their children, and their

workpeople. If you take any small animal with lungs like your owna mouse, for instanceand force it to

breathe no air but what you have breathed already; if you put it in a close box, and while you take in breath

from the outer air, send out your breath through a tube, into that box, the animal will soon faint: if you go on

Take a second instance, which I beg to press most seriously on the notice of mothers, governesses, and

nurses. If you allow a child to get into the habit of sleeping with its head under the bed clothes, and thereby

breathing its own breath over and over again, that child will assuredly grow pale, weak, and ill. Medical men

have cases on record of scrofula appearing in children previously healthy, which could only be accounted for

from this habit, and which ceased when the habit stopped. Let me again entreat your attention to this

Take another instance, which is only too common: If you are in a crowded room, with plenty of fire and

lights and company, doors and windows all shut tight, how often you feel faintso faint that you may

require smellingsalts or some other stimulant. The cause of your faintness is just the same as that of the

mouse's fainting in the box; you and your friends, and, as I shall show you presently, the fire and the candles

likewise, having been all breathing each other's breaths, over and over again, till the air has become unfit to

support life. You are doing your best to enact over again the Highland tragedy, of which Sir James Simpson

tells in his lectures to the workingclasses of Edinburgh, when at a Christmas meeting thirtysix persons

danced all night in a small room with a low ceiling, keeping the doors and windows shut. The atmosphere of

the room was noxious beyond description; and the effect was, that seven of the party were soon after seized

with typhus fever, of which two died. You are inflicting on yourselves the torments of the poor dog, who is

kept at the Grotto del Cane, near Naples, to be stupefied, for the amusement of visitors, by the carbonic acid

gas of the Grotto, and brought to life again by being dragged into the fresh air; nay, you are inflicting upon

yourselves the torments of the famous Black Hole of Calcutta: and, if there was no chimney in the room, by

which some fresh air could enter, the candles would soon burn blue, as they do, you know, when ghosts

appear; your brains become disturbed; and you yourselves ran the risk of becoming ghosts, and the candles of

Of this last fact there is no doubt; for if, instead of putting a mouse into the box, you will put a lighted candle,

and breathe into the tube as before, however gently, you will in a short time put the candle out.

Now, how is this? First, what is the difference between the breath you take in and the breath you give out?

The difference is this. The breath which you take in is, or ought to be, pure air, composed, on the whole, of

The breath which you give out is an impure air, to which has been added, among other matters which will not

That this is the fact you can prove for yourselves by a simple experiment. Get a little limewater at the

chemist's, and breathe into it through a glass tube; your breath will at once make the limewater milky. The

carbonic acid of your breath has laid hold of the lime, and made it visible as white carbonate of limein

Now I do not wish, as I said, to load your memories with scientific terms: but I beseech you to remember at

least these two, oxygen gas and carbonic acid gas; and to remember that, as surely as oxygen feeds the fire of

I say, "the fire of life." In that expression lies the answer to our second question: Why does our breath

produce a similar effect upon the mouse and the lighted candle? Every one of us is, as it were, a living fire.

Were we not, how could we be always warmer than the air outside us? There is a process; going on

perpetually in each of us, similar to that by which coals are burnt in the fire, oil in a lamp, wax in a candle,

and the earth itself in a volcano. To keep each of those fires alight, oxygen is needed; and the products of

combustion, as they are called, are more or less the same in each casecarbonic acid and steam.

These facts justify the expression I just made use ofwhich may have seemed to some of you

fantasticalthat the fire and the candles in the crowded room were breathing the same breath as you were. It

is but too true. An average fire in the grate requires, to keep it burning, as much oxygen as several human

beings do; each candle or lamp must have its share of oxygen likewise, and that a very considerable one, and

an average gasburnerpray attend to this, you who live in rooms lighted with gasconsumes as much

oxygen as several candles. All alike are making carbonic acid. The carbonic acid of the fire happily escapes

up the chimney in the smoke: but the carbonic acid from the human beings and the candles remains to poison

Now, I think you may understand one of the simplest, and yet most terrible, cases of want of

ventilationdeath by the fumes of charcoal. A human being shut up in a room, of which every crack is

closed, with a pan of burning charcoal, falls asleep, never to wake again. His inward fire is competing with

the fire of charcoal for the oxygen of the room; both are making carbonic acid out of it: but the charcoal,

being the stronger of the two, gets all the oxygen to itself, and leaves the human being nothing to inhale but

the carbonic acid which it has made. The human being, being the weaker, dies first: but the charcoal dies also.

When it has exhausted all the oxygen of the room, it cools, goes out, and is found in the morning

halfconsumed beside its victim. If you put a giant or an elephant, I should conceive, into that room, instead

of a human being, the case would be reversed for a time: the elephant would put out the burning charcoal by

the carbonic acid from his mighty lungs; and then, when he had exhausted all the air in the room, die likewise

Ventilation means simply letting out the foul air, and letting in the fresh air; letting out the air which has been

breathed by men or by candles, and letting in the air which has not. To understand how to do that, we must

remember a most simple chemical law, that a gas as it is warmed expands, and therefore becomes lighter; as

Now the carbonic acid in the breath which comes out of our mouth is warm, lighter than the air, and rises to

the ceiling; and therefore in any unventilated room full of people, there is a layer of foul air along the ceiling.

You might soon test that for yourselves, if you could mount a ladder and put your heads there aloft. You do

test it for yourselves when you sit in the galleries of churches and theatres, where the air is palpably more

Where, again, workpeople are employed in a crowded house of many storeys, the health of those who work

In the old monkeyhouse of the Zoological Gardens, when the cages were on the old plan, tier upon tier, the

poor little fellows in the uppermost tierso I have been toldalways died first of the monkey's

constitutional complaint, consumption, simply from breathing the warm breath of their friends below. But

since the cages have been altered, and made to range side by side from top to bottom, consumptionI

The first question in ventilation, therefore, is to get this carbonic acid safe out of the room, while it is warm

and light and close to the ceiling; for if you do not, this happens: The carbonic acid gas cools and becomes

heavier; for carbonic acid, at the same temperature as common air, is so much heavier than common air, that

you may actuallyif you are handy enoughturn it from one vessel to another, and pour out for your

enemy a glass of invisible poison. So down to the floor this heavy carbonic acid comes, and lies along it, just

as it lies often in the bottom of old wells, or old brewers' vats, as a stratum of poison, killing occasionally the

men who descend into it. Hence, as foolish a practice as I know is that of sleeping on the floor; for towards

the small hours, when the room gets cold, the sleeper on the floor is breathing carbonic acid.

And here one word to those ladies who interest themselves with the poor. The poor are too apt in times of

distress to pawn their bedsteads and keep their beds. Never, if you have influence, let that happen. Keep the

bedstead, whatever else may go, to save the sleeper from the carbonic acid on the floor.

How, then, shall we get rid of the foul air at the top of the room? After all that has been written and tried on

ventilation, I know no simpler method than putting into the chimney one of Arnott's ventilators, which may

be bought and fixed for a few shillings; always remembering that it must be. fixed into the chimney as near

the ceiling as possible. I can speak of these ventilators from twentyfive years' experience. Living in a house

with low ceilings, liable to become overcharged with carbonic acid, which produces sleepiness in the

evening, I have found that these ventilators keep the air fresh and pure; and I consider the presence of one of

these ventilators in a room more valuable than three or four feet additional height of ceiling. I have found,

too, that their working proves how necessary they are, from this simple fact: You would suppose that, as the

ventilator opens freely into the chimney, the smoke would be blown down through it in high winds, and

blacken the ceiling: but this is just what does not happen. If the ventilator be at all properly poised, so as to

shut with a violent gust of wind, it will at all other moments keep itself permanently open; proving thereby

that there is an updraught of heated air continually escaping from the ceiling up the chimney. Another very

simple method of ventilation is employed in those excellent cottages which Her Majesty has built for her

labourers round Windsor. Over each door a sheet of perforated zinc, some eighteen inches square, is fixed;

allowing the foul air to escape into the passage; and in the ceiling of the passage a similar sheet of zinc,

allowing it to escape into the roof. Fresh air, meanwhile, should be obtained from outside, by piercing the

windows, or otherwise. And here let me give one hint to all builders of houses: If possible, let bedroom

Let me impress the necessity of using some such contrivances, not only on parents and educators, but on

those who employ workpeople, and above all on those who employ young women in shops or in work

rooms. What their condition may be in this city I know not; but most painful it has been to me in other places,

when passing through warehouses or workrooms, to see the pale, sodden, and, as the French would say,

"etiolated" countenances of the girls who were passing the greater part of the day in them; and painful, also,

to breathe an atmosphere of which habit had, alas! made them unconscious, but which to one coming out of

the open air was altogether noxious, and shocking also; for it was fostering the seeds of death, not only in the

Why should this be? Everyone will agree that good ventilation is necessary in a hospital, because people

cannot get well without fresh air. Do they not see that by the same reasoning good ventilation is necessary

everywhere, because people cannot remain well without fresh air? Let me entreat those who employ women

in workrooms, if they have no time to read through such books as Dr. Andrew Combe's "Physiology applied

to Health and Education," and Madame de Wahl's "Practical Hints on the Moral, Mental, and Physical

Training of Girls," to procure certain tracts published by Messrs. Jarrold, Paternoster Row, for the Ladies'

Sanitary Association; especially one which bears on this subject: "The Blackhole in our own Bedrooms;"

Dr. Lankester's "School Manual of Health;" or a manual on ventilation, published by the Metropolitan

I look forwardI say it openlyto some period of higher civilisation, when the Acts of Parliament for the

ventilation of factories and workshops shall be largely extended, and made far more stringent; when officers

of public health shall be empowered to enforce the ventilation of every room in which persons are employed

for hire: and empowered also to demand a proper system of ventilation for every new house, whether in

country or in town. To that, I believe, we must come: but I had sooner far see these improvements carried out,

as befits the citizens of a free country, in the spirit of the Gospel rather than in that of the Law; carried out,

not compulsorily and from fear of fines, but voluntarily, from a sense of duty, honour, and humanity. I

appeal, therefore, to the good feeling of all whom it may concern, whether the health of those whom they

employ, and therefore the supply of fresh air which they absolutely need, are not matters for which they are

And if any excellent person of the old school should answer me: "Why make all this fuss about ventilation?

Our forefathers got on very well without it"I must answer that, begging their pardons, our ancestors did

nothing of the kind. Our ancestors got on usually very ill in these matters: and when they got on well, it was

First. They got on very ill. To quote a few remarkable instances of longevity, or to tell me that men were

larger and stronger on the average in old times, is to yield to the old fallacy of fancying that savages were

peculiarly healthy, because those who were seen were active and strong. The simple answer is, that the strong

alone survived, while the majority died from the severity of the training. Savages do not increase in number;

and our ancestors increased but very slowly for many centuries. I am not going to disgust my audience with

statistics of disease: but knowing something, as I happen to do, of the social state and of the health of the

Middle and Elizabethan Ages, I have no hesitation in saying that the average of disease and death was far

greater then than it is now. Epidemics of many kinds, typhus, ague, plagueall diseases which were caused

more or less by bad airdevastated this land and Europe in those days with a horrible intensity, to which

even the choleras of our times are mild. The back streets, the hospitals, the gaols, the barracks, the camps

every place in which any large number of persons congregated, were so many nests of pestilence, engendered

by uncleanliness, which defiled alike the water which was drunk and the air which was breathed; and as a

single fact, of which the tables of insurance companies assure us, the average of human life in England has

increased twentyfive per cent. since the reign of George I., owing simply to our more rational and cleanly

But secondly, I said that when our ancestors got on well, they did so because they got ventilation in spite of

themselves. Luckily for them, their houses were illbuilt; their doors and windows would not shut. They had

latticewindowed houses, too; to live in one of which, as I can testify from long experience, is as thoroughly

ventilating as living in a lantern with the horn broken out. It was because their houses were full of draughts,

and still more, in the early Middle Age, because they had no glass, and stopped out the air only by a shutter at

night, that they sought for shelter rather than for fresh air, of which they sometimes had too much; and, to

escape the wind, built their houses in holes, such as that in which the old city of Winchester stands. Shelter, I

believe, as much as the desire to be near fish in Lent, and to occupy the rich alluvium of the valleys, made the

monks of Old England choose the riverbanks for the sites of their abbeys. They made a mistake therein,

which, like most mistakes, did not go unpunished. These low situations, especially while the forests were yet

thick on the hills around, were the perennial haunts of fever and ague, produced by subtle vegetable poisons,

carried in the carbonic acid given off by rotten vegetation. So there, again, they fell in with man's old

enemybad air. Still, as long as the doors and windows did not shut, some free circulation of air remained.

But now, our doors and windows shut only too tight. We have plateglass instead of lattices; and we have

replaced the draughty and smoky, but really wholesome open chimney, with its wide corners and settles, by

narrow registers, and even by stoves. We have done all we can, in fact, to seal ourselves up hermetically from

the outer air, and to breath our own breaths over and over again; and we pay the penalty of it in a thousand

ways unknown to our ancestors, through whose rooms all the winds of heaven whistled, and who were glad

enough to shelter themselves from draughts in the sittingroom by the high screen round the fire, and in the

sleepingroom by the thick curtains of the four post bedstead, which is now rapidly disappearing before a

higher civilisation. We therefore absolutely require to make for ourselves the very ventilation from which our

But, ladies, there is an old and true proverb, that you may bring a horse to the water, but you cannot make

him drink. And in like wise it is too true, that you may bring people to the fresh air, but you cannot make

them breath it. Their own folly, or the folly of their parents and educators, prevents their lungs being duly

filled and duly emptied. Therefore the blood is not duly oxygenated, and the whole system goes wrong.

Paleness, weakness, consumption, scrofula, and too many other ailments, are the consequences of illfilled

And if anyone shall answer: "We do not want robust health so much as intellectual attainment; the mortal

body, being the lower organ, must take its chance, and be even sacrificed, if need be to the higher organthe

immortal mind"To such I reply, You cannot do it. The laws of nature, which are the express will of God,

laugh such attempts to scorn. Every organ of the body is formed out of the blood; and if the blood be vitiated,

every organ suffers in proportion to its delicacy; and the brain, being the most delicate and highly specialised

of all organs, suffers most of all, and soonest of all, as everyone knows who has tried to work his brain when

his digestion was the least out of order. Nay, the very morals will suffer. From illfilled lungs, which signify

illrepaired blood, arise year by year an amount not merely of disease, but of folly, temper, laziness,

intemperance, madness, and, let me tell you fairly, crimethe sum of which will never be known till that

great day when men shall be called to account for all deeds done in the body, whether they be good or evil.

I must refer you on this subject again to Andrew Combe's "Physiology," especially chapters iv. and vii.; and

also to chapter x. of Madame de Wahl's excellent book. I will only say this shortly, that the three most

common causes of illfilled lungs, in children and in young ladies, are stillness, silence, and stays.

First, stillness; a sedentary life, and want of exercise. A girl is kept for hours sitting on a form writing or

reading, to do which she must lean forward; and if her schoolmistress cruelly attempts to make her sit

upright, and thereby keep the spine in an attitude for which Nature did not intend it, she is thereby doing her

best to bring on that disease, so fearfully common in girls' schools, lateral curvature of the spine. But

practically the girl will stoop forward. And what happens? The lower ribs are pressed into the body, thereby

displacing more or less something inside. The diaphragm in the meantime, which is the very bellows of the

lungs, remains loose; the lungs are never properly filled or emptied; and an excess of carbonic acid

accumulates at the bottom of them. What follows? Frequent sighing to get rid of it; heaviness of head;

depression of the whole nervous system under the influence of the poison of the lungs; and when the poor

child gets up from her weary work, what is the first thing she probably does? She lifts up her chest, stretches,

yawns, and breathes deeplyNature's voice, Nature's instinctive cure, which is probably regarded as

ungraceful, as what is called "lolling" is. As if sitting upright was not an attitude in itself essentially

ungraceful, and such as no artist would care to draw. As if "lolling," which means putting the body in the

attitude of the most perfect ease compatible with a fullyexpanded chest, was not in itself essentially

graceful, and to be seen in every reposing figure in Greek basreliefs and vases; graceful, and like all

graceful actions, healthful at the same time. The only tolerably wholesome attitude of repose, which I see

allowed in average schoolrooms, is lying on the back on the floor, or on a sloping board, in which case the

lungs must be fully expanded. But even so, a pillow, or some equivalent, ought to be placed under the small

I now go on to the second mistakeenforced silence. Moderate reading aloud is good: but where there is any

tendency to irritability of throat or lungs, too much moderation cannot be used. You may as well try to cure a

diseased lung by working it, as to cure a lame horse by galloping him. But where the breathing organs are of

average health let it be said once and for all, that children and young people cannot make too much noise.

The parents who cannot bear the noise of their children have no right to have brought them into the world.

The schoolmistress who enforces silence on her pupils is committingunintentionally no doubt, but still

committingan offence against reason, worthy only of a convent. Every shout, every burst of laughter,

every songnay, in the case of infants, as physiologists well know, every moderate fit of cryingconduces

to health, by rapidly filling and emptying the lung, and changing the blood more rapidly from black to red,

that is, from death to life. Andrew Combe tells a story of a large charity school, in which the young girls

were, for the sake of their health, shut up in the hall and schoolroom during play hours, from November till

March, and no romping or noise allowed. The natural consequences were, the great majority of them fell ill;

and I am afraid that a great deal of illness has been from time to time contracted in certain schoolrooms,

simply through this one cause of enforced silence. Some cause or other there must be for the amount of

illhealth and weakliness which prevails especially among girls of the middle classes in towns, who have not,

poor things, the opportunities which richer girls have, of keeping themselves in strong health by riding,

skating, archery, that last quite an admirable exercise for the chest and lungs, and far preferable to croquet,

which involves too much unwholesome stooping.Even a game of ball, if milliners and shopgirls had

room to indulge in one after their sedentary work, might bring fresh spirits to many a heart, and fresh colour

I spoke just now of the Greeks. I suppose you will all allow that the Greeks were, as far as we know, the most

beautiful race which the world ever saw. Every educated man knows that they were also the cleverest of all

Now, these people had made physical as well as intellectual education a science as well as a study. Their

women practised graceful, and in some cases even athletic, exercises. They developed, by a free and healthy

life, those figures which remain everlasting and unapproachable models of human beauty: butto come to

my third pointthey wore no stays. The first mention of stays that I have ever found is in the letters of dear

old Synesius, Bishop of Cyrene, on the Greek coast of Africa, about four hundred years after the Christian

era. He tells us how, when he was shipwrecked on a remote part of the coast, and he and the rest of the

passengers were starving on cockles and limpets, there was among them a slave girl out of the far East, who

had a pinched waspwaist, such as you may see on the old Hindoo sculptures, and such as you may see in

any street in a British town. And when the Greek ladies of the neighbourhood found her out, they sent for her

from house to house, to behold, with astonishment and laughter, this new and prodigious, waist, with which it

seemed to them it was impossible for a human being to breathe or live; and they petted the poor girl, and fed

her, as they might a dwarf or a giantess, till she got quite fat and comfortable, while her owners had not

enough to eat. So strange and ridiculous seemed our present fashion to the descendants of those who,

centuries before, had imagined, because they had seen living and moving, those glorious statues which we

It seems to me that a few centuries hence, when mankind has learnt to fear God more, and therefore to obey

more strictly those laws of nature and of science which are the will of Godit seems to me, I say, that in

those days the present fashion of tight lacing will be looked back upon as a contemptible and barbarous

superstition, denoting a very low level of civilisation in the peoples which have practised it. That for

generations past women should have been in the habitnot to please men, who do not care about the matter

as a point of beautybut simply to vie with each other in obedience to something called fashionthat they

should, I say, have been in the habit of deliberately crushing that part of the body which should be specially

left free, contracting and displacing their lungs, their heart, and all the most vital and important organs, and

entailing thereby disease, not only on themselves but on their children after them; that for forty years past

physicians should have been telling them of the folly of what they have been doing; and that they should as

yet, in the great majority of cases, not only turn a deaf ear to all warnings, but actually deny the offence, of

which one glance of the physician or the sculptor, who know what shape the human body ought to be, brings

them in guiltythis, I say, is an instance ofwhat shall I call it?which deserves at once the lash, not

merely of the satirist, but of any theologian who really believes that God made the physical universe. Let me,

I pray you, appeal to your common sense for a moment. When any one chooses a horse or a dog, whether for

strength, for speed, or for any other useful purpose, the first thing almost to be looked at is the girth round the

ribs; the room for heart and lungs. Exactly in proportion to that will be the animal's general healthiness,

power of endurance, and value in many other ways. If you will look at eminent lawyers and famous orators,

who have attained a healthy old age, you will see that in every case they are men, like the late Lord

Palmerston, and others whom I could mention, of remarkable size, not merely in the upper, but in the lower

part of the chest; men who had, therefore, a peculiar power of using the diaphragm to fill and to clear the

lungs, and therefore to oxygenate the blood of the whole body. Now, it is just these lower ribs, across which

the diaphragm is stretched like the head of a drum, which stays contract to a minimum. If you advised owners

of horses and hounds to put their horses or their hounds into stays, and lace them up tight, in order to increase

their beauty, you would receive, I doubt not, a very courteous, but certainly a very decided, refusal to do that

which would spoil not merely the animals themselves, but the whole stud or the whole kennel for years to

come. And if you advised an orator to put himself into tight stays, he, no doubt, again would give a courteous

answer; but he would replyif he was a really educated manthat to comply with your request would

involve his giving up public work, under the probable penalty of being dead within the twelvemonth.

And how much work of every kind, intellectual as well as physical, is spoiled or hindered; how many deaths

occur from consumption and other complaints which are the result of this habit of tight lacing, is known

partly to the medical men, who lift up their voices in vain, and known fully to Him who will not interfere

with the least of His own physical laws to save human beings from the consequences of their own wilful

And nowto end this lecture with more pleasing thoughtsWhat becomes of this breath which passes from

your lips? Is it merely harmful; merely waste? God forbid! God has forbidden that anything should be merely

harmful or merely waste in this so wise and wellmade world. The carbonic acid which passes from your lips

at every breathay, even that which oozes from the volcano crater when the eruption is pastis a precious

boon to thousands of things of which you have daily need. Indeed there is a sort of hint at physical truth in

the old fairy tale of the girl, from whose lips, as she spoke, fell pearls and diamonds; for the carbonic acid of

your breath may help hereafter to make the pure carbonate of lime of a pearl, or the still purer carbon of a

diamond. Nay, it may goin such a world of transformations do we liveto make atoms of coal strata,

which after being buried for ages beneath deep seas, shall be upheaved in continents which are yet unborn,

and there be burnt for the use of a future race of men, and resolved into their original elements. Coal, wise

men tell us, is on the whole breath and sunlight; the breath of living creatures who have lived in the vast

swamps and forests of some primeval world, and the sunlight which transmuted that breath into the leaves

and stems of trees, magically locked up for ages in that black stone, to become, when it is burnt at last, light

and carbonic acid as it was at first. For though you must not breathe your breath again, you may at least eat

your breath, if you will allow the sun to transmute it for you into vegetables; or you may enjoy its fragrance

and its colour in the shape of a lily or a rose. When you walk in a sunlit garden, every word you speak, every

breath you breathe, is feeding the plants and flowers around. The delicate surface of the green leaves absorbs

the carbonic acid, and parts it into its elements, retaining the carbon to make woody fibre, and courteously

returning you the oxygen to mingle with the fresh air, and be inhaled by your lungs once more. Thus do you

feed the plants; just as the plants feed you: while the great lifegiving sun feeds both; and the geranium

standing in the sick child's window does not merely rejoice his eye and mind by its beauty and freshness, but

repays honestly the trouble spent on it; absorbing the breath which the child needs not, and giving to him the

So are the services of all things constituted according to a Divine and wonderful order, and knit together in

mutual dependence and mutual helpfulnessa fact to be remembered with hope and comfort: but also with

awe and fear. For as in that which is above nature, so in nature itself; he that breaks one physical law is guilty

of all. The whole universe, as it were, takes up arms against him; and all nature, with her numberless and

unseen powers, is ready to avenge herself on him, and on his children after him, he knows not when nor

where. He, on the other hand, who obeys the laws of nature with his whole heart and mind, will find all things

working together to him for good. He is at peace with the physical universe. He is helped and befriended

alike by the sun above his head and the dust beneath his feet; because he is obeying the will and mind of Him

who made sun, and dust, and all things; and who has given them a law which cannot be broken.

Ladies,I have chosen for the title of this lecture a practical and prosaic word, because I intend the lecture

itself to be as practical and prosaic as I can make it, without becoming altogether dull.

The question of the better or worse education of women is one far too important for vague sentiment, wild

It is a practical question, on which depends not merely money or comfort, but too often health and life, as the

consequences of a good education, or disease and deathI know too well of what I speakas the

I beg you, therefore, to put out of your minds at the outset any fancy that I wish for a social revolution in the

position of women; or that I wish to see them educated by exactly the same methods, and in exactly the same

subjects, as men. British lads, on an average, are far too illtaught still, in spite of all recent improvements,

Moreover, whatever defects there may have beenand defects there must be in all things humanin the

past education of British women, it has been most certainly a splendid moral success. It has made, by the

grace of God, British women the best wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, that the world, as far as I can

Let those who will, sneer at the women of England. We who have to do the work and to fight the battle of life

know the inspiration which we derive from their virtue, their counsel, their tenderness, andbut too

oftenfrom their compassion and their forgiveness. There is, I doubt not, still left in England many a man

with chivalry and patriotism enough to challenge the world to show so perfect a specimen of humanity as a

But just because a cultivated British woman is so perfect a personage; therefore I wish to see all British

women cultivated. Because the womanhood of England is so precious a treasure; I wish to see none of it

wasted. It is an invaluable capital, or material, out of which the greatest possible profit to the nation must be

made. And that can only be done by Thrift; and that, again, can only be attained by knowledge.

Consider that word Thrift. If you will look at "Dr. Johnson's Dictionary," or if you know your "Shakespeare,"

you will see that Thrift signified originally profits, gain, riches gottenin a word, the marks of a man's

How, then, did the word Thrift get to mean parsimony, frugality, the opposite of waste? Just in the same way

as economywhich first, of course, meant the management of a householdgot to mean also the opposite

It was found that in commerce, in husbandry, in any process, in fact, men throve in proportion as they saved

Now this is a great law which runs through life; one of those laws of naturecall them, rather, laws of

Godwhich apply not merely to political economy, to commerce, and to mechanics; but to physiology, to

The secret of thriving is thrift; saving of force; to get as much work as possible done with the least

And the secret of thrift is knowledge. In proportion as you know the laws and nature of a subject, you will be

able to work at it easily, surely, rapidly, successfully; instead of wasting your money or your energies in

mistaken schemes, irregular efforts, which end in disappointment and exhaustion.

The secret of thrift, I say, is knowledge. The more you know, the more you can save yourself and that which

A knowledge of the laws of commercial credit, we all know, saves capital, enabling a less capital to do the

work of a greater. Knowledge of the electric telegraph saves time; knowledge of writing saves human speech

and locomotion; knowledge of domestic economy saves income; knowledge of sanitary laws saves health and

life; knowledge of the laws of the intellect saves wear and tear of brain; and knowledge of the laws of the

A welleducated moral sense, a wellregulated character, saves from idleness and ennui, alternating with

sentimentality and excitement, those tenderer emotions, those deeper passions, those nobler aspirations of

humanity, which are the heritage of the woman far more than of the man; and which are potent in her, for evil

or for good, in proportion as they are left to run wild and undisciplined; or are trained and developed into

graceful, harmonious, selfrestraining strength, beautiful in themselves, and a blessing to all who come under

What, therefore, I recommend to ladies in this lecture is thrift: thrift of themselves and of their own powers:

And because it is well to begin with the lower applications of thrift, and to work up to the higher, I am much

pleased to hear that the first course of the proposed lectures to women in this place will be one on domestic

I presume that the learned gentleman who will deliver these lectures will be the last to mean by that term the

mere saving of money; that he will tell you, asbeing a Germanhe will have good reason to know, that

the young lady who learns thrift in domestic economy is also learning thrift of the very highest faculties of

her immortal spirit. He will tell you, I doubt not for he must knowhow you may see in Germany young

ladies living in what we more luxurious British would consider something like poverty; cooking, waiting at

table, and performing many a household office which would be here considered menial; and yet finding time

for a cultivation of the intellect, which is, unfortunately, too rare in Great Britain.

