about other continental charities not expressly Christian, as all described by Mr. de Liefde are, and some other, too, would do the same for North America, we might see at a glance what positions are taken, and what results are attained, in the new crusade against existing civilisation itself.

It is not only a greater extension of the charitable spirit that we want, but better methods of turning it to practical account. Philanthropy, if it is to be successful, must become more scientific, and to be scientific it must first of all be historical, so to speak. Few forms of government, not less than few forms of science, can be expected to have a spontaneous origin. They must grow out of old elements, and profit by old failures and successes. New schemes for social regeneration may be desirable, but they are not to be elaborated in the study of a recluse, or the cell of an anchorite. The best way to be an accomplished physician, or engineer, is not by ignoring the sum of past or present activities, but by mastering them, and putting their methods to such original uses as observation and experience may suggest. Unfortunately, however, in charitable matters we have too much of the developing out of one's moral consciousness. Not that charitable persons have always acted in defiance of this real method of progress, but that it is to be desired that they should understand it better, and act more in accordance with it. Charity, so noble and generous a sentiment, yet requires to be fenced about with laws and proprieties. It is an excellent and powerful force, but it may become a destructive one. It quickens the imagination like a charm, but it may also madden the judgment like a curse. It often begins by denying existing facts, to end by surrounding itself with illusions of its own. It is true we are beginning to get clearer views of the aims and limits of social science, but what a dazzling, erratic, disorderly thing charity is yet. Its ethics, economy, and polity have yet very much to be determined and established. Science affects everything, from cookery upwards, but it has yet scarcely reached charitable regions. We not only fail to understand what is, but are always ready to believe in what is not. A charlatan is safe in trading on charity when every other occupation is gone. New schemes run away with all our logic. They flare across the horizon, and pass away into darkness again, like the comets that wheel above us with such gigantic menace and terrible teaching. They organise, perchance, and everything seems complete for a while; there is no flaw, no weakness anywhere, but they end like the wonderful vehicle constructed on the same principle that Holmes, the American, has told us about, that

'Went

'Went to pieces all at once,

All at once, and nothing first,

Just as bubbles do when they burst.'

Charities, like metaphysical terms and civilised races, will degenerate. Thus even our State hospitals, usually considered to be models of orderly arrangement and scientific method, are passing through this phase. Instead of homes for the recovery of the sick, they are becoming, as Mr. Hart describes them, the infirmaries of the workhouse.' He continues, summarising the results of the late Commission:

6

'The infirmaries having grown gradually in size and importance, the system of their present administration presents all kinds of variety. In some the buildings are good; in others they are execrable, and entirely incompatible with the welfare of their inmates; some have a resident officer, others have none; some few have paid nurses; in some the guardians provide the drugs, in others the paid medical officer farms the place himself, providing drugs, attendance, and dispensing for the inmates. There is no uniformity; there is a general meanness of administration; frequent examples of neglect, amounting to extreme cruelty; many instances of gross maladministration; and a prevailing ignorance of the principles on which what are in truth great hospitals should be managed, and of the means by which such establishments may be made to fulfil their functions, and to deserve their

name.'

A similar administrative looseness and unscientific method prevail elsewhere. A criminal, at present, is an imperfectly understood being, and the arrangements made for him frequently turn upon wrong principles. He is alternately fondled and punished. He knows society is against him, and yet the moment he passes over into its power he gets only a little more of its previous hardness, severity, and bitterness. He gets pressed into a dull, stupid sort of mechanical betterness by prison life, and the moment he comes out again he meets the old distrust, the old harshness, and the old begrudging charity. Grind him by severity, and you have but concentrated the demon that is in him; bribe him into piety, and you make him a hypocrite, until, were he honest, he would speak like base King Richard:

'And thus I clothe my naked villainy,

With old odd ends, stolen forth of holy writ;
And seem a saint when most I play the devil.'

The young poor, the depraved vagabonds, the orphan child, the abandoned woman, are all wanting the help that no mere charity can render them. They want to be understood, and then they want help; they must first be made rational before we can expect them to be saints. Pity is good, but as Mr. de Liefde says, 'Compassion alone does not make an efficient officer in a gaol: *** to love is one thing, but to be able to teach is another.' Fine buildings, high patronage, and stir

ring annual meetings do not create success; but humble, loving, patient, faithful workers, steadied by the strong calm and the conscious power which flow to them as they work, by the ascertained laws of fact, and not the fleeting figments of fancy, and recognising behind all their endeavours the potential energy of natural law and order, as harmonious expressions of the Divine Being and Will.

