"If men were better educated they would sympathize in the necessity of giving a better education to women. They would perceive the wisdom of applying, on a large and efficient scale, the means of health, strength and progress which lie in the gentler capacities of the gentler sex-material ready at hand, as yet wasted in desultory, often undirected efforts, are perishing inert, or fermenting to evil and despair. "Lying at the source of the mischief we trace a great mistake and a great want. "The great mistake seems to have been that in all our legislation it is taken for granted that the woman is always protected, always under tutelage, always within the precincts of a home, finding there her work, her interests, her duties and her happiness; but is this true? We know that it is altogether false. There are thousands and thousands of women who have no protection, no home. . . . As to the want, what I insist on particularly is that the means do not exist for the training of those powers; that the sphere of duty which should. occupy them is not acknowledged; and I must express my deep conviction that Society is suffering in its depths through the great mistake and this great want.” The second extract is from the "Communion of Labour." "Wherever men and women do not work together helpfully and harmoniously, and in accordance with the domestic relations-wherever there is not the Communion of Love and the Communion of Labour-there must necessarily enter the elements of discord and decay." These words are from the closing paragraph of the second lecture, "Communion of Labour," which was also delivered privately (on 28th June 1856) and printed by desire. These lectures had large demand, and in 1859 they were reprinted in one small volume together with a letter to Lord John Russell, "on the present conditions. and requirements of the women of England." This letter was suggested by the following memorable passage in his speech as President of the Social Science Association at its second meeting in 1858. "Every one must have observed the new influence which has not been asserted or sought, but is falling to the lot of women, in swaying the destinies of the world. It is not a share in directing the patronage of ministers and sharing in the council of kings, but a portion in the formation and moulding of public opinion. . . . . It seems to me and I am confirmed in this by the bright examples of heroic benevolence-that if the younger generation are to be an improvement on their fathers, if sin is to have less dominion and religion more power, if vice is to be abashed and virtue to be honoured, it is to woman we must look for such a generation." It was in a note to that letter that Mrs. Jameson records that the first time she heard women publicly addressed as members of the community, and co-operating in social objects, was in a speech from Lord Robert Cecil. The new influence had already shown itself in a very practical manner-the first number of the Englishwoman's Journal (March 1858) relates that, "In the summer and autumn of 1855 petitions were circu |