The truth is, that we British are too wealthy. We make money, if not too rapidly for the good of the nation at

large, yet too rapidly, I fear, for the good of the daughters of those who make it. Their temptationI do not,

of course, say they all yield to itbut their temptation is, to waste of the very simplestI had almost said, if

I may be pardoned the expression, of the most barbarickind; to an oriental waste of money, and waste of

time; to a fondness for mere finery, pardonable enough, but still a waste; and to the mistaken fancy that it is

But it is not of this sort of waste of which I wish to speak to day. I only mention the matter in passing, to

show that high intellectual culture is not incompatible with the performance of homely household duties, and

that the moral success of which I spoke just now need not be injured, any more than it is in Germany, by

intellectual success likewise. I trust that these words may reassure those parents, if any such there be here,

who may fear that these lectures will withdraw women from their existing sphere of interest and activity.

That they should entertain such a fear is not surprising, after the extravagant opinions and schemes which

The programme to these lectures expressly disclaims any such intentions; and I, as a husband and a father,

"To fit women for the more enlightened performance of their special duties;" to help them towards learning

how to do better what we doubt not many of them are already doing well; is, I honestly believe, the only

Let us see now how some of these special duties can be better performed by help of a little enlightenment as

Now, no man will denycertainly no man who is past fortyfive, and whose digestion is beginning to quail

before the lumps of beef and mutton which are the boast of a British kitchen, and to prefer, with Justice

Shallow, and, I presume, Sir John Falstaff also, "any pretty little tiny kickshaws"no man, I say, who has

reached that age, but will feel it a practical comfort to him to know that the young ladies of his family are at

all events good cooks; and understand, as the French do, thrift in the matter of food.

Neither will any parent who wishes, naturally enough, that his daughters should cost him as little as possible;

and wishes, naturally enough also, that they should be as well dressed as possible, deny that it would be a

good thing for them to be practical milliners and mantuamakers; and, by making their own clothes

But, beside this thrift in clothing, I am not alone, I believe, in wishing for some thrift in the energy which

produces it. Labour misapplied, you will agree, is labour wasted; and as dress, I presume, is intended to adorn

the person of the wearer, the making a dress which only disfigures her may be considered as a plain case of

waste. It would be impertinent in me to go into any details: but it is impossible to walk about the streets now

without passing young people who must be under a deep delusion as to the success of their own toilette.

Instead of graceful and noble simplicity of form, instead of combinations of colour at once rich and delicate,

because in accordance with the chromatic laws of nature, one meets with phenomena more and more painful

to the eye, and startling to common sense, till one would be hardly more astonished, and certainly hardly

more shocked, if in a year or two, one should pass someone going about like a Chinese lady, with pinched

feet, or like a savage of the Amazons, with a wooden bung through her lower lip. It is easy to complain of

these monstrosities: but impossible to cure them, it seems to me, without an education of the taste, an

education in those laws of nature which produce beauty in form and beauty in colour. For that the cause of

these failures lies in want of education is patent. They are most common inI had almost said they are

confined tothose classes of welltodo persons who are the least educated; who have no standard of taste

of their own; and who do not acquire any from cultivated friends and relations: who, in consequence, dress

themselves blindly according to what they conceive to be the Paris fashions, conveyed at thirdhand through

an equally uneducated dressmaker; in innocent ignorance of the factfor fact I believe it to bethat Paris

fashions are invented now not in the least for the sake of beauty, but for the sake of producing, through

variety, increased expenditure, and thereby increased employment; according to the strange system which

now prevails in France of compelling, if not prosperity, at least the signs of it; and like schoolboys before a

Let British ladies educate themselves in those laws of beauty which are as eternal as any other of nature's

laws; which may be seen fulfilled, as Mr. Ruskin tells us, so eloquently in every flower and every leaf, in

every sweeping down and rippling wave; and they will be able to invent graceful and economical dresses for

Let me now go a step farther, and ask you to consider this: There are in England now a vast number, and an

increasing number, of young women who, from various circumstances which we all know, must in after life

be either the mistresses of their own fortunes, or the earners of their own bread. And, to do that wisely and

well, they must be more or less women of business, and to be women of business they must know something

of the meaning of the words Capital, Profit, Price, Value, Labour, Wages, and of the relation between those

two last. In a word, they must know a little political economy. Nay, I sometimes think that the mistress of

every household might find, not only thrift of money, but thrift of brain; freedom from mistakes, anxieties,

worries of many kinds, all of which eat out the health as well as the heart, by a little sound knowledge of the

When we consider that every mistress of a household is continually buying, if not selling; that she is

continually hiring and employing labour in the form of servants; and very often, into the bargain, keeping her

husband's accounts: I cannot but think that her hardworked brain might be clearer, and her hardtried desire

to do her duty by every subject in her little kingdom, might be more easily satisfied, had she read something

of what Mr. John Stuart Mill has written, especially on the duties of employer and employed. A capitalist, a

commercialist, an employer of labour, and an accountantevery mistress of a household is all these, whether

she likes it or not; and it would be surely well for her, in so very complicated a state of society as this, not to

trust merely to that motherwit, that intuitive sagacity and innate power of ruling her fellowcreatures, which

carries women so nobly through their work in simpler and less civilised societies.

And here I stop to answer those who may sayas I have heard it saidThat a woman's intellect is not fit for

business; that when a woman takes to business, she is apt to do it ill, and unpleasantly likewise, to be more

suspicious, more irritable, more grasping, more unreasonable, than regular men of business would be:

thatas I have heard it put"a woman does not fight fair." The answer is simple. That a woman's intellect

is eminently fitted for business is proved by the enormous amount of business she gets through without any

special training for it: but those faults in a woman of which some men complain are simply the results of her

not having had a special training. She does not know the laws of business. She does not know the rules of the

game she is playing; and therefore she is playing it in the dark, in fear and suspicion, apt to judge of questions

on personal grounds, often offending those with whom she has to do, and oftener still making herself

miserable over matters of law or of business, on which a little sound knowledge would set her head and her

When I have seen widows, having the care of children, of a great household, of a great estate, of a great

business, struggling heroically, and yet often mistakenly; blamed severely for selfishness and ambition, while

they were really sacrificing themselves with the divine instinct of a mother for their children's interest: I have

stood by with mingled admiration and pity, and said to myself: "How nobly she is doing the work without

teaching! How much more nobly would she have done it had she been taught! She is now doing her work at

the most enormous waste of energy and of virtue: had she had knowledge, thrift would have followed it; she

would have done more work with far less trouble. She will probably kill herself if she goes on; while sound

knowledge would have saved her health, saved her heart, saved her friends, and helped the very loved ones

A little political economy, therefore, will at least do no harm to a woman; especially if she have to take care

of herself in after life; neither, I think, will she be much harmed by some sound knowledge of another

subject, which I see promised in these lectures: "Natural philosophy, in its various branches, such as the

A little knowledge of the laws of light, for instance, would teach many women that by shutting themselves up

day after day, week after week, in darkened rooms, they are as certainly committing a waste of health,

destroying their vital energy, and diseasing their brains, as if they were taking so much poison the whole

A little knowledge of the laws of heat would teach women not to clothe themselves and their children after

foolish and insufficient fashions, which in this climate sow the seeds of a dozen different diseases, and have

to be atoned for by perpetual anxieties, and by perpetual doctors' bills; and as for a little knowledge of the

laws of electricity, one thrift I am sure it would producethrift to us men, of having to answer continual

inquiries as to what the weather is going to be, when a slight knowledge of the barometer, or of the form of

the clouds and the direction of the wind, would enable many a lady to judge for herself, and not, after inquiry

on inquiry, regardless of all warnings, go out on the first appearance of a strip of blue sky, and come home

wet through, with what she calls "only a chill," but which really means a nail driven into her coffina

probable shortening, though it may be a very small one, of her mortal life; because the food of the next

twentyfour hours, which should have gone to keep the vital heat at its normal standard, will have to be

Ladies, these are subjects on which I must beg to speak a little more at length, premising them by one

statement, which may seem jest, but is solemn earnestthat, if the medical men of this or any other city were

what the world now calls "alive to their own interests"that is, to the mere making of money; instead of

being, what medical men are, the most generous, disinterested, and highminded class in these realms, then

they would oppose by all means in their power the delivery of lectures on natural philosophy to women. For

if women act upon what they learn in those lecturesand having women's hearts, they will act upon it

there ought to follow a decrease of sickness and an increase of health, especially among children; a thrift of

life, and a thrift of expense besides, which would very seriously affect the income of medical men.

For let me ask you, ladies, with all courtesy, but with all earnestnessAre you aware of certain facts, of

which every one of those excellent medical men is too well aware? Are you aware that more human beings

are killed in England every year by unnecessary and preventable diseases than were killed at Waterloo or at

Sadowa? Are you aware that the great majority of those victims are children? Are you aware that the diseases

which carry them off are for the most part such as ought to be specially under the control of the women who

love them, pet them, educate them, and would in many cases, if need be, lay down their lives for them? Are

you aware, again, of the vast amount of disease which, so both wise mothers and wise doctors assure me, is

engendered in the sleepingroom from simple ignorance of the laws of ventilation, and in the schoolroom

likewise, from simple ignorance of the laws of physiology? from an ignorance of which I shall mention no

other case here save onethat too often from ignorance of signs of approaching disease, a child is punished

for what is called idleness, listlessness, wilfulness, sulkiness; and punished, too, in the unwisest wayby an

increase of tasks and confinement to the house, thus overtasking still more a brain already overtasked, and

depressing still more, by robbing it of oxygen and of exercise, a system already depressed? Are you aware, I

ask again, of all this? I speak earnest upon this point, because I speak with experience. As a single instance: a

medical man, a friend of mine, passing by his own schoolroom, heard one of his own little girls screaming

and crying, and went in. The governess, an excellent woman, but wholly ignorant of the laws of physiology,

complained that the child had of late become obstinate and would not learn; and that therefore she must

punish her by keeping her indoors over the unlearnt lessons. The father, who knew that the child was usually

a very good one, looked at her carefully for a little while; sent her out of the schoolroom; and then said, "That

child must not open a book for a month." "If I had not acted so," he said to me, "I should have had that child

Now, in the face of such facts as these, is it too much to ask of mothers, sisters, aunts, nurses,

governessesall who may be occupied in the care of children, especially of girlsthat they should study

thrift of human health and human life, by studying somewhat the laws of life and health? There are booksI

may say a whole literature of bookswritten by scientific doctors on these matters, which are in my mind far

more important to the schoolroom than half the trashy accomplishments, socalled, which are expected to be

known by governesses. But are they bought? Are they even to be bought, from most country booksellers? Ah,

for a little knowledge of the laws to the neglect of which is owing so much fearful disease, which, if it does

not produce immediate death, too often leaves the constitution impaired for years to come. Ah the waste of

health and strength in the young; the waste, too, of anxiety and misery in those who love and tend them. How

much of it might be saved by a little rational education in those laws of nature which are the will of God

about the welfare of our bodies, and which, therefore, we are as much bound to know and to obey, as we are

bound to know and obey the spiritual laws whereon depends the welfare of our souls.

Pardon me, ladies, if I have given a moment's pain to anyone here: but I appeal to every medical man in the

room whether I have not spoken the truth; and having such an opportunity as this, I felt that I must speak for

the sake of children, and of women likewise, or else for ever hereafter hold my peace.

Let me pass on from this painful subjectfor painful it has been to me for many yearsto a question of

intellectual thriftby which I mean just now thrift of words; thrift of truth; restraint of the tongue; accuracy

Mothers complain to me that girls are apt to benot intentionally untruthfulbut exaggerative, prejudiced,

incorrect, in repeating a conversation or describing an event; and that from this fault arise, as is to be

expected, misunderstandings, quarrels, rumours, slanders, scandals, and what not.

Now, for this waste of words there is but one cure: and if I be told that it is a natural fault of women; that they

cannot take the calm judicial view of matters which men boast, and often boast most wrongly, that they can

take; that under the influence of hope, fear, delicate antipathy, honest moral indignation, they will let their

eyes and ears be governed by their feelings; and see and hear only what they wish to see and hearI answer,

that it is not for me as a man to start such a theory; but that if it be true, it is an additional argument for some

education which will correct this supposed natural defect. And I say deliberately that there is but one sort of

education which will correct it; one which will teach young women to observe facts accurately, judge them

calmly, and describe them carefully, without adding or distorting: and that is, some training in natural

I beg you not to be startled: but if you are, then test the truth of my theory by playing tonight at the game

called "Russian Scandal;" in which a story, repeated in secret by one player to the other, comes out at the end

of the game, owing to the inaccurate andforgive me if I say ituneducated brains through which it has

passed, utterly unlike its original; not only ludicrously maimed and distorted, but often with the most fantastic

additions of events, details, names, dates, places, which each player will aver that he received from the player

before him. I am afraid that too much of the average gossip of every city, town, and village is little more than

a game of "Russian Scandal;" with this difference that while one is but a game, the other is but too

But now, if among your party there shall be an average lawyer, medical man, or man of science, you will find

that he, and perhaps he alone, will be able to retail accurately the story which has been told him. And why?

Simply because his mind has been trained to deal with facts; to ascertain exactly what he does see or hear,

Now, you certainly cannot make young ladies barristers or attorneys; nor employ their brains in getting up

cases, civil or criminal; and as for chemistry, they and their parents may have a reasonable antipathy to

smells, blackened fingers, and occasional explosions and poisonings. But you may make them something of

I could say much on this point: allow me at least to say this: I verify believe that any young lady who would

employ some of her leisure time in collecting wild flowers, carefully examining them, verifying them, and

arranging them; or who would in her summer trip to the seacoast do the same by the common objects of the

shore, instead of wasting her holiday, as one sees hundreds doing, in lounging on benches on the esplanade,

reading worthless novels, and criticising dressesthat such a young lady, I say, would not only open her

own mind to a world of wonder, beauty, and wisdom, which, if it did not make her a more reverent and pious

soul, she cannot be the woman which I take for granted she is; but would save herself from the habitI had

almost said the necessityof gossip; because she would have things to think of and not merely persons; facts

instead of fancies; while she would acquire something of accuracy, of patience, of methodical observation

and judgment, which would stand her in good stead in the events of daily life, and increase her power of

bridling her tongue and her imagination. "God is in heaven, and thou upon earth; therefore let thy words be

few;" is the lesson which those are learning all day long who study the works of God with reverent accuracy,

lest by misrepresenting them they should be tempted to say that God has done that which He has not; and in

And now I come to a thrift of the highest kind, as contrasted with a waste the most deplorable and ruinous of

all; thrift of those faculties which connect us with the unseen and spiritual world; with humanity, with Christ,

with God; thrift of the immortal spirit. I am not going now to give you a sermon on duty. You hear such, I

doubt not, in church every Sunday, far better than I can preach to you. I am going to speak rather of thrift of

the heart, thrift of the emotions. How they are wasted in these days in reading what are called sensation

novels, all know but too well; how British literatureall that the best hearts and intellects among our

forefathers have bequeathed to usis neglected for light fiction, the reading of which is, as a lady well said,

"the worst form of intemperancedramdrinking and opiumeating, intellectual and moral."

I know that the young will delightthey have delighted in all ages, and will to the end of timein fictions

which deal with that "oldest tale which is for ever new." Novels will be read: but that is all the more reason

why women should be trained, by the perusal of a higher, broader, deeper literature, to distinguish the good

novel from the bad, the moral from the immoral, the noble from the base, the true work of art from the sham

which hides its shallowness and vulgarity under a tangled plot and melodramatic situations. She should

learnand that she can only learn by cultivationto discern with joy, and drink in with reverence, the good,

the beautiful, and the true; and to turn with the fine scorn of a pure and strong womanhood from the bad, the

And if any parent should be inclined to reply: "Why lay so much stress upon educating a girl in British

literature? Is it not far more important to make our daughters read religious books?" I answerOf course it

is. I take for granted that that is done in a Christian land. But I beg you to recollect that there are books and

books; and that in these days of a free press it is impossible, in the long run, to prevent girls reading books of

very different shades of opinion, and very different religious worth. It may be, therefore, of the very highest

importance to a girl to have her intellect, her taste, her emotions, her moral sense, in a word, her whole

womanhood, so cultivated and regulated that she shall herself be able to discern the true from the false, the

orthodox from the unorthodox, the truly devout from the merely sentimental, the Gospel from its counterfeits.

I should have thought that there never had been in Britain, since the Reformation, a crisis at which young

Englishwomen required more careful cultivation on these matters; if at least they are to be saved from making

themselves and their families miserable; and from endingas I have known too many endwith broken

Take warning by what you see abroad. In every country where the women are uneducated, unoccupied;

where their only literature is French novels or translations of themin every one of those countries the

women, even to the highest, are the slaves of superstition, and the puppets of priests. In proportion as, in

certain other countriesnotably, I will say, in Scotlandthe women are highly educated, family life and

family secrets are sacred, and the woman owns allegiance and devotion to no confessor or director, but to her

I say plainly, that if any parents wish their daughters to succumb at least to some quackery or superstition,

whether calling itself scientific, or calling itself religiousand there are too many of both just nowthey

cannot more certainly effect their purpose than by allowing her to grow up ignorant, frivolous, luxurious,

vain; with her emotions excited, but not satisfied, by the reading of foolish and even immoral novels.

In such a case the more delicate and graceful the organisation, the more noble and earnest the nature, which

has been neglected, the more certain it isI know too well what I am sayingto go astray.

The time of depression, disappointment, vacuity, all but despair must come. The immortal spirit, finding no

healthy satisfaction for its highest aspirations, is but too likely to betake itself to an unhealthy and exciting

superstition. Ashamed of its own long selfindulgence, it is but too likely to flee from itself into a morbid

asceticism. Not having been taught its Godgiven and natural duties in the world, it is but too likely to betake

itself, from the mere craving for action, to selfinvented and unnatural duties out of the world. Ignorant of

true science, yet craving to understand the wonders of nature and of spirit, it is but too likely to betake itself

to nonsciencenonsense as it is usually calledwhether of spiritrapping and mesmerism, or of

miraculous relics and winking pictures. Longing for guidance and teaching, and never having been taught to

guide and teach itself, it is but too likely to deliver itself up in selfdespair to the guidance and teaching of

those who, whether they be quacks or fanatics, look on uneducated women as their natural prey.

You will see, I am sure, from what I have said, that it is not my wish that you should become mere learned

women; mere female pedants, as useless and unpleasing as male pedants are wont to be. The education which

I set before you is not to be got by mere hearing lectures or reading books: for it is an education of your

whole character; a selfeducation; which really means a committing of yourself to God, that He may educate

you. Hearing lectures is good, for it will teach you how much there is to be known, and how little you know.

Reading books is good, for it will give you habits of regular and diligent study. And therefore I urge on you

strongly private study, especially in case a library should be formed here of books on those most practical

subjects of which I have been speaking. But, after all, both lectures and books are good, mainly in as far as

they furnish matter for reflection: while the desire to reflect and the ability to reflect must come, as I believe,

from above. The honest craving after light and power, after knowledge, wisdom, active usefulness, must

One word more, and I have done. Let me ask women to educate themselves, not for their own sakes merely,

but for the sake of others. For, whether they will or not, they must educate others. I do not speak merely of

those who may be engaged in the work of direct teaching; that they ought to be well taught themselves, who

can doubt? I speak of thoseand in so doing I speak of every woman, young and oldwho exercise as wife,

as mother, as aunt, as sister, or as friend, an influence, indirect it may be, and unconscious, but still potent and

practical, on the minds and characters of those about them, especially of men. How potent and practical that

influence is, those know best who know most of the world and most of human nature. There are those who

considerand I agree with themthat the education of boys under the age of twelve years ought to be

entrusted as much as possible to women. Let me askof what period of youth and manhood does not the

same hold true? I pity the ignorance and conceit of the man who fancies that he has nothing left to learn from

cultivated women. I should have thought that the very mission of woman was to be, in the highest sense, the

educator of man from infancy to old age; that that was the work towards which all the Godgiven capacities

of women pointed; for which they were to be educated to the highest pitch. I should have thought that it was

the glory of woman that she was sent into the world to live for others, rather than for herself; and therefore I

should sayLet her smallest rights be respected, her smallest wrongs redressed: but let her never be

persuaded to forget that she is sent into the world to teach manwhat, I believe, she has been teaching him

all along, even in the savage statenamely, that there is something more necessary than the claiming of

rights, and that is, the performing of duties; to teach him specially, in these socalled intellectual days, that

there is something more than intellect, and that is purity and virtue. Let her never be persuaded to forget

that her calling is not the lower and more earthly one of selfassertion, but the higher and the diviner calling

of selfsacrifice; and let her never desert that higher life, which lives in others and for others, like her

And if any should answer that this doctrine would keep woman a dependent and a slave, I rejoinNot so: it

would keep her what she should bethe mistress of all around her, because mistress of herself. And more, I

should express a fear that those who made that answer had not yet seen into the mystery of true greatness and

true strength; that they did not yet understand the true magnanimity, the true royalty of that spirit, by which

the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.

Surely that is woman's callingto teach man: and to teach him what? To teach him, after all, that his calling

is the same as hers, if he will but see the things which belong to his peace. To temper his fiercer, coarser,

more selfassertive nature, by the contact of her gentleness, purity, selfsacrifice. To make him see that not

by blare of trumpets, not by noise, wrath, greed, ambition, intrigue, puffery, is good and lasting work to be

done on earth: but by wise selfdistrust, by silent labour, by lofty selfcontrol, by that charity which hopeth

all things, believeth all things, endureth all things; by such an example, in short, as women now in tens of

thousands set to those around them; such as they will show more and more, the more their whole womanhood

is educated to employ its powers without waste and without haste in harmonious unity. Let the woman begin

in girlhood, if such be her happy lotto quote the words of a great poet, a great philosopher, and a great

With all things round about her drawn From Maytime and the cheerful dawn; A dancing shape, an image

A spirit, yet a woman too, With household motions light and free, And steps of virgin liberty. A countenance

in which shall meet Sweet records, promises as sweet; A creature not too bright and good For human nature's

daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.

But let her highest and her final development be that which not nature, but selfeducation alone can

A being breathing thoughtful breath; A traveller betwixt life and death. With reason firm, with temperate will

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill. A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and

Fresh from the Marbles of the British Museum, I went my way through London streets. My brain was still

full of fair and grand forms; the forms of men and women whose every limb and attitude betokened perfect

health, and grace, and power, and self possession and selfrestraint so habitual and complete that it had

become unconscious, and undistinguishable from the native freedom of the savage. For I had been up and

down the corridors of those Greek sculptures, which remain as a perpetual sermon to rich and poor, amid our

artificial, unwholesome, and it may be decaying pseudocivilisation, saying with looks more expressive than

all wordsSuch men and women can be; for such they have been; and such you may be yet, if you will use

that science of which you too often only boast. Above all, I had been pondering over the awful and yet tender

beauty of the maiden figures from the Parthenon and its kindred temples. And these, or such as these, I

thought to myself, were the sisters of the men who fought at Marathon and Salamis; the mothers of many a

man among the ten thousand whom Xenophon led back from Babylon to the Black Sea shore; the

ancestresses of many a man who conquered the East in Alexander's host, and fought with Porus in the far

Punjab. And were these women mere dolls? These men mere gladiators? Were they not the parents of

philosophy, science, poetry, the plastic arts? We talk of education now. Are we more educated than were the

ancient Greeks? Do we know anything about education, physical, intellectual, or aesthetic, and I may say

moral likewise religious education, of course, in our sense of the world, they had nonebut do we know

anything about education of which they have not taught us at least the rudiments? Are there not some

branches of education which they perfected, once and for ever; leaving us northern barbarians to follow, or

else not to follow, their example? To produce health, that is, harmony and sympathy, proportion and grace, in

every faculty of mind and bodythat was their notion of education. To produce that, the textbook of their

childhood was the poetry of Homer, and not ofBut I am treading on dangerous ground. It was for this that

the seafaring Greek lad was taught to find his ideal in Ulysses; while his sister at home found hers, it may be,

in Nausicaa. It was for this, that when perhaps the most complete and exquisite of all the Greeks, Sophocles

the good, beloved by gods and men, represented on the Athenian stage his drama of Nausicaa, and, as usual,

could notfor he had no voicehimself take a speaking part, he was content to do one thing in which he

specially excelled; and dressed and masked as a girl, to play at ball amid the chorus of Nausicaa's maidens.

That drama of Nausicaa is lost; and if I dare say so of any play of Sophocles', I scarce regret it. It is well,

perhaps, that we have no second conception of the scene, to interfere with the simplicity, so grand, and yet so

Nausicaa, it must be remembered, is the daughter of a king. But not of a king in the exclusive modern

European or old Eastern sense. Her father, Alcinous, is simply primus inter pares among a community of

merchants, who are called "kings" likewise; and Mayor for lifeso to speakof a new trading city, a

nascent Genoa or Venice, on the shore of the Mediterranean. But the girl Nausicaa, as she sleeps in her

"carved chamber," is "like the immortals in form and face;" and two handmaidens who sleep on each side of

To her there enters, in the shape of some maiden friend, none less than Pallas Athene herself, intent on saving

worthily her favourite, the shipwrecked Ulysses; and bids her in a dream go forthand wash the clothes. {6}

Nausicaa, wherefore doth thy mother bear Child so forgetful? This long time doth rest, Like lumber in the

house, much raiment fair. Soon must thou wed, and be thyself welldrest, And find thy bridegroom raiment

of the best. These are the things whence good repute is born, And praises that make glad a parent's breast.

Come, let us both go washing with the morn; So shalt thou have clothes becoming to be worn.

Know that thy maidenhood is not for long, Whom the Phoeacian chiefs already woo, Lords of the land

whence thou thyself art sprung. Soon as the shining dawn comes forth anew, For wain and mules thy noble

father sue, Which to the place of washing shall convey Girdles and shawls and rugs of splendid hue, This for

thyself were better than essay Thither to walk: the place is distant a long way.

One by the hearth sat, with the maids around, And on the skeins of yarn, seapurpled, spent Her morning toil.

Him to the council bound, Called by the honoured kings, just going forth she found.

And calling him, as she might now, Pappa phile, Dear Papa, asks for the mulewaggon: but it is her father's

But he understood alland she goes forth in the mulewaggon, with the clothes, after her mother has put in

"a chest of all kinds of delicate food, and meat, and wine in a goatskin;" and last but not least, the

indispensable cruse of oil for anointing after the bath, to which both Jews, Greeks, and Romans owed so

much health and beauty. And then we read in the simple verse of a poet too refined, like the rest of his race,

to see anything mean or ridiculous in that which was not ugly and unnatural, how she and her maids got into

the "polished waggon," "with good wheels," and she "took the whip and the studded reins," and "beat them

till they started;" and how the mules, "rattled" away, and "pulled against each other," till

When they came to the fair flowing river Which feeds good lavatories all the year, Fitted to cleanse all sullied

robes soever, They from the wain the mules unharnessed there, And chased them free, to crop their juicy fare

By the swift river, on the margin green; Then to the waters dashed the clothes they bare And in the

streamfilled trenches stamped them clean. Which, having washed and cleansed, they spread before The

sunbeams, on the beach, where most did lie Thick pebbles, by the seawave washed ashore. So, having left

them in the heat to dry, They to the bath went down, and byandby, Rubbed with rich oil, their midday meal

essay, Couched in green turf, the river rolling nigh. Then, throwing off their veils, at ball they play, While the

The mere beauty of this scene all will feel, who have the sense of beauty in them. Yet it is not on that aspect

which I wish to dwell, but on its healthfulness. Exercise is taken, in measured time, to the sound of song, as a

duty almost, as well as an amusement. For this game of ball, which is here mentioned for the first time in

human literature, nearly three thousand years ago, was held by the Greeks and by the Romans after them, to

be an almost necessary part of a liberal education; principally, doubtless, from the development which it

produced in the upper half of the body, not merely to the arms, but to the chest, by raising and expanding the

ribs, and to all the muscles of the torso, whether perpendicular or oblique. The elasticity and grace which it

was believed to give were so much prized, that a room for ballplay, and a teacher of the art, were integral

parts of every gymnasium; and the Athenians went so far as to bestow on one famous ballplayer,

Aristonicus of Carystia, a statue and the rights of citizenship. The rough and hardy young Spartans, when

passing from boyhood into manhood, received the title of ball players, seemingly from the game which it

was then their special duty to learn. In the case of Nausicaa and her maidens, the game would just bring into

their right places all that is liable to be contracted and weakened in women, so many of whose occupations

must needs be sedentary and stooping; while the song which accompanied the game at once filled the lungs

regularly and rhythmically, and prevented violent motion, or unseemly attitude. We, the civilised, need

physiologists to remind us of these simple facts, and even then do not act on them. Those old halfbarbarous

But fair Nausicaa must have beensome will saysurely a mere child of nature, and an uncultivated

So far from it, that her whole demeanour and speech show culture of the very highest sort, full of "sweetness

and light." Intelligent and fearless, quick to perceive the bearings of her strange and sudden adventure,

quick to perceive the character of Ulysses, quick to answer his lofty and refined pleading by words as lofty

and refined, and pious withal;for it is she who speaks to her handmaids the once so famous words:

Strangers and poor men all are sent from Zeus; And alms, though small, are sweet.