We do not regard continental charities as signal examples of what we ought to do, or ought never to have done. We do not think our insularity has so far cramped us as to make an external status the only true one for understanding our position and duty. But it will better us to take it. Egotism, individual or national, is never the mood likely to do us most. good. To understand ourselves, it is necessary we should know others, and to better ourselves we should faithfully study others, and bring our comparisons home. There are characteristics we can never engraft, but there are virtues and excellencies we may both acquire and supplement. As a contribution to the historical aspect of charities, Mr. de Liefde's work will help to do much for us. It is simple, unpretending, but solid. He has seen all he writes about with his own eyes. He brings the very institutions he writes about to us, and we can enter into all their details without difficulty or weariness. Perhaps, at times, he is too much influenced by the colouring of annual reports, and sermonises where description would have been more natural; but the difficulty is to escape such faults, and he has evidently done his best, cheerfully and lovingly. The value of his work would have been much increased had he adopted a broader principle of selection, but its unity and coherence would have been impaired. As an illustration of the mighty power of Christian love, the work is perfect of its kind, but as a glance at European charities it is therefore a little defective. There are several institutions described that are almost identical in their nature, whilst one or two specimens are altogether omitted. It is possible, however, that some of these were included in the twenty-six he visited, although not, from various reasons, included in the fifteen he has described. We miss, for instance, any account of one of the several continental institutions for the treatment of idiots and cretins, and as they are in every way remarkable, and one or two of them are managed by persons of English and American fame, the omission seriously impairs the completeness of the book. It is true he gives an account of the establishments at Laforce, which include one for idiots and incurables, but many will regard this as an insufficient presentment of what is being done for this class upon the con

tinent.

tinent. Still the work is a very valuable one. As recording examples of quiet moral heroism, it is healthy and refreshing; and as depicting an out-of-the-way world, it is novel and readable. It should be in the hands of all managers of public charitable institutions, and subordinate officers may learn from it many a lesson of loving patience and manly struggle that will help them to love their work, and brave their difficulties with newness of energy and life. A book of aphorisms for charitable people would be a most excellent thing; it would help them to be wise when they are often only soft-hearted, and just where they are simply too idle to be anything but alms-givers. It would be useful for those who sustain charitable institutions, as well as those who officer them. But it would seem a hard, cold, formal, exact book, and so full of rebuke to many who give, as Jack Bunting swore, because they know not what else to do, that it would be unpopular and unreadable. Here, however, is a mass of concrete advice, logic, philosophy, ethics, and political economy, and one forgets the irksomeness of the lessons in the pleasant prattle of our Dutch guide, who has gone through so much hard travelling, read so many heavy, voluminous reports, and, surviving all, treats us to sketches and pictures that are sweet, cheering, and idyllic.

Although many of the establishments described by Mr. de Liefde indirectly owe their origin, according to his views, to English sympathy and liberality, they present some curious contrasts with our own institutions. Here, in England, for instance, we move en masse in committees, if we want to establish a philanthropic society, and with a noverint universi in the shape of a resolution to the effect that this society be called' so and so, we have forthwith originated a scheme; money, officers, and other things being mere subordinate matters that may or may not come afterwards. But in most of the cases given by Mr. de Liefde it is otherwise. We have a picture of one man toiling for a project in view, sacrificing position and money, giving up house and home, a wandering beggar like Fliedner, an aged joiner like Wurtz, a persecuted martyr like Fingado, and struggling heroically until his one object was accomplished. And so there are romantic biographies that impart an indescribable charm, and contrasts strangely with our own mostly prosaically-formed institutions. Perhaps, of all, there is none more interesting than that of Philippe Jacob Wurtz, the joiner, of Neuhof, near Strasburg, who founded an establishment there for indigent children. Quaint pictures of Strasburg life come out. His mother was a poor washerwoman, and could only give her son a little, simple,

simple, rudimentary German education. A knowledge of French was necessary to enable a man to get on, but only German was taught in the schools, and the private teachers who taught French were called 'lantern-preceptors,' because they usually guided themselves to and fro through the dark streets at nights by their own lanterns. But no lanternpreceptor could young Wurtz afford, and so he lived his life, a Frenchman, without ever being able to speak his own country's language. Then came his travelling apprenticeship, and other trials, ending with the founding of his establishment in his eightieth year. Other histories are interesting from another point of view. Here are some people who have fought their doubts and gathered strength,' and who, while others have been losing themselves in the intricate mazes of theological controversy and metaphysical doubt, have worked out eloquent testimonies to the strength of Christian love and the heroism of Christian faith. Dr. Fliedner, the founderof the Deaconesses' House at Kaiserwerth, in Rhenish Prussia, imbibed rationalistic ideas at Giessen and Göttingen, but a visit to England changed his mind. 'Here he witnessed a living Christianity abounding in works of love towards the poor, the lost, the prisoner, and the outcast, such as he never saw before. This, which was quite new to him, set him thinking seriously about the source whence numerous streams of disinterested self-denying charity. obtained their supply.' Mr. Georgi, too, was a rationalist, as a young man, and a disciple of Kant and Hegel, but found truer illumination in Thomas à Kempis's Imitation of Christ. At the asylum for poor neglected children at Düsselthal, near Düsseldorf, he carried into action the gentlest but firmest Christianity. When he went, he found sticks and cudgels there that had been used to keep the boys in order, and he had them carried out in solemn procession. Ah!' cried one of the boys, 'this fellow thinks he will manage us without a stick.' 'I think I will,' he replied drily. It would have been well for our own asylums and reformatories had they had officers as true and as firm as Mr. Georgi in this respect. Pastor O. G. Heldring, again, went through the same fiery trial of doubt at Utrecht. He became a pantheist, and wandered in the barren regions of the everlasting No. 'It was then,' he says, in a short sketch of his own life, 'that an unspeakable craving for faith arose in my soul. I became acquainted with the writings of Jacobi, Hamann, and Claudius, and they convinced me of the preciousness of knowing God through faith.' He became a patriarch to the poor, blessing a Veluwe sandheath, the result of man's disafforesting, with water for the

body,