Clear of intellect, prompt of action, modest of demeanour, shrinking from the slightest breath of scandal;

while she is not ashamed, when Ulysses, bathed and dressed, looks himself again, to whisper to her maidens

her wish that the Gods might send her such a spouse.This is Nausicaa as Homer draws her; and as many a

scholar and poet since Homer has accepted her for the ideal of noble maidenhood. I ask my readers to study

for themselves her interview with Ulysses, in Mr. Worsley's translation, or rather in the grand simplicity of

the original Greek, {7} and judge whether Nausicaa is not as perfect a lady as the poet who imagined her

or, it may be, drew her from lifemust have been a perfect gentleman; both complete in those "manners"

which, says the old proverb, "make the man:" but which are the woman herself; because with herwho acts

more by emotion than by calculationmanners are the outward and visible tokens of her inward and spiritual

grace, or disgrace; and flow instinctively, whether good or bad, from the instincts of her inner nature.

True, Nausicaa could neither read nor write. No more, most probably, could the author of the Odyssey. No

more, for that matter, could Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, though they were plainly, both in mind and manners,

most highlycultivated men. Reading and writing, of course, have now become necessaries of humanity; and

are to be given to every human being, that he may start fair in the race of life. But I am not aware that Greek

women improved much, either in manners, morals, or happiness, by acquiring them in after centuries. A wise

man would sooner see his daughter a Nausicaa than a Sappho, an Aspasia, a Cleopatra, or even an Hypatia.

Full of such thoughts, I went through London streets, among the Nausicaas of the present day; the girls of the

period; the daughters and hereafter mothers of our future rulers, the great Demos or commercial middle class

of the greatest mercantile city in the world: and noted what I had noted with fear and sorrow, many a day, for

many a year; a type, and an increasing type, of young women who certainly had not had the "advantages,"

Of course, in such a city as London, to which the best of everything, physical and other, gravitates, I could

not but pass, now and then, beautiful persons, who made me proud of those grandes Anglaises aux joues

rouges, whom the Parisiennes ridicule and envy. But I could not help suspecting that their looks showed

them to be either countrybred, or born of country parents; and this suspicion was strengthened by the fact

that, when compared with their mothers, the mother's physique was, in the majority of cases, superior to the

daughters'. Painful it was, to one accustomed to the ruddy wellgrown peasant girl, stalwart, even when, as

often, squat and plain, to remark the exceedingly small size of the average young woman; by which I do not

mean mere want of heightthat is a little matterbut want of breadth likewise; a general want of those

large frames, which indicate usually a power of keeping strong and healthy not merely the muscles, but the

Poor little things. I passed hundredsI pass hundreds every day trying to hide their littleness by the nasty

mass of false hair or what does duty for it; and by the ugly and useless hat which is stuck upon it, making

the head thereby look ridiculously large and heavy; and by the high heels on which they totter onward, having

forgotten, or never learnt, the simple art of walking; their bodies tilted forward in that ungraceful attitude

which is called why that name of all others?a "Grecian bend;" seemingly kept on their feet, and kept

together at all, in that strange attitude, by tight stays which prevented all graceful and healthy motion of the

hips or sides; their raiment, meanwhile, being purposely misshapen in this direction and in that, to hideit

must be presumed deficiencies of form. If that chignon and those heels had been taken off, the figure

which would have remained would have been that too often of a puny girl of sixteen. And yet there was no

doubt that these women were not only full grown, but some of them, alas! wives and mothers.

Poor little things.And this they have gained by socalled civilisation: the power of aping the "fashions" by

which the wornout "Parisienne" hides her own personal defects; and of making themselves, by innate want

of that taste which the "Parisienne" possesses, only the cause of something like a sneer from many a

cultivated man; and of something like a sneer, too, from yonder gipsy woman who passes by, with bold

bright face, and swinging hip, and footstep stately and elastic; far better dressed, according to all true canons

of taste, than most town girls; and thanking her fate that she and her "Rom" are no house dwellers and

But the face which is beneath that chignon and that hat? Wellit is sometimes pretty: but how seldom

handsome, which is a higher quality by far. It is not, strange to say, a wellfed face. Plenty of money, and

perhaps too much, is spent on those fine clothes. It had been better, to judge from the complexion, if some of

that money had been spent in solid wholesome food. She looks as if she livedas she too often does, I

hearon tea and breadandbutter, or rather on bread with the minimum of butter. For as the want of bone

indicates a deficiency of phosphatic food, so does the want of flesh about the cheeks indicate a deficiency of

hydrocarbon. Poor little Nausicaa: that is not her fault. Our boasted civilisation has not even taught her what

to eat, as it certainly has not increased her appetite; and she knows not what every country fellow

knowsthat without plenty of butter and other fatty matters, she is not likely to keep even warm. Better to

eat nasty fat bacon now, than to supply the want of it some few years hence by nastier codliver oil. But there

is no one yet to tell her that, and a dozen other equally simple facts, for her own sake, and for the sake of that

coming Demos which she is to bring into the world; a Demos which, if we can only keep it healthy in body

and brain, has before it so splendid a future: but which, if body and brain degrade beneath the influence of

modern barbarism, is but too likely to follow the Demos of ancient Byzantium, or of modern Paris.

Ay, but her intellect. She is so clever, and she reads so much, and she is going to be taught to read so much

Ah wellthere was once a science called Physiognomy. The Greeks, from what I can learn, knew more of it

than any people since: though the Italian painters and sculptors must have known much; far more than we. In

a more scientific civilisation there will be such a science once more: but its laws, though still in the empiric

stage, are not altogether forgotten by some. Little children have often a fine and clear instinct of them. Many

cultivated and experienced women have a fine and clear instinct of them likewise. And some such would tell

us that there is intellect in plenty in the modern Nausicaa: but not of the quality which they desire for their

country's future good. Self consciousness, eagerness, volubility, petulance in countenance, in gesture, and in

voicewhich last is too often most harsh and artificial, the breath being sent forth through the closed teeth,

and almost entirely at the corners of the mouthand, with all this, a weariness often about the wrinkling

forehead and the drooping lids;all these, which are growing too common, not among the Demos only, nor

only in the towns, are signs, they think, of the unrest of unhealth, physical, intellectual, spiritual. At least they

are as different as two types of physiognomy in the same race can be, from the expression both of face and

gesture, in those old Greek sculptures, and in the old Italian painters; and, it must be said, in the portraits of

Reynolds, and Gainsborough, Copley, and Romney. Not such, one thinks, must have been the mothers of

Britain during the latter half of the last century and the beginning of the present; when their sons, at times,

And if Nausicaa has become such in town: what is she when she goes to the seaside, not to wash the clothes

in freshwater, but herself in saltthe very saltwater, laden with decaying organisms, from which, though

not polluted further by a dozen sewers, Ulysses had to cleanse himself, anointing, too, with oil, ere he was fit

to appear in the company of Nausicaa of Greece? She dirties herself with the dirty saltwater; and probably

chills and tires herself by walking thither and back, and staying in too long; and then flaunts on the pier,

bedizened in garments which, for monstrosity of form and disharmony of colours, would have set that Greek

Nausicaa's teeth on edge, or those of any average Hindoo woman now. Or, even sadder still, she sits on chairs

and benches all the weary afternoon, her head drooped on her chest, over some novel from the "Library;" and

then returns to tea and shrimps, and lodgings of which the fragrance is not unsuggestive, sometimes not

unproductive, of typhoid fever. Ah, poor Nausicaa of England! That is a sad sight to some who think about

the present, and have read about the past. It is not a sad sight to see your old fathertradesman, or clerk, or

what notwho has done good work in his day, and hopes to do some more, sitting by your old mother, who

has done good work in her dayamong the rest, that heaviest work of all, the bringing you into the world

and keeping you in it till nowhonest, kindly, cheerful folk enough, and not inefficient in their own calling;

though an average Northumbrian, or Highlander, or Irish Easterling, beside carrying a brain of five times the

intellectual force, could drive five such men over the cliff with his bare hands. It is not a sad sight, I say, to

see them sitting about upon those seaside benches, looking out listlessly at the water, and the ships, and the

sunlight, and enjoying, like so many flies upon a wall, the novel act of doing nothing. It is not the old for

whom wise men are sad: but for you. Where is your vitality? Where is your "Lebensgluckseligkeit," your

enjoyment of superfluous life and power? Why you cannot even dance and sing, till now and then, at night,

perhaps, when you ought to lie safe in bed, but when the weak brain, after receiving the day's nourishment,

has roused itself a second time into a false excitement of gaslight pleasure. What there is left of it is all going

into that foolish book, which the womanly element in you, still healthy and alive, delights in; because it

places you in fancy in situations in which you will never stand, and inspires you with emotions, some of

which, it may be, you had better never feel. Poor Nausicaaold, some men think, before you have been ever

And now they are going to "develop" you; and let you have your share in "the higher education of women,"

by making you read more books, and do more sums, and pass examinations, and stoop over desks at night

after stooping over some other employment all day; and to teach you Latin, and even Greek!

Well, we will gladly teach you Greek, if you learn thereby to read the history of Nausicaa of old, and what

manner of maiden she was, and what was her education. You will admire her, doubtless. But do not let your

admiration limit itself to drawing a meagre half mediaevalised design of heras she never looked. Copy in

your own person; and even if you do not descend as lowor rise as highas washing the household clothes,

at least learn to play at ball; and sing, in the open air and sunshine, not in theatres and concertrooms by

gaslight; and take decent care of your own health; and dress not like a "Parisienne"nor, of course, like

Nausicaa of old, for that is to ask too much: but somewhat more like an average Highland lassie; and try to

A mien and face In which full plainly I can trace Benignity, and homebred sense, Ripening in perfect

innocence. Here scattered, like a random seed, Remote from men, thou dost not need The embarrassed look

of shy distress And maidenly shamefacedness. Thou wear'st upon thy forehead clear The freedom of a

mountaineer. A face with gladness overspread, Soft smiles, by human kindness bred, And seemliness

complete, that sways Thy courtesies, about thee plays. With no restraint, save such as springs From quick and

eager visitings Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach Of thy few words of English speech. A bondage sweetly

Ah, yet unspoilt Nausicaa of the North; descendant of the dark tenderhearted Celtic girl, and the fair

deephearted Scandinavian Viking, thank God for thy heather and fresh air, and the kine thou tendest, and

the wool thou spinnest; and come not to seek thy fortune, child, in wicked London town; nor import, as they

tell me thou art doing fast, the ugly fashions of that London town, clumsy copies of Parisian cockneydom,

into thy Highland home; nor give up the healthful and graceful, free and modest dress of thy mother and thy

mother's mother, to disfigure the little kirk on Sabbath days with crinoline and corset, highheeled boots, and

It is proposed, just now, to assimilate the education of girls more and more to that of boys. If that means that

girls are merely to learn more lessons, and to study what their brothers are taught, in addition to what their

mothers were taught; then it is to be hoped, at least by physiologists and patriots, that the scheme will sink

into that limbo whither, in a free and tolerably rational country, all imperfect and illconsidered schemes are

sure to gravitate. But if the proposal be a bonafide one: then it must be borne in mind that in the Public

schools of England, and in all private schools, I presume, which take their tone from them, cricket and

football are more or less compulsory, being considered integral parts of an Englishman's education; and that

they are likely to remain so, in spite of all reclamations: because masters and boys alike know that games do

not, in the long run, interfere with a boy's work; that the same boy will very often excel in both; that the

games keep him in health for his work; and the spirit with which he takes to his games when in the lower

school, is a fair test of the spirit with which he will take to his work when he rises into the higher school; and

that nothing is worse for a boy than to fall into that loafing, tuckshop haunting set, who neither play hard

nor work hard, and are usually extravagant, and often vicious. Moreover, they know well that games conduce,

not merely to physical, but to moral health; that in the playingfield boys acquire virtues which no books can

give them; not merely daring and endurance, but, better still, temper, selfrestraint, fairness, honour,

unenvious approbation of another's success, and all that "give and take" of life which stand a man in such

good stead when he goes forth into the world, and without which, indeed, his success is always maimed and

Now: if the promoters of higher education for women will compel girls to any training analogous to our

publicschool games; if, for instance, they will insist on that most natural and wholesome of all exercises,

dancing, in order to develop the lower half of the body; on singing, to expand the lungs and regulate the

breath; and on some gamesball or what notwhich will ensure that raised chest, and upright carriage, and

general strength of the upper torso, without which full oxygenation of the blood, and therefore general health,

is impossible; if they will sternly forbid tight stays, high heels, and all which interferes with free growth and

free motion; if they will consider carefully all which has been written on the "halftime system" by Mr.

Chadwick and others; and accept the certain physical law that, in order to renovate the brain day by day, the

growing creature must have plenty of fresh air and play, and that the child who learns for four hours and

plays for four hours, will learn more, and learn it more easily, than the child who learns for the whole eight

hours; if, in short, they will teach girls not merely to understand the Greek tongue, but to copy somewhat of

the Greek physical training, of that "music and gymnastic" which helped to make the cleverest race of the old

world the ablest race likewise; then they will earn the gratitude of the patriot and the physiologists, by doing

their best to stay the downward tendencies of the physique, and therefore ultimately of the morale, in the

I am sorry to say that, as yet, I hear of but one movement in this direction among the promoters of the "higher

education of women." {8} I trust that the subject will be taken up methodically by those gifted ladies, who

have acquainted themselves, and are labouring to acquaint other women, with the first principles of health;

and that they may avail to prevent the coming generations, under the unwholesome stimulant of competitive

examinations, and so forth, from "developing" into so many Chinesedwarfsor idiots.

Who are these who follow us softly over the moor in the autumn eve? Their wings brush and rustle in the

firboughs, and they whisper before us and behind, as if they called gently to each other, like birds flocking

The woodpecker on the pinestems knows them, and laughs aloud for joy as they pass. The rooks above the

pasture know them, and wheel round and tumble in their play. The brown leaves on the oak trees know them,

and flutter faintly, and beckon as they pass. And in the chattering of the dry leaves there is a meaning, and a

"Take us home, take us home, you soft airmothers, now our fathers the sunbeams are grown dull. Our green

summer beauty is all draggled, and our faces are grown wan and wan; and the buds, the children whom we

nourished, thrust us off, ungrateful, from our seats. Waft us down, you soft airmothers, upon your wings to

the quiet earth, that we may go to our home, as all things go, and become air and sunlight once again."

And the bold young firseeds know them, and rattle impatient in their cones. "Blow stronger, blow fiercer,

slow airmothers, and shake us from our prisons of dead wood, that we may fly and spin away

northeastward, each on his horny wing. Help us but to touch the moorland yonder, and we will take good

care of ourselves henceforth; we will dive like arrows through the heather, and drive our sharp beaks into the

soil, and rise again as green trees toward the sunlight, and spread out lusty boughs."

They never think, bold fools, of what is coming to bring them low in the midst of their pride; of the reckless

axe which will fell them, and the saw which will shape them into logs; and the trains which will roar and

rattle over them, as they lie buried in the gravel of the way, till they are ground and rotted into powder, and

dug up and flung upon the fire, that they too may return home, like all things, and become air and sunlight

And the airmothers hear their prayers, and do their bidding: but faintly; for they themselves are tired and

Tired and sad are the airmothers, and their gardens rent and wan. Look at them as they stream over the black

forest, before the dim southwestern sun; long lines and wreaths of melancholy grey, stained with dull yellow

or dead dun. They have come far across the seas, and done many a wild deed upon their way; and now that

they have reached the land, like shipwrecked sailors, they will lie down and weep till they can weep no more.

Ah, how different were those soft airmothers when, invisible to mortal eyes, they started on their long

skyjourney, five thousand miles across the sea! Out of the blazing caldron which lies between the two New

Worlds, they leapt up when the great sun called them, in whirls and spouts of clear hot steam; and rushed of

their own passion to the northward, while the whirling earth ball whirled them east. So northeastward they

rushed aloft, across the gay West Indian isles, leaving below the glitter of the flyingfish, and the sidelong

eyes of cruel sharks; above the canefields and the plantaingardens, and the cocoagroves which fringe the

shores; above the rocks which throbbed with earthquakes, and the peaks of old volcanoes, cinderstrewn;

while, far beneath, the ghosts of their dead sisters hurried home upon the northeast breeze.

Wild deeds they did as they rushed onward, and struggled and fought among themselves, up and down, and

round and backward, in the fury of their blind hot youth. They heeded not the tree as they snapped it, nor the

ship as they whelmed it in the waves; nor the cry of the sinking sailor, nor the need of his little ones on shore;

hasty and selfish even as children, and, like children, tamed by their own rage. For they tired themselves by

struggling with each other, and by tearing the heavy water into waves; and their wings grew clogged with

seaspray, and soaked more and more with steam. But at last the sea grew cold beneath them, and their clear

steam shrank to mist; and they saw themselves and each other wrapped in dull rainladen clouds. Then they

drew their white cloudgarments round them, and veiled themselves for very shame; and said: "We have

been wild and wayward; and, alas! our pure bright youth is gone. But we will do one good deed yet ere we

die, and so we shall not have lived in vain. We will glide onward to the land, and weep there; and refresh all

things with soft warm rain; and make the grass grow, the buds burst; quench the thirst of man and beast, and

So they are wandering past us, the airmothers, to weep the leaves into their graves; to weep the seeds into

their seedbeds, and weep the soil into the plains; to get the rich earth ready for the winter, and then creep

Weary, and still more weary, slowly and more slowly still, they will journey on far northward, across

fastchilling seas. For a doom is laid upon them, never to be still again, till they rest at the North Pole itself,

the still axle of the spinning world; and sink in death around it, and become white snowclad ghosts.

But will they live again, those chilled airmothers? Yes, they must live again. For all things move for ever;

and not even ghosts can rest. So the corpses of their sisters, piling on them from above, press them outward,

press them southward toward the sun once more; across the floes and round the icebergs, weeping tears of

snow and sleet, while men hate their wild harsh voices, and shrink before their bitter breath. They know not

that the cold bleak snowstorms, as they hurtle from the black northeast, bear back the ghosts of the soft

But as they fly southwards, warm life thrills them, and they drop their loads of sleet and snow; and meet their

young live sisters from the south, and greet them with flash and thunderpeal. And, please God, before many

weeks are over, as we run WestwardHo, we shall overtake the ghosts of these airmothers, hurrying back

toward their father, the great sun. Fresh and bright under the fresh bright heaven, they will race with us

toward our home, to gain new heat, new life, new power, and set forth about their work once more. Men call

them the southwest wind, those airmothers; and their ghosts the northeast trade; and value them, and

rightly, because they bear the traders out and home across the sea. But wise men, and little children, should

look on them with more seeing eyes; and say, "May not these winds be living creatures? They, too, are

For is not our life like their life? Do we not come and go as they? Out of God's boundless bosom, the fount of

life, we came; through selfish, stormy youth and contrite tearsjust not too late; through manhood not

altogether useless; through slow and chill old age, we return from Whence we came; to the Bosom of God

once moreto go forth again, it may be, with fresh knowledge, and fresh powers, to nobler work. Amen.

Such was the prophecy which I learnt, or seemed to learn, from the southwestern wind off the Atlantic, on a

certain delectable evening. And it was fulfilled at night, as far as the gentle air mothers could fulfil it, for

There was a roaring in the woods all night; The rain came heavily and fell in floods; But now the sun is rising

calm and bright, The birds are singing in the distant woods; Over his own sweet voice the stockdove broods,

The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters, And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.

But was I a gloomy and distempered man, if, upon such a morn as that, I stood on the little bridge across a

certain brook, and watched the water run, with something of a sigh? Or if, when the schoolboy beside me

lamented that the floods would surely be out, and his day's fishing spoiled, I said to him"Ah, my boy, that

is a little matter. Look at what you are seeing now, and understand what barbarism and waste mean. Look at

all that beautiful water which God has sent us hither off the Atlantic, without trouble or expense to us.

Thousands, and tens of thousands, of gallons will run under this bridge today; and what shall we do with it?

Nothing. And yet: think only of the mills which that water would have turned. Think how it might have kept

up health and cleanliness in poor creatures packed away in the back streets of the nearest town, or even in

London itself. Think even how country folks, in many parts of England, in three months' time, may be crying

out for rain, and afraid of short crops, and fever, and scarlatina, and cattleplague, for want of the very water

which we are now letting run back, wasted, into the sea from whence it came. And yet we call ourselves a

It is not wise, I know, to preach to boys. And yet, sometimes, a man must speak his heart; even, like Midas's

slave, to the reeds by the river side. And I had so often, fishing up and down full many a stream, whispered

my story to those same riverreeds; and told them that my Lord the Sovereign Demos had, like old Midas,

asses' ears in spite of all his gold, that I thought I might for once tell it the boy likewise, in hope that he might

help his generation to mend that which my own generation does not seem like to mend.

I might have said more to him: but did not. For it is not well to destroy too early the child's illusion, that

people must be wise because they are grown up, and have votes, and ruleor think they rulethe world.

The child will find out how true that is soon enough for himself. If the truth be forced on him by the hot

words of those with whom he lives, it is apt to breed in him that contempt, stormful and therefore barren,

which makes revolutions; and not that pity, calm and therefore helpful, which makes reforms.

My boy, did you ever hear the old Eastern legend about the Gipsies? How they were such good musicians,

that some great Indian Sultan sent for the whole tribe, and planted them near his palace, and gave them land,

and ploughs to break it up, and seed to sow it, that they might dwell there, and play and sing to him.

But when the winter arrived, the Gipsies all came to the Sultan, and cried that they were starving. "But what

have you done with the seedcorn which I gave you?" "O Light of the Age, we ate it in the summer." "And

what have you done with the ploughs which I gave you?" "O Glory of the Universe, we burnt them to bake

Then said that great Sultan"Like the butterflies you have lived; and like the butterflies you shall wander."

Now suppose that the Sultan of all Sultans, who sends the rain, should make a like answer to us foolish

human beings, when we prayed for rain: "But what have you done with the rain which I gave you six months

since?" "We have let it run into the sea." "Then, ere you ask for more rain, make places wherein you can keep

it when you have it." "But that would be, in most cases, too expensive. We can employ our capital more

It is not for me to say what answer might be made to such an excuse. I think a child's still unsophisticated

sense of right and wrong would soon supply one; and probably oneconsidering the complexity, and

difficulty, and novelty, of the whole question somewhat too harsh; as children's judgments are wont to be.

But would it not be well if our children, without being taught to blame anyone for what is past, were taught

something about what ought to be done now, what must be done soon, with the rainfall of these islands; and

about other and kindred healthquestions, on the solution of which depends, and will depend more and more,

the life of millions? One would have thought that those public schools and colleges which desire to

monopolise the education of the owners of the soil; of the great employers of labour; of the clergy; and of all,

indeed, who ought to be acquainted with the duties of property, the conditions of public health, and, in a

word, with the general laws of what is now called Social Science one would have thought, I say, that these

public schools and colleges would have taught their scholars somewhat at least about such matters, that they

might go forth into life with at least some rough notions of the causes which make people healthy or

unhealthy, rich or poor, comfortable or wretched, useful or dangerous to the State. But as long as our great

educational institutions, safe, or fancying themselves safe, in some enchanted castle, shut out by ancient

magic from the living world, put a premium on Latin and Greek verses: a wise father will, during the

"You must understand, my boy, that all the water in the country comes out of the sky, and from nowhere else;

and that, therefore, to save and store the water when it falls is a question of life and death to crops, and man,

and beast; for with or without water is life or death. If I took, for instance, the water from the moors above

and turned it over yonder field, I could double, and more than double, the crops in that field, henceforth."

"Only because the field lies higher than the house; and ifnow here is one thing which you and every

civilised man should know if you have watermeadows, or any 'irrigated' land, as it is called, above a

house, or, even on a level with it, it is certain to breed not merely cold and damp, but fever or ague. Our

forefathers did not understand this; and they built their houses, as this is built, in the lowest places they could

find: sometimes because they wanted to be near ponds, from whence they could get fish in Lent; but more

often, I think, because they wanted to be sheltered from the wind. They had no glass, as we have, in their

windows, or, at least, only latticed casements, which let in the wind and cold; and they shrank from high and

exposed, and therefore really healthy, spots. But now that we have good glass, and sash windows, and doors

that will shut tight, we can build warm houses where we like. And if you ever have to do with the building of

cottages, remember that it is your duty to the people who will live in them, and therefore to the State, to see

that they stand high and dry, where no water can drain down into their foundations, and where fog, and the

poisonous gases which are given out by rotting vegetables, cannot drain down either. You will learn more

about all that when you learn, as every civilised lad should in these days, something about chemistry, and the

laws of fluids and gases. But you know already that flowers are cut off by frost in the low grounds sooner

than in the high; and that the fog at night always lies along the brooks; and that the sour moorsmell which

warns us to shut our windows at sunset, comes down from the hill, and not up from the valley. Now all these

things are caused by one and the same law; that cold air is heavier than warm; and, therefore, like so much

"Well, I have wandered a little from the rainfall: though not as far as you fancy; for fever and ague and

rheumatism usually mean rain in the wrong place. But if you knew how much illness, and torturing pain,

and death, and sorrow arise, even to this very day, from ignorance of these simple laws, then you would bear

them carefully in mind, and wish to know more about them. But now for water being life to the beasts. Do

you rememberthough you are hardly old enoughthe cattleplague? How the beasts died, or had to be

killed and buried, by tens of thousands; and how misery and ruin fell on hundreds of honest men and women

over many of the richest counties of England: but how we in this vale had no cattleplague; and how there

was noneas far as I recollectin the uplands of Devon and Cornwall, nor of Wales, nor of the Scotch

Highlands? Now, do you know why that was? Simply because we here, like those other uplanders, are in

such a country as Palestine was before the foolish Jews cut down all their timber, and so destroyed their own

rainfalla 'land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills.' There is

hardly a field here that has not, thank God, its running brook, or its sweet spring, from which our cattle were

drinking their health and life, while in the claylands of Cheshire, and in the Cambridgeshire fenswhich

were drained utterly drythe poor things drank no water, too often, save that of the very same putrid ponds

in which they had been standing all day long, to cool themselves, and to keep off the flies. I do not say, of

course, that bad water caused the cattleplague. It came by infection from the East of Europe. But I say that

bad water made the cattle ready to take it, and made it spread over the country; and when you are old enough

I will give you plenty of proofsome from the herds of your own kinsmenthat what I say is true."

"And as for pure water being life to human beings: why have we never fever here, and scarcely ever diseases

like feverzymotics, as the doctors call them? Or, if a case comes into our parish from outside, why does the

fever never spread? For the very same reason that we had no cattleplague. Because we have more pure

water close to every cottage than we need. And this I tell you: that the only two outbreaks of deadly disease

which we have had here for thirty years, were both of them, as far as I could see, to be traced to filthy water

having got into the poor folks' wells. Water, you must remember, just as it is life when pure, is death when

foul. For it can carry, unseen to the eve, and even when it looks clear and sparkling, and tastes soft and sweet,

poisons which have perhaps killed more human beings than ever were killed in battle. You have read,

perhaps, how the Athenians, when they were dying of the plague, accused the Lacedaemonians outside the

walls of poisoning their wells; or how, in some of the pestilences of the Middle Ages, the common people

used to accuse the poor harmless Jews of poisoning the wells, and set upon them and murdered them horribly.

They were right, I do not doubt, in their notion that the wellwater was giving them the pestilence: but they

had not sense to see that they were poisoning the wells themselves by their dirt and carelessness; or, in the

case of poor besieged Athens, probably by mere overcrowding, which has cost many a life ere now, and will

cost more. And I am sorry to tell you, my little man, that even now too many people have no more sense than

they had, and die in consequence. If you could see a battlefield, and men shot down, writhing and dying in

hundreds by shell and bullet, would not that seem to you a horrid sight? ThenI do not wish to make you

sad too early, but this is a fact that everyone should knowthat more people, and not strong men only, but

women and little children too, are killed and wounded in Great Britain every year by bad water and want of

water together, than were killed and wounded in any battle which has been fought since you were born.

Medical men know this well. And when you are older, you may see it for yourself in the RegistrarGeneral's

"Well, my dear boy, the true causes of it have only been known for the last thirty or forty years; and we

English are, as good King Alfred found us to his sorrow a thousand years ago, very slow to move, even when

we see a thing ought to be done. Let us hope that in this matterwe have been so in most matters as

yetwe shall be like the tortoise in the fable, and not the hare; and by moving slowly, but surely, win the

"But now think for yourself: and see what you would do to save these people from being poisoned by bad

water. Remember that the plain question is this: The rainwater comes down from heaven as water, and

nothing but water. Rainwater is the only pure water, after all. How would you save that for the poor people

who have none? There; run away and hunt rabbits on the moor: but look, meanwhile, how you would save

"Well? What would you do? Make ponds, you say, like the old monks' ponds, now all broken down. Dam all

"'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings'Well, that will have to be done. That is being done more and

more, more or less well. The good people of Glasgow did it first, I think; and now the good people of

Manchester, and of other northern towns, have done it, and have saved many a human life thereby already.

But it must be done, some day, all over England and Wales, and great part of Scotland. For the mountain tops

and moors, my boy, by a beautiful law of nature, compensate for their own poverty by yielding a wealth

which the rich lowlands cannot yield. You do not understand? Then see. Yon moor above can grow neither

corn nor grass. But one thing it can grow, and does grow, without which we should have no corn nor grass,

and that iswater. Not only does far more rain fall up there than falls here down below, but even in drought

the high moors condense the moisture into dew, and so yield some water, even when the lowlands are burnt

up with drought. The reason of that you must learn hereafter. That it is so, you should know yourself. For on

the high chalk downs, you know, where farmers make a sheeppond, they never, if they are wise, make it in a

valley or on a hillside, but on the bleakest top of the very highest down; and there, if they can once get it

filled with snow and rain in winter, the blessed dews of night will keep some water in it all the summer

through, while the ponds below are utterly dried up. And even so it is, as I know, with this very moor. Corn

and grass it will not grow, because there is too little 'staple,' that is, soluble minerals, in the sandy soil. But

how much water it might grow, you may judge roughly for yourself, by remembering how many brooks like

this are running off it now to carry mere dirt into the river, and then into the sea."

"Because we cannot afford it. No one would buy the water when we had stored it. The rich in town and

country will always take careand quite right they areto have water enough for themselves, and for their

servants too, whatever it may cost them. But the poorer people areand therefore usually, alas! the more

ignorantthe less water they get; and the less they care to have water; and the less they are inclined to pay

for it; and the more, I am sorry to say, they waste what little they do get; and I am still more sorry to say,

spoil, and even steal and sellin London at leastthe stopcocks and leadpipes which bring the water into

their houses. So that keeping a watershop is a very troublesome and uncertain business; and one which is

"But why not let some company manage it, as they manage railways, and gas, and other things?"

"Ahyou have been overhearing a good deal about companies of late, I see. But this I will tell you; that

when you grow up, and have a vote and influence, it will be your duty, if you intend to be a good citizen, not

only not to put the watersupply of England into the hands of fresh companies, but to help to take out of their

hands what watersupply they manage already, especially in London; and likewise the gassupply; and the

railroads; and everything else, in a word, which everybody uses, and must use. For you must understandat

least as soon as you canthat though the men who make up companies are no worse than other men, and

some of them, as you ought to know, very good men; yet what they have to look to is their profits; and the

less water they supply, and the worse it is, the more profit they make. For most water, I am sorry to say, is

fouled before the water companies can get to it, as this water which runs past us will be, and as the Thames

water above London is. Therefore it has to be cleansed, or partly cleansed, at a very great expense. So water

companies have to be inspectedin plain English, watchedat a very heavy expense to the nation by

Government officers; and compelled to do their best, and take their utmost care. And so it has come to pass

that the London water is not now nearly as bad as some of it was thirty years ago, when it was no more fit to

drink than that in the cattleyard tank. But still we must have more water, and better, in London; for it is

growing year by year. There are more than three millions of people already in what we call London; and ere

you are an old man there may be between four and five millions. Now to supply all these people with water is

a duty which we must not leave to any private companies. It must be done by a public authority, as is fit and

proper in a free selfgoverning country. In this matter, as in all others, we will try to do what the Royal

Commission told us four years ago we ought to do. I hope that you will see, though I may not, the day when

what we call London, but which is really ninetenths of it, only a great nest of separate villages huddled

together, will be divided into three great self governing cities, London, Westminster, and Southwark; each

with its own corporation, like that of the venerable and wellgoverned city of London; each managing its

own watersupply, gassupply, and sewage, and other matters besides; and managing them, like Dublin,

Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, and other great northern towns, far more cheaply and far better than any

"But where shall we get water enough for all these millions of people? There are no mountains near London.

Some fifteen years ago the Londoners might have had water from us; and I was one of those who did my best

to get it for them: but the water companies did not choose to take it; and now this part of England is growing

so populous and so valuable that it wants all its little rainfall for itself. So there is another leaf torn out of the

Sibylline books for the poor old water companies. You do not understand: you will some day. But you may

comfort yourself about London. For it happens to be, I think, the luckiest city in the world; and if it had not

been, we should have had pestilence on pestilence in it, as terrible as the great plague of Charles II.'s time.

The old Britons, without knowing in the least what they were doing, settled old London city in the very

centre of the most wonderful natural reservoir in this island, or perhaps in all Europe; which reaches from

Kent into Wiltshire, and round again into Suffolk; and that is, the dear old chalk downs."

"Yes. But the turf on them never burns up, and the streams which flow through them never run dry, and

seldom or never flood either. Do you not know, from Winchester, that that is true? Then where is all the rain

and snow gone, which falls on them year by year, but into the chalk itself, and into the greensands, too,

below the chalk? There it is, soaked up as by a sponge, in quantity incalculable; enough, some think, to

supply London, let it grow as huge as it may. I wish I too were sure of that. But the Commission has shown

itself so wise and fair, and brave likewise too brave, I am sorry to say, for some who might have supported

"But if there was not water enough in the chalk, are not the Londoners rich enough to bring it from any

"My boy, in this also we will agree with the Commissionthat we ought not to rob Peter to pay Paul, and

take water to a distance which other people close at hand may want. Look at the map of England and southern

Scotland; and see for yourself what is just, according to geography and nature. There are four mountain

ranges; four great waterfields. First, the hills of the Border. Their rainfall ought to be stored for the Lothians

and the extreme north of England. Then the Yorkshire and Derbyshire Hillsthe central chine of England.

Their rainfall is being stored already, to the honour of the shrewd northern men, for the manufacturing

counties east and west of the hills. Then come the Lake mountainsthe finest waterfield of all, because

more rain by far falls there than in any place in England. But they will be wanted to supply Lancashire, and

some day Liverpool itself; for Liverpool is now using rain which belongs more justly to other towns; and

besides, there are plenty of counties and towns, down into Cheshire, which would be glad of what water

Lancashire does not want. At last come the Snowdon mountains, a noble waterfield, which I know well; for

an old dream of mine has been, that ere I died I should see all the rain of the Carnedds, and the Glyders, and

Siabod, and Snowdon itself, carried across the Conway river to feed the mining districts of North Wales,

where the streams are now all foul with oil and lead; and then on into the western coal and iron fields, to

Wolverhampton and Birmingham itself: and if I were the engineer who got that done, I should be

happierprouder I dare not saythan if I had painted nobler pictures than Raffaelle, or written nobler plays

than Shakespeare. I say that, boy, in most deliberate earnest. But meanwhile, do you not see that in districts

where coal and iron may be found, and fresh manufactures may spring up any day in any place, each district

has a right to claim the nearest rainfall for itself? And now, when we have got the water into its proper place,

"My boy, are not you and I free citizens; part of the people, the Commonsas the good old word runsof

this country? And are we notor ought we not to be in timebeside that, educated men? By the people,

remember, I mean, not only the handworking man who has just got a vote; I mean the clergy of all

denominations; and the gentlemen of the press; and last, but not least, the scientific men. If those four classes

together were to tell every government'Free water we will have, and as much as we reasonably choose;'

and tell every candidate for the House of Commons: 'Unless you promise to get us as much free water as we

reasonably choose, we will not return you to Parliament:' then, I think, we four should put such a 'pressure' on

Government as no water companies, or other vested interests, could long resist. And if any of those four

classes should hang back, and waste their time and influence over matters far less important and less pressing,

the other three must laugh at them, and more than laugh at them; and ask them: 'Why have you education,

why have you influence, why have you votes, why are you freemen and not slaves, if not to preserve the

comfort, the decency, the health, the lives of men, women, and childrenmost of those latter your own

"Well, after all, that is a more practical matter than speculations grounded on the supposition that all classes

will do their duty. But the first thing we will do will be to give to the very poorest houses a constant supply,

at high pressure; so that everybody may take as much water as he likes, instead of having to keep the water in

"So far from it, wherever the water has been laid on at high pressure, the waste, which is terrible nowsome

say that in London onethird of the water is wastedbegins to lessen; and both water and expense are saved.

If you will only think, you will see one reason why. If a woman leaves a highpressure tap running, she will

flood her place and her neighbour's too. She will be like the magician's servant, who called up the demon to

draw water for him; and so he did: but when he had begun he would not stop, and if the magician had not

"Becauseand really here there are many excuses for the poor old water companies, when so many of them

swerve and gib at the very mention of constant watersupply, like a poor horse set to draw a load which he

feels is too heavy for himbecause, to keep everything in order among dirty, careless, and often drunken

people, there must be officers with lawful authoritywater policemen we will call themwho can enter

people's houses when they will, and if they find anything wrong with the water, set it to rights with a high

hand, and even summon the people who have set it wrong. And that is a power which, in a free country, must

never be given to the servants of any private company, but only to the officers of a corporation or of the

"Well, we shall have, I believe, so much to spare that we may at least do this: In each district of each city, and

the centre of each town, we may build public baths and lavatories, where poor men and women may get their

warm baths when they will; for now they usually never bathe at all, because they will notand ought not, if

they be hardworked folkbathe in cold water during nine months of the year. And there they shall wash

their clothes, and dry them by steam; instead of washing them as now, at home, either under back sheds,

where they catch cold and rheumatism, or too often, alas! in their own living rooms, in an atmosphere of foul

vapour, which drives the father to the publichouse and the children into the streets; and which not only

prevents the clothes from being thoroughly dried again, but is, my dear boy, as you will know when you are

older, a very hotbed of disease. And they shall have other comforts, and even luxuries, these public

lavatories; and be made, in time, graceful and refining, as well as merely useful. Nay, we will even, I think,

have in front of each of them a real fountain; not like the drinkingfountains though they are great and

needful boonswhich you see here and there about the streets, with a tiny dribble of water to a great deal of

expensive stone: but real fountains, which shall leap, and sparkle, and plash, and gurgle; and fill the place

with life, and light, and coolness; and sing in the people's ears the sweetest of all earthly songssave the

"Yes, my boy. And for that very reason, I think we, the people, will have our fountains; if it be but to make

our governments, and corporations, and all public bodies and officers, remember that they allsave Her

Majesty the Queenare our servants, and not we theirs; and that we choose to have water, not only to wash

with, but to play with, if we like. And I believefor the world, as you will find, is full not only of just but of

generous souls that if the watersupply were set really right, there would be found, in many a city, many a

generous man who, over and above his compulsory waterrate, would give his poor fellowtownsmen such a

real fountain as those which ennoble the great square at Carcasonne and the great square at Nismes; to be 'a

"And now, if you want to go back to your Latin and Greek, you shall translate for me into LatinI do not

expect you to do it into Greek, though it would turn very well into Greek, for the Greeks know all about the

matter long before the Romanswhat follows here; and you shall verify the facts and the names, etc., in it

from your dictionaries of antiquity and biography, that you may remember all the better what it says. And by

that time, I think, you will have learnt something more useful to yourself, and, I hope, to your country

hereafter, than if you had learnt to patch together the neatest Greek and Latin verses which have appeared

I have often amused myself, by fancying one question which an old Roman emperor would ask, were he to

rise from his grave and visit the sights of London under the guidance of some minister of state. The august

shade would, doubtless, admire our railroads and bridges, our cathedrals and our public parks, and much

more of which we need not be ashamed. But after awhile, I think, he would look round, whether in London or

in most of our great cities, inquiringly and in vain, for one class of buildings, which in his empire were wont

to be almost as conspicuous and as splendid, because, in public opinion, almost as necessary, as the basilicas

and temples: "And where," he would ask, "are your public baths?" And if the minister of state who was his

guide should answer: "Oh great Caesar, I really do not know. I believe there are some somewhere at the back

of that ugly building which we call the National Gallery; and I think there have been some meetings lately in

the East End, and an amateur concert at the Albert Hall, for restoring, by private subscriptions, some baths

and washhouses in Bethnal Green, which had fallen to decay. And there may be two or three more about the

metropolis; for parish vestries have powers by Act of Parliament to establish such places, if they think fit, and

choose to pay for them out of the rates." Then, I think, the august shade might well make answer: "We used

to call you, in old Rome, northern barbarians. It seems that you have not lost all your barbarian habits. Are

you aware that, in every city in the Roman empire, there were, as a matter of course, public baths open, not

only to the poorest freeman, but to the slave, usually for the payment of the smallest current coin, and often

gratuitously? Are you aware that in Rome itself, millionaire after millionaire, emperor after emperor, from

Menenius Agrippa and Nero down to Diocletian and Constantine, built baths, and yet more baths; and

connected with them gymnasia for exercise, lecturerooms, libraries, and porticoes, wherein the people might

have shade, and shelter, and rest? I remark, bythebye, that I have not seen in all your London a single

covered place in which the people may take shelter during a shower. Are you aware that these baths were of

the most magnificent architecture, decorated with marbles, paintings, sculptures, fountains, what not? And

yet I had heard, in Hades down below, that you prided yourselves here on the study of the learned languages;

Then, if the minister should make reply: "Oh yes, we know all this. Even since the revival of letters in the end

of the fifteenth century a whole literature has been writtena great deal of it, I fear, by pedants who seldom

washed even their hands and facesabout your Greek and Roman baths. We visit their colossal ruins in Italy

and elsewhere with awe and admiration; and the discovery of a new Roman bath in any old city of our isles

"Then why," the shade might ask, "do you not copy an example which you so much admire? Surely England

"On the contrary, our rainfall is almost too great; our soil so damp that we have had to invent a whole art of

subsoil drainage unknown to you; while, as for fuel, our coalmines make us the great fuelexporting people

What a quiet sneer might curl the lip of a Constantine as he replied: "Not in vain, as I said, did we call you,

some fifteen hundred years ago, the barbarians of the north. But tell me, good barbarian, whom I know to be

both brave and wisefor the fame of your young British empire has reached us even in the realms below,

and we recognise in you, with all respect, a people more like us Romans than any which has appeared on

earth for many centuries how is it you have forgotten that sacred duty of keeping the people clean, which

you surely at one time learnt from us? When your ancestors entered our armies, and rose, some of them, to be

great generals, and even emperors, like those two Teuton peasants, Justin and Justinian, who, long after my

days, reigned in my own Constantinople: then, at least, you saw baths, and used them; and felt, after the bath,

that you were civilised men, and not 'sordidi ac foetentes,' as we used to call you when fresh out of your

The minister, I fear, would have to answer that our ancestors were barbarous enough, not only to destroy the

Roman cities, and temples, and basilicas, and statues, but the Roman baths likewise; and then retired, each

man to his own freehold in the country, to live a life not much more cleanly or more graceful than that of the

swine which were his favourite food. But he would have a right to plead, as an excuse, that not only in

England, but throughout the whole of the conquered Latin empire, the Latin priesthood, who, in some

respects, wereto their honourthe representatives of Roman civilisation and the protectors of its

remnants, were the determined enemies of its cleanliness; that they looked on personal dirtlike the old

hermits of the Thebaid as a sign of sanctity; and discouragedas they are said to do still in some of the

Romance countries of Europethe use of the bath, as not only luxurious, but also indecent.

At which answer, it seems to me, another sneer might curl the lip of the august shade, as he said to himself:

"This, at least, I did not expect, when I made Christianity the state religion of my empire. But you, good

"On the contrary, sire, the upper classes of our empire boast of being the cleanliestperhaps the only

perfectly cleanlypeople in the world: except, of course, the savages of the South Seas. And dirt is so far

from being a thing which we admire, that our scientific menthan whom the world has never seen

wiserhave proved to us, for a whole generation past, that dirt is the fertile cause of disease and

"And, therefore," replies the shade, ere he disappears, "of discontent and revolution: followed by a tyranny

endured, as in Rome and many another place, by men once free; because tyranny will at least do for them

what they are too lazy, and cowardly, and greedy, to do for themselves. Farewell, and prosper; as you seem

likely to prosper, on the whole. But if you wish me to consider you a civilised nation: let me hear that you

have brought a great river from the depths of the earth, be they a thousand fathoms deep, or from your nearest

mountains, be they five hundred miles away; and have washed out London's dirtand your own shame. Till

then, abstain from judging too harshly a Constantine, or even a Caracalla; for they, whatever were their sins,

built baths, and kept their people clean. But do your gymnasiayour schools and universities, teach your

The more I have contemplated that ancient story of the Fall, the more it has seemed to me within the range of

probability, and even of experience. It must have happened somewhere for the first time; for it has happened

only too many times since. It has happened, as far as I can ascertain, in every race, and every age, and every

grade of civilisation. It is happening round us now in every region of the globe. Always and everywhere, it

seems to me, have poor human beings been tempted to eat of some "tree of knowledge," that they may be,

even for an hour, as gods; wise, but with a false wisdom; careless, but with a frantic carelessness; and happy,

but with a happiness which, when the excitement is past, leaves too oftenas with that hapless pair in

Eden depression, shame, and fear. Everywhere, and in all ages, as far as I can ascertain, has man been

inventing stimulants and narcotics to supply that want of vitality of which he is so painfully aware; and has

asked nature, and not God, to clear the dull brain, and comfort the weary spirit.

This has been, and will be perhaps for many a century to come, almost the most fearful failing of this poor,

exceptional, over organised, diseased, and truly fallen being called Man, who is in doubt daily whether he

be a god or an ape; and in trying wildly to become the former, ends but too often in becoming the latter.

For man, whether savage or civilised, feels, and has felt in every age, that there is something wrong with him.

He usually confesses this factas is to be expectedof his fellowmen, rather than of himself; and shows

his sense that there is something wrong with them by complaining of, hating, and killing them. But he cannot

always conceal from himself the fact that he, too, is wrong, as well as they; and as he will not usually kill

himself, he tries wild ways to make himself at least feelif not to besomewhat "better." Philosophers may

bid him be content; and tell him that he is what he ought to be, and what nature has made him. But he cares

nothing for the philosophers. He knows, usually, that he is not what he ought to be; that he carries about with

him, in most cases, a body more or less diseased and decrepit, incapable of doing all the work which he feels

that he himself could do, or expressing all the emotions which he himself longs to express; a dull brain and

dull senses, which cramp the eager infinity within him; asso Goethe once said with pitythe horse's

single hoof cramps the fine intelligence and generosity of his nature, and forbids him even to grasp an object,

like the more stupid cat, and baser monkey. And man has a self, too, within, from which he longs too often to

escape, as from a household ghost; who pulls out, at unfortunately rude and unwelcome hours, the ledger of

memory. And so when the tempterbe he who he maysays to him, "Take this, and you will 'feel better.'

Take this, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil:" then, if the temptation was, as the old story says,

too much for man while healthy and unfallen, what must it be for his unhealthy and fallen children?

'Tis life, not death, for which you pant; 'Tis life, whereof your nerves are scant; More life, and fuller, that you

And your tree of knowledge is not the tree of life: it is in every case, the tree of death; of decrepitude,

madness, misery. He prefers the voice of the tempter: "Thou shalt not surely die." Nay, he will say at last:

"Better be as gods awhile, and die: than be the crawling, insufficient thing I am; and live."

Hedid I say? Alas! I must say she likewise. The sacred story is only too true to fact, when it represents the

woman as falling, not merely at the same time as the man, but before the man. Only let us remember that it

represents the woman as tempted; tempted, seemingly, by a rational being, of lower race, and yet of superior

cunning; who must, therefore, have fallen before the woman. Who or what the being was, who is called the

Serpent in our translation of Genesis, it is not for me to say. We have absolutely, I think, no facts from which

to judge; and Rabbinical traditions need trouble no man much. But I fancy that a missionary, preaching on

this story to Negroes; telling them plainly that the "Serpent" meant the first Obeah man; and then comparing

the experiences of that hapless pair in Eden, with their own after certain orgies not yet extinct in Africa and

elsewhere, would be only too well understood: so well, indeed, that he might run some risk of eating himself,

not of the tree of life, but of that of death. The sorcerer or sorceress tempting the woman; and then the woman

tempting the man; this seems to be, certainly among savage peoples, and, alas! too often among civilised

Butparadoxical as it may seemthe woman's yielding before the man is not altogether to her dishonour,

as those old monks used to allege who hated, and too often tortured, the sex whom they could not enjoy. It is

not to the woman's dishonour, if she felt, before her husband, higher aspirations than those after mere animal

pleasure. To be as gods, knowing good and evil, is a vain and foolish, but not a base and brutal, wish. She

proved herself therebythough at an awful costa woman, and not an animal. And indeed the woman's

more delicate organisation, her more vivid emotions, her more voluble fancy, as well as her mere physical

weakness and weariness, have been to her, in all ages, a special source of temptation; which it is to her

honour that she has resisted so much better than the physically stronger, and therefore more culpable, man.

As for what the tree of knowledge was, there really is no need for us to waste our time in guessing. If it was

not one plant, then it was another. It may have been something which has long since perished off the earth. It

may have beenas some learned men have guessedthe sacred Soma, or Homa, of the early Brahmin race;

and that may have been a still existing narcotic species of Asclepias. It certainly was not the vine. The

language of the Hebrew Scripture concerning it, and the sacred use to which it is consecrated in the Gospels,

forbid that notion utterly; at least to those who know enough of antiquity to pass by, with a smile, the theory

that the wines mentioned in Scripture were not intoxicating. And yetas a fresh corroboration of what I am

trying to sayhow fearfully has that noble gift to man been abused for the same end as a hundred other

vegetable products, ever since those mythic days when Dionusos brought the vine from the far East, amid

troops of human Maenads and halfhuman Satyrs; and the Bacchae tore Pentheus in pieces on Cithaeron, for

daring to intrude upon their sacred rites; and since those historic days, too, when, less than two hundred years

before the Christian era, the Bacchic rites spread from Southern Italy into Etruria, and thence to the matrons

of Rome; and under the guidance of Poenia Annia, a Campanian lady, took at last shapes of which no man

must speak, but which had to be put down with terrible but just severity, by the Consuls and the Senate.

But it matters little, I say, what this same tree of knowledge was. Was every vine on earth destroyed

tomorrow, and every vegetable also from which alcohol is now distilled, man would soon discover

something else wherewith to satisfy the insatiate craving. Has he not done so already? Has not almost every

people had its tree of knowledge, often more deadly than any distilled liquor, from the absinthe of the

cultivated Frenchman, and the opium of the cultivated Chinese, down to the bushpoisons wherewith the

tropic sorcerer initiates his dupes into the knowledge of good and evil, and the fungus from which the

Samoiede extracts in autumn a few days of brutal happiness, before the setting in of the long six months'

night? God grant that modern science may not bring to light fresh substitutes for alcohol, opium, and the rest;

and give the white races, in that state of effeminate and godless quasicivilisation which I sometimes fear is

creeping upon them, fresh means of destroying themselves delicately and pleasantly off the face of the earth.

It is said by some that drunkenness is on the increase in this island. I have no trusty proof of it: but I can

believe it possible; for every cause of drunkenness seems on the increase. Overwork of body and mind;

circumstances which depress health; temptation to drink, and drink again, at every corner of the streets; and

finally, money, and ever more money, in the hands of uneducated people, who have not the desire, and too

often not the means, of spending it in any save the lowest pleasures. These, it seems to me, are the true causes

of drunkenness, increasing or not. And if we wish to become a more temperate nation, we must lessen them,

First, overwork. We all live too fast, and work too hard. "All things are full of labour, man cannot utter it." In

the heavy struggle for existence which goes on all around us, each man is tasked more and moreif he be

really worth buying and usingto the utmost of his powers all day long. The weak have to compete on equal

terms with the strong; and crave, in consequence, for artificial strength. How we shall stop that I know not,

while every man is "making haste to be rich, and piercing himself through with many sorrows, and falling

into foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition." How we shall stop that, I say, I

know not. The old prophet may have been right when he said: "Surely it is not of the Lord that the people

shall labour in the very fire, and weary themselves for very vanity;" and in some juster, wiser, more sober

system of society somewhat more like the Kingdom of The Father come on earthit may be that poor

human beings will not need to toil so hard, and to keep themselves up to their work by stimulants, but will

have time to sit down, and look around them, and think of God, and God's quiet universe, with something of

quiet in themselves; something of rational leisure, and manful sobriety of mind, as well as of body.

But it seems to me also, that in such a state of society, whenas it was once well put"every one has

stopped running about like rats:"that those who work hard, whether with muscle or with brain, would not

be surrounded, as now, with every circumstance which tempts toward drink; by every circumstance which

depresses the vital energies, and leaves them an easy prey to pestilence itself; by bad light, bad air, bad food,

bad water, bad smells, bad occupations, which weaken the muscles, cramp the chest, disorder the digestion.

Let any rational man, fresh from the countryin which I presume God, having made it, meant all men, more

or less, to livego through the back streets of any city, or through whole districts of the "black countries" of

England; and then ask himself: Is it the will of God that His human children should live and toil in such dens,

such deserts, such dark places of the earth? Lot him ask himself: Can they live and toil there without

contracting a probably diseased habit of body; without contracting a certainly dull, weary, sordid habit of

mind, which craves for any pleasure, however brutal, to escape from its own stupidity and emptiness? When I

run through, by rail, certain parts of the ironproducing countrystreets of furnaces, collieries, slag heaps,

mud, slop, brick houserows, smoke, dirt and that is all; and when I am told, whether truly or falsely, that

the main thing which the wellpaid and wellfed men of those abominable wastes care for isgood

I sayas I have said elsewhere, and shall do my best to say it againthat the craving for drink and

narcotics, especially that engendered in our great cities, is not a disease, but a symptom of disease; of a far

deeper disease than any which drunkenness can produce; namely, of the growing degeneracy of a population

striving in vain by stimulants and narcotics to fight against those slow poisons with which our greedy

barbarism, miscalled civilisation, has surrounded them from the cradle to the grave. I may be answered that

the old German, Angle, Dane, drank heavily. I know it: but why did they drink, save for the same reason that

the fenman drank, and his wife took opium, at least till the fens were drained? why but to keep off the

depressing effects of the malaria of swamps and new clearings, which told on themwho always settled in

the lowest groundsin the shape of fever and ague? Here it may be answered again that stimulants have

been, during the memory of man, the destruction of the Red Indian race in America. I reply boldly that I do

not believe it. There is evidence enough in Jacques Cartier's "Voyages to the Rivers of Canada;" and evidence

more than enough in Strachey's "Travaile in Virginia"to quote only two authorities out of manyto prove

that the Red Indians, when the white man first met with them, were, in North and South alike, a diseased,

decaying, and, as all their traditions confess, decreasing race. Such a race would naturally crave for "the

water of life," the "usquebagh," or whisky, as we have contracted the old name now. But I should have

thought that the white man, by introducing among these poor creatures iron, firearms, blankets, and above

all, horses wherewith to follow the buffaloherds, which they could never follow on foot, must have done ten

times more towards keeping them alive, than he has done towards destroying them by giving them the chance

of a week's drunkenness twice a year, when they came in to his forts to sell the skins which, without his gifts,

Such a race would, of course, if wanting vitality, crave for stimulants. But if the stimulants, and not the

original want of vitality, combined with morals utterly detestable, and worthy only of the gallowsand here

I know what I say, and dare not tell what I know, from eyewitnesseshave been the cause of the Red

Indians' extinction, then how is it, let me ask, that the Irishman and the Scotsman have, often to their great

harm, been drinking as much whiskyand usually very bad whiskynot merely twice a year, but as often

as they could get it, during the whole Iron Age, and, for aught anyone can tell, during the Bronze Age, and

the Stone Age before that, and yet are still the most healthy, able, valiant, and prolific races in Europe? Had

they drunk less whisky they would, doubtless, have been more healthy, able, valiant, and perhaps even

MORE prolific, than they are now. They show no sign, however, as yet, of going the way of the Red Indian.

But if the craving for stimulants and narcotics is a token of deficient vitality, then the deadliest foe of that

craving, and all its miserable results, is surely the Sanatory Reformer; the man who preaches, andas far as

ignorance and vested interests will allow him, procuresfor the masses, pure air, pure sunlight, pure water,

pure dwellinghouses, pure food. Not merely every fresh drinkingfountain, but every fresh public bath and

wash house, every fresh open space, every fresh growing tree, every fresh open window, every fresh flower

in that windoweach of these is so much, as the old Persians would have said, conquered for Ormuzd, the

god of light and life, out of the dominion of Ahriman, the king of darkness and of death; so much taken from

the causes of drunkenness and disease, and added to the causes of sobriety and health.

Meanwhile one thing is clear: that if this present barbarism and anarchy of covetousness, miscalled modern

civilisation, were tamed and drilled into something more like a Kingdom of God on earth, then we should not

see the reckless and needless multiplication of liquor shops, which disgraces this country now.

As a single instance: in one country parish of nine hundred inhabitants, in which the population has increased

only oneninth in the last fifty years, there are now practically eight public houses, where fifty years ago

there were but two. One, that is, for every hundred and tenor rather, omitting children, farmers,

shopkeepers, gentlemen, and their households, one for every fifty of the inhabitants. In the face of the

allurements, often of the basest kind, which these dens offer, the clergyman and the schoolmaster struggle in

vain to keep up night schools and young men's clubs, and to inculcate habits of providence.

The young labourers over a great part of the south and east, at least of Englandthough never so well off,

for several generations, as they are noware growing up thriftless, shiftless; inferior, it seems to me, to their

grandfathers in everything, save that they can usually read and write, and their grandfathers could not; and

that they wear smart cheap cloth clothes, instead of their grandfathers' smockfrocks.

And if it be so in the country, how must it be in towns? There must come a thorough change in the present

licensing system, in spite of all the "pressure" which certain powerful vested interests may bring to bear on

governments. And it is the duty of every good citizen, who cares for his countrymen, and for their children

Again: I said just now that a probable cause of increasing drunkenness was the increasing material prosperity

of thousands who knew no recreation beyond low animal pleasure. If I am right and I believe that I am

rightI must urge on those who wish drunkenness to decrease, the necessity of providing more, and more

Men drink, and women too, remember, not merely to supply exhaustion, not merely to drive away care; but

often simply to drive away dulness. They have nothing to do save to think over what they have done in the

day, or what they expect to do to morrow; and they escape from that dreary round of business thought in

liquor or narcotics. There are still those, by no means of the handworking class, but absorbed all day by

business, who drink heavily at night in their own comfortable homes, simply to recreate their overburdened

minds. Such cases, doubtless, are far less common than they were fifty years ago: but why? Is not the

decrease of drinking among the richer classes certainly due to the increased refinement and variety of their

tastes and occupations? In cultivating the aesthetic side of man's nature; in engaging him with the beautiful,

the pure, the wonderful, the truly natural; with painting, poetry, music, horticulture, physical sciencein all

this lies recreation, in the true and literal sense of that word, namely, the recreating and mending of the

exhausted mind and feelings, such as no rational man will now neglect, either for himself, his children, or his

But how little of all this is open to the masses, all should know but too well. How little opportunity the

average handworker, or his wife, has of eating of any tree of knowledge, save of the very basest kind, is but

too palpable. We are mending, thank God, in this respect. Free libraries and museums have sprung up of late

in other cities beside London. God's blessing rest upon them all. And the Crystal Palace, and still later, the

Bethnal Green Museum, have been, I believe, of far more use than many average sermons and lectures from

But are we not still far behind the old Greeks, and the Romans of the Empire likewise, in the amount of

amusement and instruction, and even of shelter, which we provide for the people? Recollect theto

medisgraceful fact, that there is not, as far as I am aware, throughout the whole of London, a single portico

or other covered place, in which the people can take refuge during a shower: and this in the climate of

England! Where they do take refuge on a wet day the publican knows but too well; as he knows also where

thousands of the lower classes, simply for want of any other place to be in, save their own sordid dwellings,

spend as much as they are permitted of the Sabbath day. Let us put down "Sunday drinking" by all means, if

we can. But let us remember that by closing the publichouses on Sunday, we prevent no man or woman

from carrying home as much poison as they choose on Saturday night, to brutalise themselves therewith,

perhaps for eightand forty hours. And let us seein the name of Him who said that He had made the

Sabbath for man, and not man for the Sabbathlet us see, I say, if we cannot do something to prevent the

townsman's Sabbath being, not a day of rest, but a day of mere idleness; the day of most temptation, because

And here, perhaps some sweet soul may look up reprovingly and say: "He talks of rest. Does he forget, and

would he have the working man forget, that all these outward palliatives will never touch the seat of the

disease, the unrest of the soul within? Does he forget, and would he have the working man forget, who it was

who saidwho only has the right to say: "Come unto Me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will

give you rest"? Ah no, sweet soul. I know your words are true. I know that what we all want is inward rest;

rest of heart and brain; the calm, strong, selfcontained, selfdenying character; which needs no stimulants,

for it has no fits of depression; which needs no narcotics, for it has no fits of excitement; which needs no

ascetic restraints, for it is strong enough to use God's gifts without abusing them; the character, in a word,

which is truly temperate, not in drink or food merely, but in all desires, thoughts, and actions; freed from the

wild lusts and ambitions to which that old Adam yielded, and, seeking for light and life by means forbidden,

found thereby disease and death. Yes, I know that; and know, too, that that rest is found only where you have

And yet, in such a world as this, governed by a Being who has made sunshine, and flowers, and green grass,

and the song of birds, and happy human smiles, and who would educate by themif we would let HimHis

human children from the cradle to the grave; in such a world as this, will you grudge any particle of that

education, even any harmless substitute for it, to those spirits in prison whose surroundings too often tempt

them, from the cradle to the grave, to fancy that the world is composed of bricks and iron, and governed by

inspectors and policemen? Preach to those spirits in prison, as you know far better than we parsons how to

preach; but let them have besides some glimpses of the splendid fact, that outside their prisonhouse is a

world which God, not man, has made; wherein grows everywhere that tree of knowledge, which is likewise

the tree of life; and that they have a right to some small share of its beauty, and its wonder, and its rest, for

their own health of soul and body, and for the health of their children after them.

The pleasure, gentlemen and ladies, of addressing you here is mixed in my mind with very solemn feelings;

For it was in this very city of Bristol, twentyseven years ago, that I received my first lesson in what is now

called Social Science; and yet, alas! more than ten years elapsed ere I could even spell out that lesson, though

it had been written for me (as well as for all England) in letters of flame, from the one end of heaven to the

I was a schoolboy in Clifton up above. I had been hearing of political disturbances, even of riots, of which I

understood nothing, and for which I cared nothing. But on one memorable Sunday afternoon I saw an object

which was distinctly not political. Otherwise I should have no right to speak of it here.

It was an afternoon of sullen autumn rain. The fog hung thick over the docks and lowlands. Glaring through

That, I was told, was the gate of the new gaol on fire. That the prisoners in it had been set free; that But

why speak of what too many here recollect but too well? The fog rolled slowly upward. Dark figures, even at

that great distance, were flitting to and fro across what seemed the mouth of the pit. The flame

increasedmultipliedat one point after another; till by ten o'clock that night I seemed to be looking down

upon Dante's Inferno, and to hear the multitudinous moan and wail of the lost spirits surging to and fro amid

Right behind Brandon Hillhow can I ever forget it?rose the great central mass of fire; till the little

mound seemed converted into a volcano, from the peak of which the flame streamed up, not red alone, but,

delicately green and blue, pale rose and pearly white, while crimson sparks leapt and fell again in the midst of

that rainbow, not of hope, but of despair; and dull explosions down below mingled with the roar of the mob,

Higher and higher the fog was scorched and shrivelled upward by the fierce heat below, glowing through and

through with red reflected glare, till it arched itself into one vast dome of red hot iron, fit roof for all the

madness down belowand beneath it, miles away, I could see the lonely tower of Dundie shining red; the

symbol of the old faith, looking down in stately wonder and sorrow upon the fearful birththroes of a new

age. Yes.Why did I say just now despair? I was wrong. Birththroes, and not death pangs, those horrors

were. Else they would have no place in my discourse; no place, indeed, in my mind. Why talk over the signs

of disease, decay, death? Let the dead bury their dead, and let us follow Him who dieth not; by whose

The old order changeth, giving place to the new, And God fulfils himself in many ways.

If we will believe this,if we will look on each convulsion of society, however terrible for the time being, as

a token, not of decrepitude, but of youth; not as the expiring convulsions of sinking humanity, but as upward

struggles, upward toward fuller light, freer air, a juster, simpler, and more active life;then we shall be able

to look calmly, however sadly, on the most appalling tragedies of humanityeven on these late Indian

ones and take our share, faithful and hopeful, in supplying the new and deeper wants of a new and nobler

But to return. It was on the Tuesday or Wednesday after, if I recollect right, that I saw another, and a still

more awful sight. Along the north side of Queen Square, in front of ruins which had been three days before

noble buildings, lay a ghastly row, not of corpses, but of corpsefragments. I have no more wish than you to

dilate upon that sight. But there was one charred fragmentwith a scrap of old red petticoat adhering to it,

which I never forgot which I trust in God that I never shall forget. It is good for a man to be brought once

at least in his life face to face with fact, ultimate fact, however horrible it may be; and have to confess to

himself, shuddering, what things are possible upon God's earth, when man has forgotten that his only welfare

Not that I learnt the lesson then. When the first excitement of horror and wonder were past, what I had seen

made me for years the veriest aristocrat, full of hatred and contempt of these dangerous classes, whose

existence I had for the first time discovered. It required many yearsyears, too, of personal intercourse with

the poorto explain to me the true meaning of what I saw here in October twentyseven years ago, and to

learn a part of that lesson which God taught to others thereby. And one part at least of that lesson was this:

That the social state of a city depends directly on its moral state, andI fear dissenting voices, but I must say

what I believe to be truththat the moral state of a city dependshow far I know not, but frightfully, to an

extent as yet uncalculated, and perhaps incalculableon the physical state of that city; on the food, water,

But that lesson, and others connected with it, was learnt, and learnt well, by hundreds. From the sad

catastrophe I date the rise of that interest in Social Science; that desire for some nobler, more methodic, more

permanent benevolence than that which stops at mere almsgiving and charityschools. The dangerous classes

began to be recognised as an awful fact which must be faced; and faced, not by repression, but by

improvement. The "Perils of the Nation" began to occupy the attention not merely of politicians, but of

philosophers, physicians, priests; and the admirable book which assumed that title did but reecho the feeling

Ever since that time, scheme on scheme of improvement has been not only proposed but carried out. A

general interest of the upper classes in the lower, a general desire to do good, and to learn how good can be

done, has been awakened throughout England, such as, I boldly say, never before existed in any country upon

earth; and England, her eyes opened to her neglect of these classes, without whose strong arms her wealth

and genius would be useless, has put herself into a permanent state of confession of sin, repentance, and

amendment, which I verily trust will be accepted by Almighty God; and will, in spite of our present shame

and sorrow, {10} in spite of shame and sorrow which may be yet in store for us, save alive both the soul and

Let us then, that we may learn how to bear our part in this great work of Social Reform, consider awhile great

cities, their good and evil; and let us start from the facts about your own city of which I have just put you in

remembrance. The universal law will be best understood from the particular instance; and best of all, from the

instance with which you are most intimately acquainted. And do not, I entreat you, fear that I shall be rude

enough to say anything which may give pain to you, my generous hosts; or presumptuous enough to impute

blame to anyone for events which happened long ago, and of the exciting causes of which I know little or

nothing. Bristol was then merely in the same state in which other cities of England were, and in which every

city on the Continent is now; and the local exciting causes of that outbreak, the personal conduct of A or B in

it, is just what we ought most carefully to forget, if we wish to look at the real root of the matter. If

consumption, latent in the constitution, have broken out in active mischief, the wise physician will trouble his

head little with the particular accident which woke up the sleeping disease. The disease was there, and if one

thing had not awakened it some other would. And so, if the population of a great city have got into a socially

diseased state, it matters little what shock may have caused it to explode. Politics may in one case, fanaticism

in another, national hatred in a third, hunger in a fourthperhaps even, as in Byzantium of old, no more

important matter than the jealousy between the blue and the green charioteers in the theatre, may inflame a

whole population to madness and civil war. Our business is not with the nature of the igniting spark, but of

I will not, then, to begin, go as far as some who say that "A great city is a great evil." We cannot say that

Bristol was in 1830 or is now, a great evil. It represents so much realised wealth; and that, again, so much

employment for thousands. It represents so much commerce; so much knowledge of foreign lands; so much

distribution of their products; so much science, employed about that distribution.

And it is undeniable, that as yet we have had no means of rapid and cheap distribution of goods, whether

imports or manufactures, save by this crowding of human beings into great cities, for the more easy despatch

of business. Whether we shall devise other means hereafter is a question of which I shall speak presently.

Meanwhile, no man is to be blamed for the existence, hardly even for the evils, of great cities. The process of

their growth has been very simple. They have gathered themselves round abbeys and castles, for the sake of

protection; round courts, for the sake of law; round ports, for the sake of commerce; round coal mines, for the

sake of manufacture. Before the existence of railroads, pennyposts, electric telegraphs, men were compelled

When the population was small, and commerce feeble, the cities grew to no very great size, and the bad

effects of this crowding were not felt. The cities of England in the Middle Age were too small to keep their

inhabitants week after week, month after month, in one deadly vapourbath of foul gas; and though the

mortality among infants was probably excessive, yet we should have seen among the adult survivors few or

none of those stunted and etiolated figures so common now in England, as well as on the Continent. The

green fields were close outside the walls, where lads and lasses went amaying, and children gathered

flowers, and sober burghers with their wives took the evening walk; there were the butts, too, close outside,

where stalwart prenticelads ran and wrestled, and pitched the bar, and played backsword, and practised with

the longbow; and sometimes, in stormy times, turned out for a few months as readytrained soldiers, and,

and then returned again to the workshop and the loom. The very mayor and alderman went forth, at five

o'clock on the summer's morning, with hawk and leapingpole, after a duck and heron; or hunted the hare in

state, probably in the full glory of furred gown and gold chain; and then returned to breakfast, and doubtless

transacted their day's business all the better for their morning's gallop on the breezy downs.

But there was another side to this genial and healthy picture. A hint that this was a state of society which had

its conditions, its limit; and if those were infringed, woe alike to burgher and to prentice. Every now and then

epidemic disease entered the jolly cityand then down went strong and weak, rich and poor, before the

invisible and seemingly supernatural arrows of that angel of death whom they had been pampering

They fasted, they prayed; but in vain. They called the pestilence a judgment of God; and they called it by a

true name. But they know not (and who are we to blame them for not knowing?) what it was that God was

judging therebyfoul air, foul water, unclean backyards, stifling attics, houses hanging over the narrow

street till light and air were alike shut outthat there lay the sin; and that to amend that was the repentance

Yet we cannot blame them. They showed that the crowded city life can bring out human nobleness as well as

human baseness; that to be crushed into contact with their fellowmen, forced at least the loftier and tender

souls to know their fellowmen, and therefore to care for them, to love them, to die for them. Yesfrom one

temptation the city life is free, to which the country life is sadly exposedthat isolation which,

selfcontented and self helping, forgets in its surly independence that man is his brother's keeper. In cities,

on the contrary, we find that the stories of these old pestilences, when the first panic terror has past, become,

however tragical, still beautiful and heroic; and we read of noblehearted men and women palliating ruin

which they could not cure, braving dangers which seemed to them miraculous, from which they were utterly

defenceless, spending money, time, and, after all, life itself upon sufferers from whom they might without

They are very cheering, the stories of the old city pestilences; and the nobleness which they brought out in the

heart of many a townsman who had seemed absorbed in the lust of gainwho perhaps had been really

absorbed in ittill that fearful hour awakened in him his better self, and taught him, not

selfaggrandisement, but selfsacrifice; begetting in him, out of the very depth of darkness, new and divine

light. That nobleness, doubt it not, exists as ever in the hearts of citizens. May God grant us to see the day

when it shall awaken to exert itself, not for the palliation, not even for the cure, but for the prevention, yea,

About the middle of the sixteenth century, as far as I can ascertain, another and even more painful

phenomenon appears in our great citiesa dangerous class. How it arose is not yet clear. That the

Reformation had something to do with the matter, we can hardly doubt. At the dissolution of the monasteries,

the more idle, ignorant, and profligate members of the mendicant orders, unable to live any longer on the

alms of the public, sunk, probably, into vicious penury. The frightful misgovernment of this country during

the minority of Edward the Sixth, especially the conversion of tilled lands into pasture, had probably the

effect of driving the surplus agricultural population into the great towns. But the social history of this whole

period is as yet obscure, and I have no right to give an opinion on it. Another element, and a more potent one,

is to be found in the discharged soldiers who came home from foreign war, and the sailors who returned from

our voyages of discovery, and from our raids against the Spaniards, too often crippled by scurvy, or by Tropic

fevers, with perhaps a little prize money, which was as hastily spent as it had been hastily gained. The later

years of Elizabeth, and the whole of James the First's reign, disclose to us an ugly state of society in the low

streets of all our seaport towns; and Bristol, as one of the great startingpoints of West Indian adventure,

was probably, during the seventeenth century, as bad as any city in England. According to Ben Jonson, and

the playwriters of his time, the beggars become a regular fourth estate, with their own laws, and even their

own languageof which we may remark, that the thieves' Latin of those days is full of German words,

indicating that its inventors had been employed in the Continental wars of the time. How that class sprung up,

we may see, I suppose, pretty plainly, from Shakespeare's "Henry the Fifth." Whether Nym, Pistol, and

Bardolph, Doll and Mrs. Quickly, existed in the reign of Henry the Fifth, they certainly existed in the reign of

Elizabeth. They are probably sketches from life of people whom Shakespeare had seen in Alsatia and the

To these merely rascal elements, male and female, we must add, I fear, those whom mere penury, from

sickness, failure, want of employment drove into dwellings of the lowest order. Such people, though not

criminal themselves, are but too likely to become the parents of criminals. I am not blaming them, poor souls;

God forbid! I am merely stating a fact. When we examine into the ultimate cause of a dangerous class; into

the one property common to all its members, whether thieves, beggars, profligates, or the merely

pauperisedwe find it to be this loss of selfrespect. As long as that remains, poor souls may struggle on

heroically, pure amid penury, filth, degradation unspeakable. But when self respect is lost, they are lost with

it. And whatever may be the fate of virtuous parents, children brought up in dens of physical and moral filth

cannot retrieve selfrespect. They sink, they must sink, into a life on a level with the sights, sounds, aye, the

very smells, which surround them. It is not merely that the child's mind is contaminated, by seeing and

hearing, in overcrowded houses, what he should not hear and see: but the whole physical circumstances of his

life are destructive of self respect. He has no means for washing himself properly: but he has enough of the

innate sense of beauty and fitness to feel that he ought not to be dirty; he thinks that others despise him for

being dirty, and he half despises himself for being so. In all raged schools and reformatories, so they tell me,

the first step toward restoring selfrespect is to make the poor fellows clean. From that moment they begin to

look on themselves as new menwith a new start, new hopes, new duties. For not without the deepest

physical as well as moral meaning, was baptism chosen by the old Easterns, and adopted by our Lord Jesus

Christ, as the sign of a new life; and outward purity made the token and symbol of that inward purity which is

the parent of selfrespect, and manliness, and a clear conscience; of the free forehead, and the eye which

But would that mere physical dirt were all that the lad has to contend with. There is the desire of enjoyment.

Moral and intellectual enjoyment he has none, and can have none: but not to enjoy something is to be dead in

life; and to the lowest physical pleasures he will betake himself, and all the more fiercely because his

opportunities of enjoyment are so limited. It is a hideous subject; I will pass it by very shortly; only asking of

you, as I have to ask daily of myselfthis solemn question: We, who have so many comforts, so many

pleasures of body, soul, and spirit, from the lowest appetite to the highest aspiration, that we can gratify each

in turn with due and wholesome moderation, innocently and innocuouslywho are we that we should judge

the poor untaught and overtempted inhabitant of Temple Street and Lewin's Mead, if, having but one or two

pleasures possible to him, he snatches greedily, even foully, at the little which he has?

And this brings me to another, and a most fearful evil of great cities, namely, drunkenness. I am one of those

who cannot, on scientific grounds, consider drunkenness as a cause of evil, but as an effect. Of course it is a

causea cause of endless crime and misery; but I am convinced that to cure, you must inquire, not what it

The main exciting cause of drunkenness is, I believe, firmly, bad air and bad lodging.

A man shall spend his days between a foul alley where he breathes sulphuretted hydrogen, a close workshop

where he breathes carbonic acid, and a close and foul bedroom where he breathes both. In neither of the three

places, meanwhile, has he his fair share of that mysterious chemical agent without which health is impossible,

the want of which betrays itself at once in the dull eye, the sallow cheeknamely, light. Believe me, it is no

mere poetic metaphor which connects in Scripture, Light with Life. It is the expression of a deep law, one

which holds as true in the physical as in the spiritual world; a case in which (as perhaps in all cases) the laws

of the visible world are the counterparts of those of the invisible world, and Earth is the symbol of Heaven.

Deprive, then, the man of his fair share of fresh air and pure light, and what follows? His blood is not

properly oxygenated: his nervous energy is depressed, his digestion impaired, especially if his occupation be

sedentary, or requires much stooping, and the cavity of the chest thereby becomes contracted; and for that

miserable feeling of languor and craving he knows but one remedythe passing stimulus of alcohol;a

passing stimulus; leaving fresh depression behind it, and requiring fresh doses of stimulant, till it becomes a

habit, a slavery, a madness. Again, there is an intellectual side to the question. The depressed nervous energy,

the impaired digestion, depress the spirits. The man feels low in mind as well as in body. Whence shall he

seek exhilaration? Not in that stifling home which has caused the depression itself. He knows none other than

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is easy to say, God help him; but it is not difficult for man to help him also.

Drunkenness is a very curable malady. The last fifty years has seen it all but die out among the upper classes

Certainly, in the first place, the spread of education. Every man has now a hundred means of rational

occupation and amusement which were closed to his grandfather; and among the deadliest enemies of

drunkenness, we may class the printingpress, the railroad, and the importation of foreign art and foreign

science, which we owe to the late forty years' peace. We can find plenty of amusement now, beside the old

one of sitting round the table and talking over wine. Why should not the poor man share in our gain? But over

and above, there are causes simply physical. Our houses are better ventilated. The stifling old fourpost bed

has given place to the airy curtainless one; and what is more than allwe wash. That morning cold bath

which foreigners consider as Young England's strangest superstition, has done as much, believe me, to

abolish drunkenness, as any other cause whatsoever. With a clean skin in healthy action, and nerves and

muscles braced by a sudden shock, men do not crave for artificial stimulants. I have found that, coeteris

paribus, a man's sobriety is in direct proportion to his cleanliness. I believe it would be so in all classes had

And they ought to have the means. Whatever other rights a man has, or ought to have, this at least he has, if

society demands of him that he should earn his own livelihood, and not be a torment and a burden to his

neighbours. He has a right to water, to air, to light. In demanding that, he demands no more than nature has

given to the wild beast of the forest. He is better than they. Treat him, then, as well as God has treated them.

If we require of him to be a man, we must at least put him on a level with the brutes.

We have then, first of all, to face the existence of a dangerous class of this kind, into which the weaker as

well as the worst members of society have a continual tendency to sink. A class which, not respecting itself,

does not respect others; which has nothing to lose and all to gain by anarchy; in which the lowest passions,

seldom gratified, are ready to burst out and avenge themselves by frightful methods.

For the reformation of that class, thousands of good men are now working; hundreds of benevolent plans are

being set on foot. Honour to them all; whether they succeed or fail, each of them does some good; each of

them rescues at least a few fellowmen, dear to God as you and I are, out of the nether pit. Honour to them

all, I say; but I should not be honest with you this night, if I did not assert most solemnly my conviction, that

reformatories, ragged schools, even hospitals and asylums, treat only the symptoms, not the actual causes, of

the disease; and that the causes are only to be touched by improving the simple physical conditions of the

class; by abolishing foul air, foul water, foul lodging, overcrowded dwellings, in which morality is difficult

and common decency impossible. You may breed a pig in a sty, ladies and gentlemen, and make a learned

pig of him after all; but you cannot breed a man in a sty, and make a learned man of him; or indeed, in the

And remember, that these physical influences of great cities, physically depressing and morally degrading,

The honest and skilled workman feels their effects. Compelled too often to live where he can, in order to be

near his work, he finds himself perpetually in contact with a class utterly inferior to himself, and his children

exposed to contaminating influences from which he would gladly remove them; but how can he? Next door

to him, even in the same house with him, may be enacted scenes of brutality or villainy which I will not

speak of here. He may shut his own eyes and ears to them; but he cannot shut his children's. He may vex his

righteous soul daily, like Lot of old, with the foul conversation of the wicked; but, like Lot of old, he cannot

keep his children from mixing with the inhabitants of the wicked city, learning their works, and at last being

involved in their doom. Oh, ladies and gentlemen, if there be one class for whom above all others I will

plead, in season and out of season; if there be one social evil which I will din into the ears of my countrymen

whenever God gives me a chance, it is this: The honest and the virtuous workman, and his unnatural contact

with the dishonest and the foul. I know well the nobleness which exists in the average of that class, in men

and in wivestheir stern uncomplaining, valorous selfdenial; and nothing more stirs my pity than to see

them struggling to bring up a family in a moral and physical atmosphere where right education is impossible.

We lavish sympathy enough upon the criminal; for God's sake let us keep a little of it for the honest man. We

spend thousands in carrying out the separation of classes in prison; for God's sake let us try to separate them a

little before they go to prison. We are afraid of the dangerous classes; for God's sake let us bestir ourselves to

stop that reckless confusion and neglect which reign in the alleys and courts of our great towns, and which

recruit those very dangerous classes from the class which ought to be, and is still, in spite of our folly,

England's strength and England's glory. Let us no longer stand by idle, and see moral purity, in street after

street, pent in the same noisome den with moral corruption, to be involved in one common doom, as the Latin

tyrant of old used to bind together the dead corpse and the living victim. But let the man who would deserve

well of his city, well of his country, set his heart and brain to the great purpose of giving the workmen

dwellings fit for a virtuous and a civilised being, and like the priest of old, stand between the living and the

Hardly less is the present physical state of our great cities felt by that numerous class which is, next to the

employer, the most important in a city. I mean the shopmen, clerks, and all the men, principally young ones,

who are employed exclusively in the work of distribution. I have a great respect, I may say affection, for this

class. In Bristol I know nothing of them; save that, from what I hear, the clerks ought in general to have a

better status here than in most cities. I am told that it is the practice here for merchants to take into their

houses very young boys, and train them to their business; that this connection between employer and

employed is hereditary, and that clerkships pass from father to son in the same family. I rejoice to hear it. It is

pleasant to find anywhere a relic of the old patriarchal bond, the permanent nexus between master and man,

which formed so important and so healthful an element of the ancient mercantile system. One would gladly

overlook a little favouritism and nepotism, a little sticking square men into round holes, and of round men

into square holes, for the sake of having a class of young clerks and employes who felt that their master's

But over and above this, whenever I have come in contact with this clerk and shopman class, they have

impressed me with considerable respect, not merely as to what they may be hereafter, but what they are now.

They are the class from which the ranks of our commercial men, our emigrants, are continually recruited;

The lad who stands behind a Bristol counter may be, fiveand twenty years hence, a large employeran

owner of houses and land in far countries across the seasa member of some colonial parliamentthe

founder of a wealthy family. How necessary for the honour of Britain, for the welfare of generations yet

unborn, that that young man should have, in body, soul, and spirit, the loftiest, and yet the most practical of

His education, too, such as it is, is one which makes me respect him as one of a class. Of course, he is

sometimes one of those "gents" whom Punch so ruthlessly holds up to just ridicule. He is sometimes a vulgar

fop, sometimes fond of low profligacyof bettinghouses and casinos. WellI know no class in any age or

country among which a fool may not be found here and there. But that the "gent" is the average type of this

class, I should utterly deny from such experience as I have had. The peculiar note and mark of the average

clerk and shopman, is, I think, in these days, intellectual activity, a keen desire for self improvement and for

independence, honourable, because self acquired. But as he is distinctly a creature of the city; as all city

influences bear at once on him more than on any other class, so we see in him, I think, more than in any class,

the best and the worst effects of modern city life. The worst, of course, is low profligacy; but of that I do not

speak here. I mean that in the same man the good and evil of a city life meet. And in this way.

In a countryman like me, coming up out of wild and silent moorlands into a great city, the first effect of the

change is increased intellectual activity. The perpetual stream of human faces, the innumerable objects of

interest in every shopwindow, are enough to excite the mind to action, which is increased by the simple fact

of speaking to fifty different human beings in the day instead of five. Now in the citybred youth this excited

state of mind is chronic, permanent. It is denoted plainly enough by the difference between the countryman's

face and that of the townsman. The former in its best type (and it is often very noble) composed, silent,

selfcontained, often stately, often listless; the latter mobile, eager, observant, often brilliant, often

Now if you keep this rapid and tense mind in a powerful and healthy body, it would do right good work.

For what are the faults of this class? What do the obscurantists (now, thank God, fewer every day) allege as

They become, it is said, discontented, conceited, dogmatical. They take up hasty notions, they condemn

fiercely what they have no means of understanding; they are too fond of fine words, of the excitement of

Well. I suppose there must be a little truth in the accusation, or it would not have been invented. There is no

smoke without fire; and these certainly are the faults of which the cleverest middleclass young men whom I

Butone fair look at these men's faces ought to tell common sense that the cause is rather physical than

moral. Confined to sedentary occupations, stooping over desks and counters in close rooms, unable to obtain

that fair share of bodily exercise which nature demands, and in continual mental effort, their nerves and brain

have been excited at the expense of their lungs, their digestion, and their whole nutritive system. Their

complexions show a general illhealth. Their mouths, too often, hint at latent disease. What wonder if there

be an irritability of brain and nerve? I blame them no more for it than I blame a man for being somewhat

touchy while he is writhing in the gout. Indeed less; for gout is very often a man's own fault; but these men's

illhealth is not. And, therefore, everything which can restore to them health of body, will preserve in them

health of mind. Everything which ministers to the CORPUS SANUM, will minister also to the MENTEM

SANAM; and a walk on Durham Downs, a game of cricket, a steamer excursion to Chepstow, shall send

them home again happier and wiser men than poring over many wise volumes or hearing many wise lectures.

How often is a worthy fellow spending his leisure honourably in hard reading, when he had much better have

been scrambling over hedge and ditch, without a thought in his head save what was put there by the grass and

the butterflies, and the green trees and the blue sky? And therefore I do press earnestly, both on employers

and employed, the incalculable value of athletic sports and country walks for those whose business compels

them to pass the day in the heart of the city; I press on you, with my whole soul, the excellency of the

earlyclosing movement; not so much because it enables young men to attend mechanics' institutes, as

because it enables them, if they choose, to get a good game of leapfrog. You may smile; but try the

experiment, and see how, as the chest expands, the muscles harden, and the cheek grows ruddy and the lips

firm, and sound sleep refreshes the lad for his next day's work, the temper will become more patient, the

spirits more genial; there will be less tendency to brood angrily over the inequalities of fortune, and to accuse

There is a class, again, above all these, which is doubtless the most important of all; and yet of which I can

say little herethe capitalist, small and great, from the shopkeeper to the merchant prince.

Heaven forbid that I should speak of them with aught but respect. There are few figures, indeed, in the world

on which I look with higher satisfaction than on the British merchant; the man whose ships are on a hundred

seas; who sends comfort and prosperity to tribes whom he never saw, and honourably enriches himself by

enriching others. There is something to me chivalrous, even kingly, in the merchant life; and there were men

in Bristol of oldas I doubt not there are nowwho nobly fulfilled that ideal. I cannot forget that Bristol

was the nurse of America; that more than two hundred years ago, the daring and genius of Bristol converted

yonder narrow stream into a mighty artery, down which flowed the young lifeblood of that great

Transatlantic nation destined to be hereafter, I believe, the greatest which the world ever saw. Yeswere I

asked to sum up in one sentence the good of great cities, I would point first to Bristol, and then to the United

States, and say, That is what great cities can do. By concentrating in one place, and upon one object, men,

genius, information, and wealth, they can conquer newfound lands by arts instead of arms; they can beget

Meanwhile, there is one fact about employers, in all cities which I know, which may seem commonplace to

you, but which to me is very significant. Whatsoever business they may do in the city, they take good care, if

possible, not to live in it. As soon as a man gets wealthy nowadays, his first act is to take to himself a villa in

the country. Do I blame him? Certainly not. It is an act of common sense. He finds that the harder he works,

the more he needs of fresh air, free country life, innocent recreation; and he takes it, and does his city

business all the better for it, lives all the longer for it, is the cheerfuller, more genial man for it. One great

social blessing, I think, which railroads have brought, is the throwing open country life to men of business. I

say blessing; both to the men themselves and to the country where they settle. The citizen takes an honest

pride in rivalling the old country gentleman, in beating him in his own sphere, as gardener, agriculturist,

sportsman, head of the village; and by his superior business habits and his command of ready money, he very

often does so. For fifty miles round London, wherever I see progress improved farms, model cottages, new

churches, new schoolsI find, in three cases out of four, that the author is some citizen who fifty years ago

would have known nothing but the narrow city life, and have had probably no higher pleasures than those of

the table; whose dreams would have been, not as now, of model farms and schools, but of turtle and

My only regret when I see so pleasant a sight is: Oh that the good man could have taken his workmen with

I assure you that, after years of thought, I see no other remedy for the worst evils of city life. "If," says the old

proverb, "the mountain will not come to Muhammed, then Muhammed must go to the mountain." And if you

Do not fancy me a dreamer dealing with impossible ideals. I know well what cannot be done; fair and grand

as it would be, if it were done, a model city is impossible in England. We have here no Eastern despotism

(and it is well we have not) to destroy an old Babylon, as that mighty genius Nabuchonosor did, and build a

few miles off a new Babylon, onehalf the area of which was park and garden, fountain and

watercoursea diviner work of art, to my mind, than the finest picture or statue which the world ever saw.

We have not either (and it is well for us that we have not) a model republic occupying a new uncleared land.

We cannot, as they do in America, plan out a vast city on some delicious and healthy site amid the virgin

forest, with streets one hundred feet in breadth, squares and boulevards already planted by God's hand with

majestic trees; and then leave the great design to be hewn out of the wilderness, street after street, square after

square, by generations yet unborn. That too is a magnificent ideal; but it cannot be ours. And it is well for us,

I believe, that it cannot. The great value of land, the enormous amount of vested interests, the necessity of

keeping to ancient sites around which labour, as in Manchester, or commerce, as in Bristol, has clustered

itself on account of natural advantages, all these things make any attempts to rebuild in cities impossible. But

they will cause us at last, I believe, to build better things than cities. They will issue in a complete

interpenetration of city and of country, a complete fusion of their different modes of life, and a combination

of the advantages of both, such as no country in the world has ever seen. We shall have, I believe and trust,

ere another generation has past, model lodginghouses springing up, not in the heart of the town, but on the

hills around it; and those will beeconomy, as well as science and good government, will compel them to

benot illbuilt rows of undrained cottages, each rented for awhile, and then left to run into squalidity and

disrepair, but huge blocks of building, each with its common eatinghouse, bar, baths, washhouses,

readingroom, common conveniences of every kind, where, in free and pure country air, the workman will

enjoy comforts which our own grandfathers could not command, and at a lower price than that which he now

pays for such accommodation as I should be ashamed to give to my own horses; while from these great

blocks of building, branch lines will convey the men to or from their work by railroad, without loss of time,

Then the city will become what it ought to be; the workshop, and not the dwellinghouse, of a mighty and

healthy people. The old foul alleys, as they become gradually depopulated, will be replaced by fresh

warehouses, fresh public buildings; and the city, in spite of all its smoke and dirt, will become a place on

which the workman will look down with pride and joy, because it will be to him no longer a prison and a

This, gentlemen and ladies, is my ideal; and I cannot but hope and believe that I shall live to see it realised

here and there, gradually and cautiously (as is our good and safe English habit), but still earnestly and well.

Did I see but the movement commenced in earnest, I should be inclined to cry a "Nunc Domine dimittis"I

have lived long enough to see a noble work begun, which cannot but go on and prosper, so beneficial would

it be found. I tell you, that but this afternoon, as the Bath train dashed through the last cutting, and your noble

vale and noble city opened before me, I looked round upon the overhanging crags, the wooded glens, and said

to myself: There, upon the rock in the free air and sunlight, and not here, beneath yon pall of smoke by the

lazy pools and festering tidal muds, ought the Bristol workman to live. Oh that I may see the time when on

the blessed Sabbath eve these hills shall swarm as thick with living men as bean fields with the summer

bees; when the glens shall ring with the laughter of ten thousand children, with limbs as steady, and cheeks as

ruddy, as those of my own lads and lasses at home; and the artisan shall find his Sabbath a day of rest indeed,

in which not only soul but body may gather health and nerve for the week's work, under the soothing and

purifying influences of those common natural sights and sounds which God has given as a heritage even to

the gipsy on the moor; and of which no man can be deprived without making his life a burden to himself,

But it will be asked: Will such improvements pay? I respect that question. I do not sneer at it, and regard it, as

some are too apt to do, as a sign of the mercenary and moneyloving spirit of the present age. I look on it as a

healthy sign of the English mind; a sign that we believe, as the old Jews did, that political and social

righteousness is inseparably connected with wealth and prosperity. The old Psalms and prophets have taught

us that lesson; and God forbid that we should forget it. The world is right well made; and the laws of trade

and of social economy, just as much as the laws of nature, are divine facts, and only by obeying them can we

thrive. And I had far sooner hear a people asking of every scheme of good, Will it pay? than throwing

themselves headlong into that merely sentimental charity to which superstitious nations have always been

pronecharity which effects no permanent good, which, whether in Hindostan or in Italy, debases, instead

of raising, the suffering classes, because it breaks the laws of social economy.

No, let us still believe that if a thing is right, it will sooner or later pay; and in social questions, make the

profitableness of any scheme a test of its rightness. It is a rough test; not an infallible one at all, but it is a fair

And as for the improvements at which I have hinted, I will boldly answer that they will pay.

They will pay directly and at once, in the saving of poorrates. They will pay by exterminating epidemics,

and numberless chronic forms of disease which now render thousands burdens on the public purse;

consumers, instead of producers of wealth. They will pay by gradually absorbing the dangerous classes; and

removing from temptation and degradation a generation yet unborn. They will pay in the increased content,

cheerfulness, which comes with health in increased goodwill of employed towards employers. They will pay

by putting the masses into a state fit for education. They will pay, too, in such fearful times as these, by the

increased physical strength and hardihood of the town populations. For it is from the city, rather than from

the country, that our armies must mainly be recruited. Not only is the townsman more ready to enlist than the

countryman, because in the town the labour market is most likely to be overstocked; but the townsman

actually makes a better soldier than the countryman. He is a shrewder, more active, more selfhelping man;

give him but the chances of maintaining the same physical strength and health as the countryman, and he will

support the honour of the British arms as gallantly as the Highlander or the Connaughtman, and restore the

days when the invincible prenticeboys of London carried terror into the heart of foreign lands. In all ages, in

all times, whether for war or for peace, it will pay. The true wealth of a nation is the health of her masses.

It may seem to some here that I have dealt too much throughout this lecture with merely material questions;

that I ought to have spoken more of intellectual progress; perhaps, as a clergyman, more also of spiritual and

I can only answer, that if this be a fault on my part, it is a deliberate one. I have spoken, whether rightly or

wrongly, concerning what I knowconcerning matters which are to me articles of faith altogether

Be it that these are merely questions of physical improvement. I see no reason in that why they should be left

to laymen, or urged only on worldly grounds and selfinterest. I do not find that when urged on those

grounds, the advice is listened to. I believe that it will not be listened to until the consciences of men, as well

as their brains, are engaged in these questions; until they are put on moral grounds, shown to have connection

with moral laws; and so made questions not merely of interest, but of duty, honour, chivalry.

I cannot but see, moreover, how many phenomena, which are supposed to be spiritual, are simply physical;

how many cases which are referred to my profession, are properly the object of the medical man. I cannot but

see, that unless there be healthy bodies, it is impossible in the long run to have a generation of healthy souls; I

cannot but see that mankind are as prone now as ever to deny the sacredness and perfection of God's physical

universe, as an excuse for their own ignorance and neglect thereof; to search the highest heaven for causes

which lie patent at their feet, and like the heathen of old time, to impute to some capricious anger of the gods

And, therefore, because I am a priest, and glory in the name of a priest, I have tried to fulfil somewhat of that

which seems to me the true office of a priestnamely, to proclaim to man the Divine element which exists in

all, even the smallest thing, because each thing is a thought of God himself; to make men understand that

God is indeed about their path and about their bed, spying out all their ways; that they are indeed fearfully

and wonderfully made, and that God's hand lies for ever on them, in the form of physical laws, sacred,

irreversible, universal, reaching from one end of the universe to the other; that whosoever persists in breaking

those laws, reaps his sure punishment of weakness and sickness, sadness and selfreproach; that whosoever

causes them to be broken by others, reaps his sure punishment in finding that he has transformed his

fellowmen into burdens and curses, instead of helpmates and blessings. To say this, is a priest's duty; and

then to preach the good news that the remedy is patent, easy, close at hand; that many of the worst evils

which afflict humanity may be exterminated by simple common sense, and the justice and mercy which does

to others as it would be done by; to awaken men to the importance of the visible world, that they may judge

from thence the higher importance of that invisible world whereof this is but the garment and the type; and in

all times and places, instead of keeping the key of knowledge to pamper one's own power or pride, to lay that

key frankly and trustfully in the hand of every human being who hungers after truth, and to say: Child of

God, this key is thine as well as mine. Enter boldly into thy Father's house, and behold the wonder, the

wisdom, the beauty of its laws and its organisms, from the mightiest planet over thy head, to the tiniest insect

beneath thy feet. Look at it, trustfully, joyfully, earnestly; for it is thy heritage. Behold its perfect fitness for

It is an open question whether the policeman is not demoralising us; and that in proportion as he does his duty

well; whether the perfection of justice and safety, the complete "preservation of body and goods," may not

reduce the educated and comfortable classes into that lapdog condition in which not conscience, but

comfort, doth make cowards of us all. Our forefathers had, on the whole, to take care of themselves; we find

it more convenient to hire people to take care of us. So much the better for us, in some respects; but, it may

be, so much the worse in others. So much the better; because, as usually results from the division of labour,

these people, having little or nothing to do save to take care of us, do so far better than we could; and so

prevent a vast amount of violence and wrong, and therefore of misery, especially to the weak; for which last

reason we will acquiesce in the existence of policemen and lawyers, as we do in the results of arbitration, as

the lesser of two evils. The odds in war are in favour of the bigger bully, in arbitration in favour of the bigger

rogue; and it is a question whether the lion or the fox be the safer guardian of human interests. But arbitration

prevents war; and that, in three cases out of four, is full reason for employing it.

On the other hand, the lapdog condition, whether in dogs or in men, is certainly unfavourable to the growth

of the higher virtues. Safety and comfort are good, indeed, for the good; for the brave, the selforiginating,

the earnest. They give to such a clear stage and no favour, wherein to work unhindered for their fellowmen.

But for the majority, who are neither brave, self originating, nor earnest, but the mere puppets of

circumstance, safety and comfort may, and actually do, merely make their lives mean and petty, effeminate

and dull. Therefore their hearts must be awakened, as often as possible, to take exercise enough for health;

and they must be reminded, perpetually and importunately, of what a certain great philosopher called,

"whatsoever things are true, honourable, just, pure, lovely, and of good report;" "if there be any manhood,

This pettiness and dulness of our modern life is just what keeps alive our stage, to which people go to see

something a little less petty, a little less dull, than what they see at home. It is, too, the cause ofI had

almost said the excuse forthe modern rage for sensational novels. Those who read them so greedily are

conscious, poor souls, of capacities in themselves of passion and action for good and evil, for which their

frivolous humdrum daily life gives no room, no vent. They know too well that human nature can be more

fertile, whether in weeds and poisons, or in flowers and fruits, than it is usually in the streets and houses of a

wellordered and tolerably sober city. And because the study of human nature is, after all, that which is

nearest to everyone and most interesting to everyone, therefore they go to fiction, since they cannot go to fact,

to see what they themselves might be had they the chance; to see what fantastic tricks before high heaven

Well, it is not for me to judge, for me to blame. I will only say that there are those who cannot read

sensational novels, or, indeed, any novels at all, just because they see so many sensational novels being

enacted round them in painful facts of sinful flesh and blood. There are those, too, who have looked in the

mirror too often to wish to see their own disfigured visage in it any more; who are too tired of themselves and

ashamed of themselves to want to hear of people like themselves; who want to hear of people utterly unlike

themselves, more noble, and able, and just, and sweet, and pure; who long to hear of heroism and to converse

with heroes; and who, if by chance they meet with an heroic act, bathe their spirits in that, as in Maydew,

If any such shall chance to see these words, let me ask them to consider with me that one word Hero, and

Hero; Heroic; Heroism. These words point to a phase of human nature, the capacity for which we all have in

ourselves, which is as startling and as interesting in its manifestations as any, and which is always beautiful,

always ennobling, and therefore always attractive to those whose hearts are not yet seared by the world or

But let us first be sure what the words mean. There is no use talking about a word till we have got at its

meaning. We may use it as a cant phrase, as a party cry on platforms; we may even hate and persecute our

fellowmen for the sake of it: but till we have clearly settled in our own minds what a word means, it will do

for fighting with, but not for working with. Socrates of old used to tell the young Athenians that the ground of

all sound knowledge wasto understand the true meaning of the words which were in their mouths all day

long; and Socrates was a wiser man than we shall ever see. So, instead of beginning an oration in praise of

Now, we shall always get most surely at the meaning of a word by getting at its etymologythat is, at what

it meant at first. And if heroism means behaving like a hero, we must find out, it seems to me, not merely

what a hero may happen to mean just now, but what it meant in the earliest human speech in which we find it.

A hero or a heroine, then, among the old Homeric Greeks, meant a man or woman who was like the gods;

and who, from that likeness, stood superior to his or her fellowcreatures. Gods, heroes, and men, is a

threefold division of rational beings, with which we meet more than once or twice. Those grand old Greeks

But more: the Greeks supposed these heroes to be, in some way or other, partakers of a divine nature; akin to

the gods; usually, either they, or some ancestor of theirs, descended from a god or goddess. Those who have

read Mr. Gladstone's "Juventus Mundi" will remember the section (cap. ix. 6) on the modes of the

approximation between the divine and the human natures; and whether or not they agree with the author

altogether, all will agree, I think, that the first idea of a hero or a heroine was a godlike man or godlike

A godlike man. What varied, what infinite forms of nobleness that word might include, ever increasing, as

men's notions of the gods became purer and loftier, or, alas! decreasing, as their notions became degraded.

The old Greeks, with that intense admiration of beauty which made them, in after ages, the mastersculptors

and draughtsmen of their own, and, indeed, of any age, would, of course, require in their hero, their godlike

man, beauty and strength, manners too, and eloquence, and all outward perfections of humanity, and neglect

his moral qualities. Neglect, I say, but not ignore. The hero, by virtue of his kindred with the gods, was

always expected to be a better man than common men, as virtue was then understood. And how better? Let us

The hero was at least expected to be more reverent than other men to those divine beings of whose nature he

partook, whose society he might enjoy even here on earth. He might be unfaithful to his own high lineage; he

might misuse his gifts by selfishness and selfwill; he might, like Ajax, rage with mere jealousy and

wounded pride till his rage ended in shameful madness and suicide. He might rebel against the very gods, and

But he ought to have, he must have, to be true to his name of Hero, justice, selfrestraint, and [Greek

text]that highest form of modesty, for which we have, alas! no name in the English tongue; that perfect

respect for the feelings of others which springs out of perfect selfrespect. And he must have tooif he were

to be a hero of the highest typethe instinct of helpfulness; the instinct that, if he were a kinsman of the

gods, he must fight on their side, through toil and danger, against all that was unlike them, and therefore

hateful to them. Who loves not the old legends, unsurpassed for beauty in the literature of any race, in which

the hero stands out as the deliverer, the destroyer of evil? Theseus ridding the land of robbers, and delivering

it from the yearly tribute of boys and maidens to be devoured by the Minotaur; Perseus slaying the Gorgon,

and rescuing Andromeda from the seabeast; Heracles with his twelve famous labours against giants and

Who dared, in the godgiven might of their manhood, Greatly to do and to suffer, and far in the fens and the

forests Smite the devourers of men, heavenhated brood of the giants; Transformed, strange, without like,

These are figures whose divine moral beauty has sunk into the hearts, not merely of poets or of artists, but of

men and women who suffered and who feared; the memory of them, fables though they may have been,

ennobled the old Greek heart; they ennobled the heart of Europe in the fifteenth century, at the rediscovery

of Greek literature. So far from contradicting the Christian ideal, they harmonised withI had almost said

they supplemented that more tender and saintly ideal of heroism which had sprung up during the earlier

Middle Ages. They justified, and actually gave a new life to, the old noblenesses of chivalry, which had

grown up in the later Middle Ages as a necessary supplement of active and manly virtue to the passive and

feminine virtue of the cloister. They inspired, mingling with these two other elements, a literature both in

England, France, and Italy, in which the three elements, the saintly, the chivalrous, and the Greek heroic,

have become one and undistinguishable, because all three are human, and all three divine; a literature which

developed itself in Ariosto, in Tasso, in the Hypnerotomachia, the Arcadia, the Euphues, and other forms,

sometimes fantastic, sometimes questionable, but which reached its perfection in our own Spenser's "Fairy

Queen" perhaps the most admirable poem which has ever been penned by mortal man.

And why? What has made these old Greek myths live, myths though they be, and fables, and fair dreams?

Whatthough they have no body, and, perhaps, never hadhas given them an immortal soul, which can

What but this, that in themdim it may be and undeveloped, but still therelies the divine idea of

selfsacrifice as the perfection of heroism, of selfsacrifice, as the highest duty and the highest joy of him

Let us say, then, that true heroism must involve selfsacrifice. Those stories certainly involve it, whether

ancient or modern, which the hearts, not of philosophers merely, or poets, but of the poorest and the most

ignorant, have accepted instinctively as the highest form of moral beautythe highest form, and yet one

Grace Darling rowing out into the storm towards the wreck. The "drunken private of the Buffs," who,

prisoner among the Chinese, and commanded to prostrate himself and kotoo, refused in the name of his

country's honour: "He would not bow to any Chinaman on earth:" and so was knocked on the head, and died

surely a hero's death. Those soldiers of the Birkenhead, keeping their ranks to let the women and children

escape, while they watched the sharks who in a few minutes would be tearing them limb from limb. Or, to go

across the Atlanticfor there are heroes in the Far WestMr. Bret Harte's "Flynn of Virginia," on the

Central Pacific Railway the place is shown to travellerswho sacrificed his life for his married comrade:

There, in the drift, Back to the wall, He held the timbers Ready to fall. Then in the darkness I heard him call:

Or the engineer, again, on the Mississippi, who, when the steamer caught fire, held, as he had sworn he

Through the hot black breath of the burning boat Jim Bludso's voice was heard; And they all had trust in his

cussedness, And knew he would keep his word. And sure's you're born, they all got off Afore the

smokestacks fell; And Bludso's ghost went up alone In the smoke of the Prairie Belle.

He weren't no saintbut at the judgment I'd run my chance with Jim 'Longside of some pious gentlemen

That wouldn't shake hands with him. He'd seen his dutya dead sure thing And went for it there and then;

To which gallant poem of Colonel John Hay'sand he has written many gallant and beautiful poemsI

have but one demurrer: Jim Bludso did not merely do his duty but more than his duty. He did a voluntary

deed, to which he was bound by no code or contract, civil or moral; just as he who introduced me to that

poem won his Victoria Crossas many a cross, Victoria and other, has been won by volunteering for a

deed to which he, too, was bound by no code or contract, military or moral. And it is of the essence of self

sacrifice, and therefore of heroism, that it should be voluntary; a work of supererogation, at least towards

society and man; an act to which the hero or heroine is not bound by duty, but which is above though not

Nay, on the strength of that same element of selfsacrifice, I will not grudge the epithet "heroic," which my

revered friend Mr. Darwin justly applies to the poor little monkey, who once in his life did that which was

above his duty; who lived in continual terror of the great baboon, and yet, when the brute had sprung upon his

friend the keeper, and was tearing out his throat, conquered his fear by love, and, at the risk of instant death,

Some would nowadays use that story merely to prove that the monkey's nature and the man's nature are, after

all, one and the same. Well: I, at least, have never denied that there is a monkeynature in man, as there is a

peacocknature, and a swine nature, and a wolfnatureof all which four I see every day too much. The

sharp and stern distinction between men and animals, as far as their natures are concerned, is of a more

modern origin than people fancy. Of old the Assyrian took the eagle, the ox, and the lionand not

unwiselyas the three highest types of human capacity. The horses of Homer might be immortal, and weep

for their master's death. The animals and monsters of Greek myth like the Ananzi spider of Negro

fableglide insensibly into speech and reason. Birdsthe most wonderful of all animals in the eyes of a

man of science or a poetare sometimes looked on as wiser, and nearer to the gods, than man. The

Norsemanthe noblest and ablest human being, save the Greek, of whom history can tell uswas not

ashamed to say of the bear of his native forests that he had "ten men's strength and eleven men's wisdom."

How could Reinecke Fuchs have gained immortality, in the Middle Ages and since, save by the truth of its

too solid and humiliating theoremthat the actions of the world of men were, on the whole, guided by

passions but too exactly like those of the lower animals? I have said, and say again, with good old Vaughan:

But I cannot forget that many an old Greek poet or sage, and many a sixteenth and seventeenth century one,

would have interpreted the monkey's heroism from quite a different point of view; and would have said that

the poor little creature had been visited suddenly by some "divine afflatus"an expression quite as

philosophical and quite as intelligible as most philosophic formulas which I read nowadaysand had been

thus raised for the moment above his abject selfish monkeynature, just as man requires to be raised above

his. But that theory belongs to a philosophy which is out of date and out of fashion, and which will have to

And now, if selfsacrifice and heroism be, as I believe, identical, I must protest against the use of the word

"sacrifice" which is growing too common in newspapercolumns, in which we are told of an "enormous

sacrifice of life;" an expression which means merely that a great many poor wretches have been killed, quite

against their own will, and for no purpose whatsoever; no sacrifice at all, unless it be one to the demons of

The stout Whig undergraduate understood better the meaning of such words, who, when asked, "In what

sense might Charles the First be said to be a martyr?" answered, "In the same sense that a man might be said

And I must protest, in like wise, against a misuse of the words "hero." "heroism," "heroic," which is

becoming too common, namely, applying them to mere courage. We have borrowed the misuse, I believe, as

we have more than one beside, from the French press. I trust that we shall neither accept it, nor the temper

which inspires it. It may be convenient for those who flatter their nation, and especially the military part of it,

into a ruinous selfconceit, to frame some such syllogism as this: "Courage is heroism: every Frenchman is

naturally courageous: therefore every Frenchman is a hero." But we, who have been trained at once in a

sounder school of morals, and in a greater respect for facts, and for language as the expression of facts, shall

be careful, I hope, not to trifle thus with that potent and awful enginehuman speech. We shall eschew

likewise, I hope, a like abuse of the word "moral," which has crept from the French press now and then, not

only into our own press, but into the writings of some of our military men, who, as Englishmen, should have

known better. We were told again and again, during the late war, that the moral effect of such a success had

been great; that the MORALE of the troops was excellent; or again, that the MORALE of the troops had

suffered, or even that they were somewhat demoralised. But when one came to test what was really meant by

these fine words, one discovered that morals had nothing to do with the facts which they expressed; that the

troops were in the one case actuated simply by the animal passion of hope, in the other simply by the animal

passion of fear. This abuse of the word "moral" has crossed, I am sorry to say, the Atlantic; and a witty

American, whom we must excuse, though we must not imitate, when some one had been blazing away at him

with a revolver, he being unarmed, is said to have described his very natural emotions on the occasion, by

saying that he felt dreadfully demoralised. We, I hope, shall confine the word "demoralisation," as our

generals of the last century would have done, when applied to soldiers, to crime, including, of course, the

neglect of duty or of discipline; and we shall mean by the word "heroism," in like manner, whether applied to

a soldier or to any human being, not mere courage, not the mere doing of duty, but the doing of something

beyond duty; something which is not in the bond; some spontaneous and unexpected act of self devotion.

I am glad, but not surprised, to see that Miss Yonge has held to this sound distinction in her golden little book

of "Golden Deeds," and said, "Obedience, at all costs and risks, is the very essence of a soldier's life. It has

the solid material, but it has hardly the exceptional brightness, of a golden deed."

I know that it is very difficult to draw the line between mere obedience to duty and express heroism. I know

also that it would be both invidious and impertinent in an utterly unheroic personage like me, to try to draw

that line; and to sit at home at ease, analysing and criticising deeds which I could not do myself; but to

To defend a post as long as it is tenable is not heroic. It is simple duty. To defend it after it has become

untenable, and even to die in so doing, is not heroic, but a noble madness, unless an advantage is to be gained

thereby for one's own side. Then, indeed, it rises towards, if not into, the heroism of self sacrifice.

Who, for example, will not endorse the verdict of all ages on the conduct of those Spartans at Thermopylae,

when they sat "combing their yellow hair for death" on the seashore? They devoted themselves to hopeless

destruction; but why? They feltI must believe that, for they behaved as if they feltthat on them the

destinies of the Western World might hang; that they were in the forefront of the battle between civilisation

and barbarism, between freedom and despotism; and that they must teach that vast mob of Persian slaves,

whom the officers of the Great King were driving with whips up to their lancepoints, that the spirit of the

old heroes was not dead; and that the Greek, even in defeat and death, was a mightier and a nobler man than

they. And they did their work. They produced, if you will, a "moral" effect, which has lasted even to this very

day. They struck terror into the heart, not only of the Persian host, but of the whole Persian empire. They

made the event of that war certain, and the victories of Salamis and Plataea comparatively easy. They made

Alexander's conquest of the East, one hundred and fifty years afterwards, not only possible at all, but

permanent when it came; and thus helped to determine the future civilisation of the whole world.

They did not, of course, foresee all this. No great or inspired man can foresee all the consequences of his

deeds; but these men were, as I hold inspired to see somewhat at least of the mighty stake for which they

played; and to count their lives worthless, if Sparta had sent them thither to help in that great game.

Or shall we refuse the name of heroic to those three German cavalry regiments who, in the battle of

MarslaTour, were bidden to hurl themselves upon the chassepots and mitrailleuses of the unbroken French

infantry, and went to almost certain death, over the corpses of their comrades, on and in and through, reeling

man over horse, horse over man, and clung like bulldogs to their work, and would hardly leave, even at the

buglecall, till in one regiment thirteen officers out of nineteen were killed or wounded? And why?

Because the French army must be stopped, if it were but for a quarter of an hour. A respite must be gained for

the exhausted Third Corps. And how much might be done, even in a quarter of an hour, by men who knew

when, and where, and why to die! Who will refuse the name of heroes to these men? And yet they, probably,

would have utterly declined the honour. They had but done that which was in the bond. They were but

obeying orders after all. As Miss Yonge well says of all heroic persons: "'I have but done that which it was

my duty to do,' is the natural answer of those capable of such actions. They have been constrained to them by

duty or pity; have never deemed it possible to act otherwise; and did not once think of themselves in the

These last true words bring us to another element in heroism: its simplicity. Whatsoever is not simple;

whatsoever is affected, boastful, wilful, covetous, tarnishes, even destroys, the heroic character of a deed;

because all these faults spring out of self. On the other hand, wherever you find a perfectly simple, frank,

unconscious character, there you have the possibility, at least, of heroic action. For it is nobler far to do the

most commonplace duty in the household, or behind the counter, with a single eye to duty, simply because it

must be donenobler far, I say, than to go out of your way to attempt a brilliant deed, with a double mind,

and saying to yourself not only"This will be a brilliant deed," but also"and it will pay me, or raise me,

or set me off, into the bargain." Heroism knows no "into the bargain." And therefore, again, I must protest

against applying the word "heroic" to any deeds, however charitable, however toilsome, however dangerous,

performed for the sake of what certain French ladies, I am told, call "faire son salut"saving one's soul in

the world to come. I do not mean to judge. Other and quite unselfish motives may be, and doubtless often are,

mixed up with that selfish one: womanly pity and tenderness; love for, and desire to imitate, a certain

Incarnate ideal of selfsacrifice, who is at once human and divine. But that motive of saving the soul, which

is too often openly proposed and proffered, is utterly unheroic. The desire to escape pains and penalties

hereafter by pains and penalties here; the balance of present loss against future gainwhat is this but

selfishness extended out of this world into eternity? "Not worldliness," indeed, as a satirist once said with

Moreoverand the young and the enthusiastic should also bear this in mindthough heroism means the

going beyond the limits of strict duty, it never means the going out of the path of strict duty. If it is your duty

to go to London, go thither: you may go as much farther as you choose after that. But you must go to London

And therefore one must seriously warn the young, lest they mistake for heroism and selfsacrifice what is

merely pride and selfwill, discontent with the relations by which God has bound them, and the

circumstances which God has appointed for them. I have known girls think they were doing a fine thing by

leaving uncongenial parents or disagreeable sisters, and cutting out for themselves, as they fancied, a more

useful and elevated line of life than that of mere home duties; while, after all, poor things, they were only

saying, with the Pharisees of old, "Corban, it is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me;" and in

the name of God, neglecting the command of God to honour their father and mother.

There are men, too, who will neglect their households and leave their children unprovided for, and even

uneducated, while they are spending their money on philanthropic or religious hobbies of their own. It is ill to

take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs; or even to the angels. It is ill, I say, trying to make presents to

God, before we have tried to pay our debts to God. The first duty of every man is to the wife whom he has

married, and to the children whom she has brought into the world; and to neglect them is not heroism, but

selfconceit; the conceit that a man is so necessary to Almighty God, that God will actually allow him to do

wrong, if He can only thereby secure the man's invaluable services. Be sure that every motive which comes

not from the single eye, every motive which springs from self, is by its very essence unheroic, let it look as

But I cannot go so far as to say the same of the love of approbationthe desire for the love and respect of

our fellow men. That must not be excluded from the list of heroic motives. I know that it is, or may be

proved to be, by victorious analysis, an emotion common to us and the lower animals. And yet no man

If those brave Spartans, if those brave Germans, of whom I spoke just now, knew that their memories would

be wept over and worshipped by brave men and fair women, and that their names would become watchwords

to children in their fatherland, what is that to us, save that it should make us rejoice, if we be truly human,

that they had that thought with them in their last moments to make selfdevotion more easy, and death more

And yetand yetis not the highest heroism that which is free even from the approbation of our

fellowmen, even from the approbation of the best and wisest? The heroism which is known only to our Father

who seeth in secret? The Godlike deeds alone in the lonely chamber? The Godlike lives lived in

obscurity?a heroism rare among us men, who live perforce in the glare and noise of the outer world: more

common among women; women of whom the world never hears; who, if the world discovered them, would

only draw the veil more closely over their faces and their hearts, and entreat to be left alone with God. True,

they cannot always hide. They must not always hide; or their fellowcreatures would lose the golden lesson.

But, nevertheless, it is of the essence of the perfect and womanly heroism, in which, as in all spiritual forces

And it was a pleasant thought to me, when I glanced lately at the golden deeds of women in Miss Yonge's

bookit was a pleasant thought to me, that I could say to myselfAh! yes. These heroines are known, and

their fame flies through the mouths of men. But if so, how many thousands of heroines there must have been,

how many thousands there may be now, of whom we shall never know. But still they are there. They sow in

secret the seed of which we pluck the flower and eat the fruit, and know not that we pass the sower daily in

the street; perhaps some humble, ill dressed woman, earning painfully her own small sustenance. She who

nurses a bedridden mother, instead of sending her to the workhouse. She who spends her heart and her money

on a drunken father, a reckless brother, on the orphans of a kinsman or a friend. She whoBut why go on

with the long list of great little heroisms, with which a clergyman at least comes in contact daily and it is

one of the most ennobling privileges of a clergyman's high calling that he does come in contact with

themwhy go on, I say, save to commemorate one more form of great little heroism the commonest, and

yet the least remembered of allnamely, the heroism of an average mother? Ah, when I think of that last

broad fact, I gather hope again for poor humanity; and this dark world looks bright, this diseased world looks

wholesome to me once more because, whatever else it is or is not full of, it is at least full of mothers.

While the satirist only sneers, as at a stock butt for his ridicule, at the managing mother trying to get her

daughters married off her hands by chicaneries and meannesses, which every novelist knows too well how to

drawwould to heaven he, or rather, alas! she would find some more chivalrous employment for his or her

penfor were they not, too, born of woman?I only say to myselfhaving had always a secret fondness

for poor Rebecca, though I love Esau more than JacobLet the poor thing alone. With pain she brought

these girls into the world. With pain she educated them according to her light. With pain she is trying to

obtain for them the highest earthly blessing of which she can conceive, namely, to be well married; and if in

doing that last, she manoeuvres a little, commits a few basenesses, even tells a few untruths, what does all

that come to, save thisthat in the confused intensity of her motherly selfsacrifice, she will sacrifice for her

daughters even her own conscience and her own credit? We may sneer, if we will, at such a poor harddriven

soul when we meet her in society; our duty, both as Christians and ladies and gentlemen, seems to me to

But to return. Looking at the amount of great little heroisms, which are being, as I assert, enacted around us

every day, no one has a right to say, what we are all tempted to say at times: "How can I be heroic? This is no

heroic age, setting me heroic examples. We are growing more and more comfortable, frivolous,

pleasureseeking, moneymaking; more and more utilitarian; more and more mercenary in our politics, in

our morals, in our religion; thinking less and less of honour and duty, and more and more of loss and gain. I

I do not deny that it is more difficult to be heroic, while circumstances are unheroic round us. We are all too

apt to be the puppets of circumstances; all too apt to follow the fashion; all too apt, like so many minnows, to

take our colour from the ground on which we lie, in hopes, like them, of comfortable concealment, lest the

new tyrant deity, called Public Opinion, should spy us out, and, like Nebuchadnezzar of old, cast us into a

burning fiery furnacewhich public opinion can make very hotfor daring to worship any god or man save

Yes, it is difficult to be anything but poor, mean, insufficient, imperfect people, as like each other as so many

sheep; and, like so many sheep, having no will or character of our own, but rushing altogether blindly over

the same gap, in foolish fear of the same dog, who, after all, dare not bite us; and so it always was and always

But, nevertheless, any man or woman who WILL, in any age and under any circumstances, can live the

If any ask proof of this, I shall ask them, in return, to read two novels; novels, indeed, but, in their method

and their moral, partaking of that heroic and ideal element, which will make them live, I trust, long after

thousands of mere novels have returned to their native dust. I mean Miss Muloch's "John Halifax,

Gentleman," and Mr. Thackeray's "Esmond," two books which no man or woman ought to read without being

"John Halifax, Gentleman," is simply the history of a poor young clerk, who rises to be a wealthy millowner

in the manufacturing districts, in the early part of this century. But he contrives to be an heroic and ideal

clerk, and an heroic and ideal millowner; and that without doing anything which the world would call heroic

or ideal, or in anywise stepping out of his sphere, minding simply his own business, and doing the duty which

lies nearest him. And how? By getting into his head from youth the strangest notion, that in whatever station

or business he may be, he can always be what he considers a gentleman; and that if he only behaves like a

gentleman, all must go right at last. A beautiful book. As I said before, somewhat of an heroic and ideal book.

A book which did me good when first I read it; which ought to do any young man good who will read it, and

then try to be, like John Halifax, a gentleman, whether in the shop, the countinghouse, the bank, or the

The otheran even more striking instance of the possibility, at least, of heroism anywhere and

everywhereis Mr. Thackeray's "Esmond." On the meaning of that book I can speak with authority. For my

dear and regretted friend told me himself that my interpretation of it was the true one; that this was the lesson

Esmond is a man of the first half of the eighteenth century; living in a coarse, drunken, ignorant, profligate,

and altogether unheroic age. He isand here the high art and the high morality of Mr. Thackeray's genius is

shownaltogether a man of his own age. He is not a sixteenthcentury or a nineteenthcentury man born

out of time. His information, his politics, his religion, are no higher than of those round him. His manners, his

views of human life, his very prejudices and faults, are those of his age. The temptations which he conquers

are just those under which the men around him fall. But how does he conquer them? By holding fast

throughout to honour, duty, virtue. Thus, and thus alone, he becomes an ideal eighteenthcentury gentleman,

an eighteenth century hero. This was what Mr. Thackeray meant for he told me so himself, I saythat it

was possible, even in England's lowest and foulest times, to be a gentleman and a hero, if a man would but be

But I will go farther. I will go from ideal fiction to actual, and yet ideal, fact; and say that, as I read history,

the most unheroic age which the civilised world ever saw was also the most heroic; that the spirit of man

triumphed most utterly over his circumstances at the very moment when those circumstances were most

How and why he did so is a question for philosophy in the highest sense of that word. The fact of his having

Then, have we not heard of the early Christian martyrs? Is there a doubt that they, unlettered men, slaves,

weak women, even children, did exhibit, under an infinite sense of duty, issuing in infinite selfsacrifice, a

heroism such as the world had never seen before; did raise the ideal of human nobleness a whole stage

rather say, a whole heavenhigher than before; and that wherever the tale of their great deeds spread, men

accepted, even if they did not copy, those martyrs as ideal specimens of the human race, till they were

actually worshipped by succeeding generations, wrongly, it may be, but pardonably, as a choir of lesser

But is there, on the other hand, a doubt that the age in which they were heroic was the most unheroic of all

ages; that they were bred, lived, and died, under the most debasing of materialist tyrannies, with art,

literature, philosophy, family and national life dying, or dead around them, and in cities the corruption of

which cannot be told for very shamecities, compared with which Paris is the abode of Arcadian simplicity

and innocence? When I read Petronius and Juvenal, and recollect that they were the contemporaries of the

Apostles; whento give an instance which scholars, and perhaps, happily, only scholars, can appreciateI

glance once more at Trimalchio's feast, and remember that within a mile of that feast St. Paul may have been

preaching to a Christian congregation, some of whomfor St. Paul makes no secret of that strange

factmay have been, ere their conversion, partakers in just such vulgar and bestial orgies as those which

were going on in the rich freedman's halls; after that, I say, I can put no limit to the possibility of man's

becoming heroic, even though he be surrounded by a hell on earth; no limit to the capacities of any human

being to form for himself or herself a high and pure ideal of human character; and, without "playing fantastic

tricks before high heaven," to carry out that ideal in everyday life; and in the most commonplace

circumstances, and the most menial occupations, to live worthy ofas I conceiveour heavenly birthright,

Let me begin by asking the ladies who are interesting themselves in this good work, whether they have really

considered what they are about to do in carrying out their own plans? Are they aware that if their Society

really succeeds, they will produce a very serious, some would think a very dangerous, change in the state of

this nation? Are they aware that they would probably save the lives of some thirty or forty per cent. of the

children who are born in England, and that therefore they would cause the subjects of Queen Victoria to

increase at a very far more rapid rate than they do now? And are they aware that some very wise men inform

us that England is already overpeopled, and that it is an exceedingly puzzling question where we shall soon

be able to find work or food for our masses, so rapidly do they increase already, in spite of the thirty or forty

per cent. which kind Nature carries off yearly before they are five years old? Have they considered what they

are to do with all those children whom they are going to save alive? That has to be thought of; and if they

really do believe, with some political economists, that over population is a possibility to a country which

has the greatest colonial empire that the world has ever seen; then I think they had better stop in their course,

But if, on the other hand, it seems to them, as I confess it does to me, that the most precious thing in the

world is a human being; that the lowest, and poorest, and the most degraded of human beings is better than all

the dumb animals in the world; that there is an infinite, priceless capability in that creature, fallen as it may

be; a capability of virtue, and of social and industrial use, which, if it is taken in time, may be developed up to

a pitch, of which at first sight the child gives no hint whatsoever; if they believe again, that of all races upon

earth now, the English race is probably the finest, and that it gives not the slightest sign whatever of

exhaustion; that it seems to be on the whole a young race, and to have very great capabilities in it which have

not yet been developed, and above all, the most marvellous capability of adapting itself to every sort of

climate and every form of life, which any race, except the old Roman, ever has had in the world; if they

consider with me that it is worth the while of political economists and social philosophers to look at the map,

and see that about fourfifths of the globe cannot be said as yet to be in anywise inhabited or cultivated, or in

the state into which men could put it by a fair supply of population, and industry, and human intellect: then,

perhaps, they may think with me that it is a duty, one of the noblest of duties, to help the increase of the

English race as much as possible, and to see that every child that is born into this great nation of England be

developed to the highest pitch to which we can develop him in physical strength and in beauty, as well as in

intellect and in virtue. And then, in that light, it does seem to me, that this Institutionsmall now, but I do

hope some day to become great and to become the mother institution of many and valuable childrenis one

of the noblest, most rightminded, straightforward, and practical conceptions that I have come across for

We all know the difficulties of sanitary legislation. One looks at them at times almost with despair. I have my

own reasons, with which I will not trouble this meeting, for looking on them with more despair than ever: not

on account of the government of the time, or any possible government that could come to England, but on

account of the peculiar class of persons in whom the ownership of the small houses has become more and

more vested, and who are becoming more and more, I had almost said, the arbiters of the popular opinion,

and of every election of parliament. However, that is no business of ours here; that must be settled

somewhere else; and a fearfully long time, it seems to me, it will be before it is settled. But, in the meantime,

what legislation cannot do, I believe private help, and, above all, woman's help, can do even better. It can do

this; it can improve the condition of the working man: and not only of him; I must speak also of the middle

classes, of the men who own the house in which the working man lives. I must speak, too, of the wealthy

tradesman; I must speak it is a sad thing to have to say itof our own class as well as of others. Sanitary

reform, as it is called, or, in plain English, the art of health, is so very recent a discovery, as all true physical

science is, that we ourselves and our own class know very little about it, and practise it very little. And this

society, I do hope, will bear in mind that it is not simply to seek the working man, not only to go into the foul

alley: but it is to go to the door of the farmer, to the door of the shopkeeper, aye, to the door of ladies and

gentlemen of the same rank as ourselves. Women can do in that work what men cannot do. The private

correspondence, private conversation, private example, of ladies, above all of married women, of mothers of

families, may do what no legislation can do. I am struck more and more with the amount of disease and death

I see around me in all classes, which no sanitary legislation whatsoever could touch, unless you had a

complete housetohouse visitation by some government officer, with powers to enter every dwelling, to

drain it, and ventilate it; and not only that, but to regulate the clothes and the diet of every inhabitant, and that

among all ranks. I can conceive of nothing short of that, which would be absurd and impossible, and would

also be most harmful morally, which would stop the present amount of disease and death which I see around

me, without some such private exertion on the part of women, above all of mothers, as I do hope will spring

I see this, that three persons out of every four are utterly unaware of the general causes of their own

illhealth, and of the illhealth of their children. They talk of their "afflictions," and their "misfortunes;" and,

if they be pious people, they talk of "the will of God," and of "the visitation of God." I do not like to trench

upon those matters here; but when I read in my book and in your book, "that it is not the will of our Father in

Heaven that one of these little ones should perish," it has come to my mind sometimes with very great

strength that that may have a physical application as well as a spiritual one; and that the Father in Heaven

who does not wish the child's soul to die, may possibly have created that child's body for the purpose of its

not dying except in a good old age. For not only in the lower class, but in the middle and upper classes, when

one sees an unhealthy family, then in three cases out of four, if one will take time, trouble, and care enough,

one can, with the help of the doctor, who has been attending them, run the evil home to a very different cause

than the will of God; and that is, to stupid neglect, stupid ignorance, or what is just as bad, stupid indulgence.

Now, I do believe that if those tracts which you are publishing, which I have read and of which I cannot

speak too highly, are spread over the length and breadth of the land, and if women clergymen's wives, the

wives of manufacturers and of great employers, district visitors and schoolmistresses, have these books put

into their hands, and are persuaded to spread them, and to enforce them, by their own example and by their

own counsel that then, in the course of a few years, this system being thoroughly carried out, you would

see a sensible and large increase in the rate of population. When you have saved your children alive, then you

must settle what to do with them. But a living dog is better than a dead lion; I would rather have the living

child, and let it take its chance, than let it return to Godwasted. O! it is a distressing thing to see children

die. God gives the most beautiful and precious thing that earth can have, and we just take it and cast it away;

we toss our pearls upon the dunghill and leave them. A dying child is to me one of the most dreadful sights in

the world. A dying man, a man dying on the field of battlethat is a small sight; he has taken his chance; he

is doing his duty; he has had his excitement; he has had his glory, if that will be any consolation to him; if he

is a wise man, he has the feeling that he is dying for his country and his queen: and that is, and ought to be,

enough for him. I am not horrified or shocked at the sight of the man who dies on the field of battle; let him

die so. It does not horrify or shock me, again, to see a man dying in a good old age, even though the last

struggle be painful, as it too often is. But it does shock me, it does make me feel that the world is indeed out

of joint, to see a child die. I believe it to be a priceless boon to the child to have lived for a week, or a day: but

oh, what has God given to this thankless earth, and what has the earth thrown away; and in nine cases out of

ten, from its own neglect and carelessness! What that boy might have been, what he might have done as an

Englishman, if he could have lived and grown up healthy and strong! And I entreat you to bear this in mind,

that it is not as if our lower or our middle classes were not worth saving: bear in mind that the physical

beauty, strength, intellectual power of the middle classesthe shopkeeping class, the farming class, down to

the lowest working classwhenever you give them a fair chance, whenever you give them fair food and air,

and physical education of any kind, prove them to be the finest race in Europe. Not merely the aristocracy,

splendid race as they are, but down and down and down to the lowest labouring man, to the navigatorwhy,

there is not such a body of men in Europe as our navigators; and no body of men perhaps have had a worse

chance of growing to be what they are; and yet see what they have done! See the magnificent men they

become, in spite of all that is against them, dragging them down, tending to give them rickets and

consumption, and all the miserable diseases which children contract; see what men they are, and then

conceive what they might be! It has been said, again and again, that there are no more beautiful race of

women in Europe than the wives and daughters of our London shopkeepers; and yet there are few races of

people who lead a life more in opposition to all rules of hygiene. But, in spite of all that, so wonderful is the

vitality of the English race, they are what they are; and therefore we have the finest material to work upon

that people ever had. And, therefore, again, we have the less excuse if we do allow English people to grow up

Let me refer again to that word that I used; deaththe amount of death. I really believe there are hundreds of

good and kind people who would take up this subject with their whole heart and soul if they were aware of

the magnitude of the evil. Lord Shaftesbury told you just now that there were one hundred thousand

preventable deaths in England every year. So it is. We talk of the loss of human life in war. We are the fools

of smoke and noise; because there are cannonballs, forsooth, and swords and red coats; and because it costs

a great deal of money, and makes a great deal of talk in the papers, we think: What so terrible as war? I will

tell you what is ten times, and ten thousand times, more terrible than war, and that is outraged Nature. War,

we are discovering now, is the clumsiest and most expensive of all games; we are finding that if you wish to

commit an act of cruelty and folly, the most costly one that you can commit is to contrive to shoot your

fellowmen in war. So it is; and thank God that so it is; but Nature, insidious, inexpensive, silent, sends no

roar of cannon, no glitter of arms to do her work; she gives no warning note of preparation; she has no

protocols, nor any diplomatic advances, whereby she warns her enemy that war is coming. Silently, I say, and

insidiously she goes forth; no! she does not even go forth; she does not step out of her path; but quietly, by

the very same means by which she makes alive, she puts to death; and so avenges herself of those who have

rebelled against her. By the very same laws by which every blade of grass grows, and every insect springs to

life in the sunbeam, she kills, and kills, and kills, and is never tired of killing; till she has taught man the

terrible lesson he is so slow to learn, that, Nature is only conquered by obeying her.

And bear in mind one thing more. Man has his courtesies of war, and his chivalries of war; he does not strike

the unarmed man; he spares the woman and the child. But Nature is as fierce when she is offended, as she is

bounteous and kind when she is obeyed. She spares neither woman nor child. She has no pity; for some

awful, but most good reason, she is not allowed to have any pity. Silently she strikes the sleeping babe, with

as little remorse as she would strike the strong man, with the spade or the musket in his hand. Ah! would to

God that some man had the pictorial eloquence to put before the mothers of England the mass of preventable

suffering, the mass of preventable agony of mind and body, which exists in England year after year; and

would that some man had the logical eloquence to make them understand that it is in their power, in the

power of the mothers and wives of the higher class, I will not say to stop it allGod only knows that but

It is in the power, I believe, of any woman in this room to save three or four liveshuman livesduring the

next six months. It is in your power, ladies; and it is so easy. You might save several lives apiece, if you

choose, without, I believe, interfering with your daily business, or with your daily pleasure; or, if you choose,

with your daily frivolities, in any way whatsoever. Let me ask, then, those who are here, and who have not

yet laid these things to heart: Will you let this meeting to day be a mere passing matter of two or three hours'

interest, which you may go away and forget for the next book or the next amusement? Or will you be in

earnest? Will you learnI say it openlyfrom the noble chairman, how easy it is to be in earnest in life;

how every one of you, amid all the artificial complications of English society in the nineteenth century, can

find a work to do, a noble work to do, a chivalrous work to do just as chivalrous as if you lived in any old

magic land, such as Spenser talked of in his "Faerie Queene;" how you can be as true a knighterrant or

ladyerrant in the present century, as if you had lived far away in the dark ages of violence and rapine? Will

you, I ask, learn this? Will you learn to be in earnest; and to use the position, and the station, and the talent

that God has given you to save alive those who should live? And will you remember that it is not the will of

your Father that is in Heaven that one little one that plays in the kennel outside should perish, either in body

The cholera, as was to be expected, has reappeared in England again; and England, as was to be expected, has

taken no sufficient steps towards meeting it; so that if, as seems but too probable, the plague should spread

next summer, we may count with tolerable certainty upon a loss of some ten thousand lives.

That ten thousand, or one thousand, innocent people should die, of whom most, if not all, might be saved

alive, would seem at first sight a matter serious enough for the attention of "philanthropists." Those who

abhor the practice of hanging one man would, one fancies, abhor equally that of poisoning many; and would

protest as earnestly against the painful capital punishment of diarrhoea as against the painless one of hempen

rope. Those who demand mercy for the Sepoy, and immunity for the Coolie women of Delhi, unsexed by

their own brutal and shameless cruelty, would, one fancies, demand mercy also for the British workman, and

immunity for his wife and family. One is therefore somewhat startled at finding that the British nation

reserves to itself, though it forbids to its armies, the right of putting to death unarmed and unoffending men,

After further consideration, however, one finds that there are, as usual, two sides to the question. One is

bound, indeed, to believe, even before proof, that there are two sides. It cannot be without good and sufficient

reason that the British public remains all but indifferent to sanitary reform; that though the science of

epidemics, as a science, has been before the world for more than twenty years, nobody believes in it enough

to act upon it, save some few dozen of fanatics, some of whom have (it cannot be denied) a direct pecuniary

interest in disturbing what they choose to term the poisonmanufactories of free and independent Britons.

Yes; we should surely respect the expressed will and conviction of the most practical of nations, arrived at

after the experience of three choleras, stretching over a whole generation. Public opinion has declared against

the necessity of sanitary reform: and is not public opinion known to be, in these last days, the Ithuriel's spear

which is to unmask and destroy all the follies, superstitions, and cruelties of the universe? The immense

majority of the British nation will neither cleanse themselves nor let others cleanse them: and are we not

governed by majorities? Are not majorities, confessedly, always in the right, even when smallest, and a show

of hands a surer test of truth than any amount of wisdom, learning, or virtue? How much more, then, when a

whole free people is arrayed, in the calm magnificence of self confident conservatism, against a few

innovating and perhaps sceptical philosophasters? Then surely, if ever, vox populi is vox coeli.

And, in fact, when we come to examine the first and commonest objection against sanitary reformers, we find

it perfectly correct. They are said to be theorists, dreamers of the study, who are ignorant of human nature;

and who in their materialist optimism, have forgotten the existence of moral evil till they almost fancy at

times that they can set the world right simply by righting its lowest material arrangements. The complaint is

perfectly true. They have been ignorant of human nature; they have forgotten the existence of moral evil; and

if any religious periodical should complain of their denying original sin, they can only answer that they did in

past years fall into that folly, but that subsequent experience has utterly convinced them of the truth of the

For, misled by this ignorance of human nature, they expected help, from time to time, from various classes of

the community, from whom no help (as they ought to have known at first) is to be gotten. Some, as a fact,

expected the assistance of the clergy, and especially of the preachers of those denominations who believe that

every human being, by the mere fact of his birth into this world, is destined to endless torture after death,

unless the preacher can find an opportunity to deliver him therefrom before he dies. They supposed that to

such preachers the mortal lives of men would be inexpressibly precious; that any science which held out a

prospect of retarding death in the case of "lost millions" would be hailed as a heavenly boon, and would be

carried out with the fervour of men who felt that for the soul's sake no exertion was too great in behalf of the

A little more reflection would have quashed their vain hope. They would have recollected that each of these

preachers was already connected with a congregation; that he had already a hold on them, and they on him;

that he was bound to provide for their spiritual wants before going forth to seek for fresh objects of his

ministry. They would have recollected that on the old principle (and a very sound one) of a bird in the hand

being worth two in the bush, the minister of a congregation would feel it his duty, as well as his interest, not

to defraud his flock of his labours by spending valuable time on a secular subject like sanitary reform, in the

hope of possibly preserving a few human beings, whose souls he might hereafter (and that again would be

They would have recollected, again, that these congregations are almost exclusively composed of those

classes who have little or nothing to fear from epidemics, and (what is even more important) who would have

to bear the expenses of sanitary improvements. But so sanguine, so reckless of human conditions had their

theories made them, that they actually expected that parish rectors, already burdened with overwork and

vestry quarrelsnay, even that preachers who got their bread by pewrents, and whose life long struggle

was, therefore, to keep those pews filled, and those renters in good humourshould astound the respectable

house owners and ratepayers who sat beneath them by the appalling words: "You, and not the 'Visitation of

God,' are the cause of epidemics; and of you, now that you are once fairly warned of your responsibility, will

your brothers' blood be required." Conceive Sanitary Reformers expecting this of "ministers," let their

denomination be what it mightmany of the poor men, too, with a wife and seven children! Truly has it

They forgot, too, that sanitary science, like geology, must be at first sight "suspect" in the eyes of the priests

of all denominations, at least till they shall have arrived at a much higher degree of culture than they now

Like geology, it interferes with that Deus e machina theory of human affairs which has been in all ages the

stronghold of priestcraft. That the Deity is normally absent, and not present; that he works on the world by

interference, and not by continuous laws; that it is the privilege of the priesthood to assign causes for these

"judgments" and "visitations" of the Almighty, and to tell mankind why He is angry with them, and has

broken the laws of nature to punish themthis, in every age, has seemed to the majority of priests a doctrine

to be defended at all hazards; for without it, so they hold, their occupation were gone at once. {13} No

wonder, then, if they view with jealousy a set of laymen attributing these "judgments" to purely chemical

laws, and to misdoings and ignorance which have as yet no place in the ecclesiastical catalogue of sins. True,

it may be that the Sanitary Reformers are right; but they had rather not think so. And it is very easy not to

think so. They only have to ignore, to avoid examining, the facts. Their canon of utility is a peculiar one; and

with facts which do not come under that canon they have no concern. It may be true, for instance, that the

eighteenth century, which to the clergy is a period of scepticism, darkness, and spiritual death, is the very

century which saw more done for science, for civilisation, for agriculture, for manufacture, for the

prolongation and support of human life than any preceding one for a thousand years and more. What matter?

That is a "secular" question, of which they need know nothing. And sanitary reform (if true) is just such

another; a matter (as slavery has been seen to be by the preachers of the United States) for the legislator, and

Others again expected, with equal wisdom, the assistance of the political economist. The fact is undeniable,

but at the same time inexplicable. What they could have found in the doctrines of most modern political

economists which should lead them to suppose that human life would be precious in their eyes, is unknown to

the writer of these pages. Those whose bugbear has been over population, whose motto has been an

cannot be expected to lend their aid in increasing the population by saving the lives of twothirds of the

children who now die prematurely in our great cities; and so still further overcrowding this unhappy land with

those helpless and expensive sources of national povertyrational human beings, in strength and health.

Moreoverand this point is worthy of serious attentionthat school of political economy, which has now

reached its full development, has taken all along a view of man's relation to Nature diametrically opposite to

that taken by the Sanitary Reformer, or indeed by any other men of science. The Sanitary Reformer holds, in

common with the chemist or the engineer, that Nature is to be obeyed only in order to conquer her; that man

is to discover the laws of her existing phenomena, in order that he may employ them to create new

phenomena himself; to turn the laws which he discovers to his own use; if need be, to counteract one by

another. In this power, it has seemed to them, lay his dignity as a rational being. It was this, the power of

invention, which made him a progressive animal, not bound as the bird and the bee are, to build exactly as his

By political economy alone has this faculty been denied to man. In it alone he is not to conquer nature, but

simply to obey her. Let her starve him, make him a slave, a bankrupt, or what not, he must submit, as the

savage does to the hail and the lightning. "Laissezfaire," says the "Science du neant," the "Science de la

misere," as it has truly and bitterly been called; "Laissez faire." Analyse economic questions if you will: but

beyond analysis you shall not step. Any attempt to raise political economy to its synthetic stage is to break

the laws of nature, to fight against factsas if facts were not made to be fought against and conquered, and

put out of the way, whensoever they interfere in the least with the welfare of any human being. The drowning

man is not to strike out for his life lest by keeping his head above water he interfere with the laws of

gravitation. Not that the political economist, or any man, can be true to his own fallacy. He must needs try his

hand at the synthetic method though he forbids it to the rest of the world: but the only deductive hint which

he has as yet given to mankind is, quaintly enough, the most unnatural "eidolon specus" which ever entered

the head of a dehumanised pedantnamely, that once famous "Preventive Check," which, if a nation did

ever apply itas it never will could issue, as every doctor knows, in nothing less than the questionable

The only explanation of such conduct (though one which the men themselves will hardly accept) is thisthat

they secretly share somewhat in the doubt which many educated men have of the correctness of their

inductions; that these same laws of political economy (where they leave the plain and safe subjectmatter of

trade) have been arrived at somewhat too hastily; that they are, in plain English, not quite sound enough yet

to build upon; and that we must wait for a few more facts before we begin any theories. Be it so. At least,

these men, in their present temper of mind, are not likely to be very useful to the Sanitary Reformer.

Would that these men, or the clergy, had been the only bruised reed in which the Sanitary Reformers put their

trust. They found another reed, however, and that was Public Opinion; but they forgot that (whatever the

stumporators may say about this being the age of electric thought, when truth flashes triumphant from pole

to pole, etc.) we have no proof whatsoever that the proportion of fools is less in this generation than in those

before it, or that truth, when unpalatable (as it almost always is), travels any faster than it did five hundred

years ago. They forgot that every social improvement, and most mechanical ones, have had to make their way

against laziness, ignorance, envy, vested wrongs, vested superstitions, and the whole vis inertiae of the world,

the flesh, and the devil. They were guilty indeed, in this case, not merely of ignorance of human nature, but of

forgetfulness of fact. Did they not know that the excellent New Poorlaw was greeted with the curses of

those very farmers and squires who now not only carry it out lovingly and willingly to the very letter, but are

often too ready to resist any improvement or relaxation in it which may be proposed by that very Poorlaw

Board from which it emanated? Did they not know that Agricultural Science, though of sixty years' steady

growth, has not yet penetrated into a third of the farms of England; and that hundreds of farmers still dawdle

on after the fashion of their forefathers, when by looking over the next hedge into their neighbour's field they

might double their produce and their profits? Did they not know that the adaptation of steam to machinery

would have progressed just as slowly, had it not been a fact patent to babies that an engine is stronger than a

horse; and that if cotton, like wheat and beef, had taken twelve months to manufacture, instead of five

minutes, Manchester foresight would probably have been as short and as purblind as that of the British

farmer? What right had they to expect a better reception for the facts of Sanitary Science?facts which

ought to, and ultimately will, disturb the vested interests of thousands, will put them to inconvenience,

possibly at first to great expense; and yet facts which you can neither see nor handle, but must accept and pay

hundreds of thousands of pounds for, on the mere word of a doctor or inspector who gets his living thereby.

Poor John Bull! To expect that you would accept such a gospel cheerfully was indeed to expect too much!

But yet, though the public opinion of the mass could not be depended on, there was a body left, distinct from

the mass, and priding itself so much on that distinctness that it was ready to say at timesof course in more

courteousat least in what it considered more Scriptural language: "This people which knoweth not the law

is accursed." To it thereforeto the religious worldsome oversanguine Sanitary Reformers turned their

eyes. They saw in it ready organised (so it professed) for all good works, a body such as the world had never

seen before. Where the religions public of Byzantium, Alexandria, or Rome numbered hundreds, that of

England numbered its thousands. It was divided, indeed, on minor points, but it was surely united by the one

aim of saving every man his own soul, and of professing the deepest reverence for that Divine Book which

tells men that the way to attain that aim is, to be good and to do good; and which contains among other

commandments this one"Thou shaft not kill." Its wealth was enormous. It possessed so much political

power, that it would have been able to command elections, to compel ministers, to encourage the weak hearts

of willing but fearful clergymen by fair hopes of deaneries and bishoprics. Its members were no clique of

unpractical fanaticsno men less. Though it might number among them a few martinet expostcaptains,

and noblemen of questionable sanity, capable of no more practical study than that of unfulfilled prophecy, the

vast majority of them were landowners, merchants, bankers, commercial men of all ranks, full of worldly

experience, and of the science of organisation, skilled all their lives in finding and in employing men and

money. What might not be hoped from such a body, to whom that commercial imperium in imperio of the

French Protestants which the edict of Nantes destroyed was poor and weak? Add to this that these men's

charities were boundless; that they were spending yearly, and on the whole spending wisely and well, ten

times as much as ever was spent before in the world, on educational schemes, missionary schemes, church

building, reformatories, ragged schools, needlewomen's charitieswhat not? No object of distress, it

seemed, could be discovered, no fresh means of doing good devised, but these men's money poured

bountifully and at once into that fresh channel, and an organisation sprang up for the employment of that

money, as thrifty and as handy as was to be expected from the moneyholding classes of this great

What could not these men do? What were they not bound by their own principles to do? No wonder that

some weak men's hearts beat high at the thought. What if the religious world should take up the cause of

Sanitary Reform? What if they should hail with joy a cause in which all, whatever their theological

differences, might join in one sacred crusade against dirt, degradation, disease, and death? What if they

should rise at the hustings to inquire of every candidate: "Will you or will you not, pledge yourself to carry

out Sanitary Reform in the place for which you are elected, and let the health and the lives of the local poor

be that 'local interest' which you are bound by your election to defend? Do you confess your ignorance of the

subject? Then know, sir, that you are unfit, at this point of the nineteenth century, to be a member of the

British Senate. You go thither to make laws 'for the preservation of life and property.' You confess yourself

ignorant of those physical laws, stronger and wider than any which you can make, upon which all human life

depends, by infringing which the whole property of a district is depreciated." Again, what might not the

"religious world," and the public opinion of "professing Christians," have done in the last twentyay, in the

The reasons of so strange an anomaly are to be approached with caution. It is a serious thing to impute

motives to a vast body of men, of whom the majority are really respectable, kindhearted, and useful; and if

in giving one's deliberate opinion one seems to blame them, let it be recollected that the blame lies not so

much on them as on their teachers: on those who, for some reasons best known to themselves, have truckled

to, and even justified, the selfsatisfied ignorance of a comfortable moneyed class.

But let it be said, and said boldly, that these men's conduct in the matter of Sanitary Reform seems at least to

show that they value virtue, not for itself, but for its future rewards. To the great majority of these men (with

some heroic exceptions, whose names may be written in no subscription list, but are surely written in the

book of life) the great truth has never been revealed, that good is the one thing to be done, at all risks, for its

own sake; that good is absolutely and infinitely better than evil, whether it pay or not to all eternity. Ask one

of them: "Is it better to do right and go to hell, or do wrong and go to heaven?"they will look at you

puzzled, half angry, suspecting you of some secret blasphemy, and, if hard pressed, put off the new and

startling question by saying, that it is absurd to talk of an impossible hypothesis. The human portion of their

virtue is not mercenary, for they are mostly worthy men; the religious part thereof, that which they keep for

Sundays and for charitable institutions, is too often mercenary, though they know it not. Their religion is too

often one of "Loss and Gain," as much as Father Newman's own; and their actions, whether they shall call

them "good works" or "fruits of faith," are so much spiritual capital, to be repaid with interest at the last day.

Therefore, like all religionists, they are most anxious for those schemes of good which seem most profitable

to themselves and to the denomination to which they belong; and the best of all such works is, of course, as

with all religionists, the making of proselytes. They really care for the bodies, but still they care more for the

souls, of those whom they assistand not wrongly either, were it not that to care for a man's soul usually

means, in the religious world, to make him think with you; at least to lay him under such obligations as to

give you spiritual power over him. Therefore it is that all religious charities in England are more and more

conducted, just as much as those of Jesuits and Oratorians, with an ulterior view of proselytism; therefore it is

that the religious world, though it has invented, perhaps, no new method of doing good; though it has been

indebted for educational movements, prison visitations, infant schools, ragged schools, and so forth, to

Quakers, cobblers, even in some cases to men whom they call infidels, have gladly adopted each and every

one of them, as fresh means of enlarging the influence or the numbers of their own denominations, and of

baiting for the body in order to catch the soul. A fair sample of too much of their labour may be seen

anywhere, in those tracts in which the prettiest stories, with the prettiest binding and pictures, on the most

secular even, sometimes, scientificof subjects, end by a few words of pious exhortation, inserted by a

different hand from that which indites the "carnal" mass of the book. They did not invent the science, or the

art of storytelling, or the woodcutting, or the plan of getting books up prettilyor, indeed, the notion of

instructing the masses at all; but finding these things in the hands of "the world," they have "spoiled the

If, indeed, these men claimed boldly all printing, all woodcutting, all storytelling, all human arts and

sciences, as gifts from God Himself; and said, as the book which they quote so often says: "The Spirit of God

gives man understanding, these, too, are His gifts, sacred, miraculous, to be accounted for to Him," then they

would be consistent; and then, too, they would have learnt, perhaps, to claim Sanitary Science for a gift

divine as any other: but nothing, alas! is as yet further from their creed. And therefore it is that Sanitary

Reform finds so little favour in their eyes. You have so little in it to show for your work. You may think you

have saved the lives of hundreds; but you cannot put your finger on one of them: and they know you not;

know not even their own danger, much less your beneficence. Therefore, you have no lien on them, not even

that of gratitude; you cannot say to a man: "I have prevented you having typhus, therefore you must attend

my chapel." No! Sanitary Reform makes no proselytes. It cannot be used as a religious engine. It is too

simply human, too little a respecter of persons, too like to the works of Him who causes His sun to shine on

the evil and the good, and His rain to fall on the just and on the unjust, and is good to the unthankful and to

the evil, to find much favour in the eyes of a generation which will compass sea and land to make one

Yes. Too like the works of our Father in heaven, as indeed all truly natural and human science needs must be.

True, to those who believe that there is a Father in heaven, this would, one supposes, be the highest

recommendation. But how many of this generation believe that? Is not their doctrine, the doctrine to testify

for which the religious world exists, the doctrine which if you deny, you are met with one universal frown

and snarlthat man has no Father in heaven: but that if he becomes a member of the religious world, by

processes varying with each denomination, he maystrange paradoxcreate a Father for himself?

But so it is. The religious world has lost the belief which even the elder Greeks and Romans had, of a "Zeus,

Father of gods and men." Even that it has lost. Therefore have man and the simple human needs of man, no

sacredness in their eyes; therefore is Nature to them no longer "the will of God exprest in facts," and to break

a law of nature no longer to sin against Him who "looked on all that He had made, and behold, it was very

good." And yet they read their Bibles, and believe that they believe in Him who stood by the lakeside in

Galilee, and told men that not a sparrow fell to the ground without their Father's knowledgeand that they

were of more value than many sparrows. Do those words now seem to some so selfevident as to be

needless? They will never seem so to the Sanitary Reformer, who has called on the "British Public" to exert

themselves in saving the lives of thousands yearly; and has received practical answers which will furnish

many a bitter jest for the Voltaire of the next socalled "age of unbelief," or fill a sad, but an instructive

All but despairing, Sanitary Reformers have turned again and again to her Majesty's Government. Alas for

them! The Government was ready and willing enough to help. The wicked world said: "Of course. It will

create a new department. It will give them more places to bestow." But the real reason of the willingness of

Government seems to be that those who compose it are thoroughly awake to the importance of the subject.

But what can a poor Government do, whose strength consists (as that of all English Governments must) in

not seeming too strong; which is allowed to do anything, only on condition of doing the minimum? Of

course, a Government is morally bound to keep itself in existence; for is it not bound to believe that it can

govern the country better than any other knot of men? But its only chance of selfpreservation is to know,

with Hesiod's wise man, "how much better the half is than the whole," and to throw over many a measure

which it would like to carry, for the sake of saving the few which it can carry.

An English Government, nowadays, is simply at the mercy of the forty or fifty members of the House of

Commons who are crotchety enough or dishonest enough to put it unexpectedly in a minority; and they, with

the vast majority of the House, are becoming more and more the delegates of that very class which is most

opposed to Sanitary Reform. The honourable member goes to Parliament not to express his opinions, (for he

has stated most distinctly at the last election that he has no opinions whatsoever), but to protect the local

interests of his constituents. And the great majority of those constituents are small houseownersthe poorer

portion of the middle class. Were he to support Government in anything like a sweeping measure of Sanitary

Reform, woe to his seat at the next election; and he knows it; and therefore, even if he allow the Government

to have its Central Board of Health, he will take good care, for his own sake, that the said Board shall not do

No wonder, that while the attitude of the House of Commons is such toward a matter which involves the lives

of thousands yearly, some educated men should be crying that Representative institutions are on their trial,

There is an answer, nevertheless, to such sentimentalists, and one hopes that people will see the answer for

themselves, and that the infection of Imperialism, which seems spreading somewhat rapidly, will be stopped

A despotism doubtless could carry out Sanitary Reform: but doubtless, also, it would not.

A despot in the nineteenth century knows well how insecure his tenure is. His motto must be, "Let us eat and

drink, for to morrow we die;" and, therefore, the first objects of his rule will be, private luxury and a

standing army; while if he engage in public works, for the sake of keeping the populace quiet, they will be

certain not to be such as will embroil him with the middle classes, while they will win him no additional

favour with the masses, utterly unaware of their necessity. Would the masses of Paris have thanked Louis

Napoleon the more if, instead of completing the Tuileries, he had sewered the St. Antoine? All arguments to

the contrary are utterly fallacious, which are drawn from ancient despotisms, Roman, Eastern, Peruvian, or

other; and for this simple reason, that they had no middle class. If they did work well (which is a question) it

was just because they had no middle classthat class, which in a free State is the very life of a nation, and

yet which, in a despotism, is sure to be the root of its rottenness. For a despot who finds, as Louis Napoleon

has done, a strong middle class already existing, must treat it as he does; he must truckle to it, pander to its

basest propensities, seem to make himself its tool, in order that he may make it his. For the sake of his own

life, he must do it; and were a despot to govern England tomorrow, we should see that the man who was

shrewd enough to have climbed to that bad eminence, would be shrewd enough to know that he could

scarcely commit a more suicidal act than, by some despotic measure of Sanitary Reform, to excite the illwill

of all the most covetous, the most stupid, and the most stubborn men in every town of England.

There is another answer, too, to "Imperialists" who talk of Representative institutions being on their trial, and

It will be time to talk of Representative institutions being good or bad, when the people of England are

In the first place, it does seem only fair that the class who suffer most from epidemics should have some little

share in the appointment of the men on whose votes extermination of epidemics now mainly depends. But

that is too large a question to argue here. Let the Government see to it in the coming session.

Yet how much soever, or how little soever, the suffrage be extended in the direction of the working man, let it

be extended, at least in some equal degree, in the direction of the educated man. Few bodies in England now

express the opinions of educated men less than does the present House of Commons. It is not chosen by

educated men, any more than it is by proletaires. It is not, on an average, composed of educated men; and the

many educated men who are in it have, for the most part, to keep their knowledge very much to themselves,

for fear of hurting the feelings of "ten pound Jack," or of the local attorney who looks after Jack's vote. And

For, to enounce with fitting clearness a great but muchforgotten truth, To have an opinion, you must have an

Strange: but true, and pregnant too. For, from it may be deduced this corollary, that ninetenths of what is

called Public Opinion is no opinion at all; for, on the matters which come under the cognizance of the House

of Commons (save where superstition, as in the case of the Sabbath, or the Jew Bill, sets folks thinking

generally on the wrong side), nine people out of ten have no opinion at all; know nothing about the matter,

and care less; wherefore, having no opinions to be represented, it is not important whether that nothing be

The true public opinion of England is composed of the opinions of the shrewd, honest, practical men in her,

whether educated or not; and of such, thank God, there are millions: but it consists also of the opinions of the

educated men in her; men who have had leisure and opportunity for study; who have some chance of

knowing the future, because they have examined the past; who can compare England with other nations;

English creeds, laws, customs, with those of the rest of mankind; who know somewhat of humanity, human

progress, human existence; who have been practised in the processes of thought; and who, from study, have

formed definite opinions, differing doubtless in infinite variety, but still all founded upon facts, by something

Till we have this class of men fairly represented in the House of Commons, there is little hope for Sanitary

Reform: when it is so represented, we shall have no reason to talk of Representative institutions being on

And it is one of the few hopeful features of the present time, that an attempt is at last being made to secure for

educated men of all professions a fair territorial representation. A memorial to the Government has been

presented, appended to which, in very great numbers, are the names of men of note, of all ranks, all shades in

politics and religion, all professionslegal, clerical, military, medical, and literary. A list of names

representing so much intellect, so much learning, so much acknowledged moderation, so much good work

already done and acknowledged by the country, has never, perhaps, been collected for any political purpose;

and if their scheme (the details of which are not yet made public) should in anywise succeed, it will do more

for the prospects of Sanitary Reform than any forward movement of the quarter of a century.

For if Sanitary Reform, or perhaps any really progressive measure, is to be carried out henceforth, we must

go back to something like the old principle of the English constitution, by which intellect, as such, had its

proper share in the public councils. During those middle ages when all the intellect and learning was

practically possessed by the clergy, they constituted a separate estate of the realm. This was the old planthe

best which could be then devised. After learning became common to the laity, the educated classes were

represented more and more only by such clever young men as could be thrust into Parliament by the private

patronage of the aristocracy. Since the last Reform Bill, even that supply of talent has been cut off; and the

consequence has been, the steady deterioration of our House of Commons toward such a level of mediocrity

as shall satisfy the ignorance of the practically electing majority, namely, the tail of the middle class; men

who are apt to possess all the failings with few of the virtues of those above them and below them; who have

no more intellectual training than the simple working man, and far less than the average shopman, and who

yet lose, under the influence of a small competence, that practical training which gives to the working man,

made strong by wholesome necessity, chivalry, endurance, courage, and selfrestraint; whose business

morality is made up of the lowest and narrowest maxims of the commercial world, unbalanced by that public

spirit, that political knowledge, that practical energy, that respect for the good opinion of his fellows, which

elevate the large employer. On the hustings, of course, this description of the average free and independent

elector would be called a calumny; and yet, where is the member of Parliament who will not, in his study,

assent to its truth, and confess, that of all men whom he meets, those who least command his respect are those

among his constituents to secure whom he takes most trouble; unless, indeed, it be the pettifoggers who

Whether this is the class to whose public opinion the health and lives of the masses are to be entrusted, is a

Meanwhile let every man who would awake to the importance of Sanitary questions, do his best to teach and

preach, in season and out of season, and to instruct, as far as he can, that public opinion which is as yet but

public ignorance. Let him throw, for instance, what weight he has into the "National Association for the

Advancement of Social Science." In it he will learn, as well as teach, not only on Sanitary Reforms, but upon

those cognate questions which must be considered with it, if it is ever to be carried out.

Indeed, this new "National Association" seems the most hopeful and practical move yet made by the

sanitarists. It may be laughed at somewhat at first, as the British Association was; but the world will find after

a while that, like the British Association, it can do great things towards moulding public opinion, and compel

men to consider certain subjects, simply by accustoming people to hear them mentioned. The Association

will not have existed in vain, if it only removes that dull fear and suspicion with which Englishmen are apt to

regard a new subject, simply because it is new. But the Association will do far more than that. It has wisely

not confined itself to any one branch of Social Science, but taken the subject in all its complexity. To do

otherwise would have been to cripple itself. It would have shut out many subjectsLaw Reform, for

instancewhich are necessary adjuncts to any Sanitary scheme; while it would have shut out that very large

class of benevolent people who have as yet been devoting their energies to prisons, workhouses, and schools.

Such will now have an opportunity of learning that they have been treating the symptoms of social disease

rather than the disease itself. They will see that vice is rather the effect than the cause of physical misery, and

that the surest mode of attacking it is to improve the physical conditions of the lower classes; to abolish foul

air, fouled water, foul lodging, and overcrowded dwellings, in which morality is difficult, and common

decency impossible. They will not give upHeaven forbid that they should give up!their special good

works; but they will surely throw the weight of their names, their talents, their earnestness, into the great

central object of preserving human life, as soon as they shall have recognised that prevention is better than

cure; and that the simple and one method of prevention is, to give the working man his rights. Water, air,

light. A right to these three at least he has. In demanding them, he demands no more than God gives freely to

the wild beast of the forest. Till society has given him them, it does him an injustice in demanding of him that

he should be a useful member of society. If he is expected to be a man, let him at least be put on a level with

the brutes. When the benevolent of the land (and they may be numbered by tens of thousands) shall once

have learnt this plain and yet awful truth, a vast upward step will have been gained. Because this new

Association will teach it them, during the next ten or twenty years, may God's blessing be on it, and, on the

noble old man who presides over it. Often already has he deserved well of his country; but never better than

now, when he has lent his great name and great genius to the object of preserving human life from wholesale

And meanwhile let the Sanitary Reformer work and wait. "Go not after the world," said a wise man, "for if

thou stand still long enough the world will come round to thee." And to Sanitary Reform the world will come

round at last. Grumbling, scoffing, cursing its benefactors; boasting at last, as usual, that it discovered for

itself the very truths which it tried to silence, it will come; and will be glad at last to accept the one sibylline

leaf, at the same price at which it might have had the whole. The Sanitary Reformer must make up his mind

to see no fruit of his labours, much less thanks or reward. He must die in faith, as St. Paul says all true men

die, "not having received the promises;" worn out, perhaps, by illpaid and unappreciated labour, as that

truesthearted and most unselfish of men, Charles Robert Walsh, died but two years ago. But his works will

follow himnot, as the preachers tell us, to heavenfor of what use would they be there, to him or to

mankind?but here, on earth, where he set them, that they might go on in his path, after his example, and

prosper and triumph long years after he is dead, when his memory shall be blessed by generations not merely

"yet unborn," but who never would have been born at all, had he not inculcated into their unwilling fathers

the simplest laws of physical health, decency, lifelaws which the wild cat of the wood, burying its own

excrement apart from its lair, has learnt by the light of nature; but which neither nature nor God Himself can

{1} This lecture was one of a series of "Lectures to Ladies," given in London in 1855, at the Needlewoman's

{2} The substance of this Essay was a lecture on Physical Education, given at the Midland Institute,

{6} I quote from the translation of the late lamented Philip Stanhope Worsley, of Corpus Christi College,

{8} Since this essay was written, I have been sincerely delighted to find that my wishes had been anticipated

at Girton College, near Cambridge, and previously at Hitchin, whence the college was removed: and that the

wise ladies who superintend that establishment propose also that most excellent institutiona

swimmingbath. A paper, moreover, read before the London Association of Schoolmistresses in 1866, on

"Physical Exercises and Recreation for Girls," deserves all attention. May those who promote such things

{11} Speech in behalf of Ladies' Sanitary Association. Delivered at St. James's Hall, London, 1859.

{13} We find a most honourable exception to this rule in a sermon by the Rev. C. Richson, of Manchester, on