The Amelioration of the Existing Employments.

321.

our means, is always a species of cheating. Dignified simplicity is better than showy splendour; and unhealthy longing for admiration and show lead us into the darkest depths of cruelty.

It is the principle of selfishness which distorts our judgment. We need to exchange our benevolent dilettantism for sincerity. Mere justice demands that we should not profit by the work of others without paying their fair wages. Half the ready-made linen shops in London are not supported by a legitimate business, but by false competition. If each customer were fairly to inquire into the system, and steadily to resolve never to buy the exactions of toil at the lowest possible rate, a reformation might easily be effected. But customers too seldom think of those whose ill-paid toil made their linen so cheap, and that—

2. The remedies which can be applied to the present condition of needlewomen must necessarily be partial, but the society for their assistance does much. Householders may aid effectually by making it a plan to give out all plain needlework, having only the mending done at home. It is possible to increase the usefulness of Dorcas societies, by employing a certain number of poor women in every parish, who are properly paid for making the garments, which can afterwards be used for clothing clubs, or otherwise distributed to the poor. The improvement in sanitary arrangements, and in the wretched lanes and courts in which these creatures sleep, should also be regulated. It has been suggested that other women should be employed as readers, in apartments where large numbers work together, and if this improvement could be effected it would do away with many of the evils which result from indiscriminate gossip.

The early shop-closing movement has already removed a great wrong. It is satisfactory to see that many shopkeepers can act as if the gains of trade are not worth the sacrifice of souls and bodies.' We hope the time will come when sons of professional men will be no longer driven to monopolize the counter, but will be successfully replaced by active women. High stools might be more frequently used for the necessity of resting; and girls might be instructed in arithmetic and fitted to keep accounts. The condition of domestic servants might be greatly improved by the encouragement of industrial schools. Girls of this class are too often forgotten between the ages of fourteen and twenty, when their characters are forming, and when they need most attention. To meet this want, we propose the establishment of adult Sundayschools, which may be attended by those in their first situations.

By throwing open fresh professions to the middle classes, we

shall

shall best widen the circle of labour for the poorer women. When all ranks have occupations fitted to their status, their rivalry will cease with each other.

The late Lady Morgan was accustomed to say (with emphatic flourishes of her green fan) that no young woman should be allowed to grow up in England without being properly skilled in some bread-getting employment. This statement should not only affect those women who are prepared to help themselves, but those fashionable idlers, the vacuums' of whose minds soon become plenums' full of weariness and dismal ennui.

"The latest gospel in this world' is to know our work and to do it. Labour is life,' whether we work for money, or from a simple wish to do our duty to others.

It has been well remarked that the strength of man belongs to production, and that of woman to economizing and finishing this raw material. For the two sexes to fulfil their rightful callings each must act as the complement of the other. Their difference in intellect and character sufficiently proves the advantages which would result from successful combination. Women might help men in literature and in art.

The suggestions proposed by Mr. Scott in his work on Domestic Architecture, include many improvements, such as painting on plaster or on walls, on wooden doors or ceilings, the ornamentation of mantelpieces or fireplaces, the staining of glass, and the modelling of figures, in which it appears to us that women of taste and skill might be successfully associated. In other forms of designing, such as wall paper and chintz, their services have been already admitted. In engraving and in photography (which when made permanent, and able to render the true relations of colour, will probably supersede engraving) they have been found useful. The annual exhibitions of female art sufficiently prove that anatomical diffi-· culties are almost insuperable to women. But it is well known that such painters as Rubens, Raffaelle, and Da Vinci admitted the assistance of pupils in the production of their most vigorous works. And in the growing demand for paintings from our colonies, or for original water-colour drawings to ornament the rooms of the middle class (and as a certain amount of mediocrity is inseparable from the low market price), we do not see why masters of their art should not avail themselves of female assistance for the less important parts of their work. This principle might be extended to the painting of panoramas and frescoes. The admission of

women to the superintendence of hospitals and workhouses is a movement so decided, that in its present state it only requires organization. The indisposition of Miss Nightingale is greatly to be deplored, though her published pamphlet has furnished us with important hints.

Special Training for Special Employments.

323

3. The call for the interposition of female interest, and the necessity for careful education, continue urgent. There is a want of system and method in the employments open to women, and an unsteadiness amongst the workers which must bring its own punishment. There is a special education needed by those who compete for higher employments, whilst those who are engaged in trade should become more familiar with the ways of business. The sisters of charity in foreign countries become novices, and go through regular training. Without such a knowledge of the value of method, Miss Nightingale would not have proved so invaluable in the hour of need. And without much drudgery to insure proficiency, our popular band of female writers (Mrs. Browning, Miss Proctor, Miss Muloch, Miss Yonge, and Miss Evans) could never have reached the exalted position which they fill. As it has been remarked, female population must be supported in some way, and that arrangement is most economical which makes their labour available to the community.

Supposing a farmer to have an increase of labourers at harvesttime, he will be too wise to allow a few covetous men to monopolize all the employment. Rather he will find out fresh fields to be drained, fresh crops to be raised, and as he advances his tried hands to the more onerous posts, he will fill up the vacancies by those who are beginners in the work, thus enlarging his outlay, whilst he doubly increases his profits. England, as Ruskin has reminded us, is a farm on a gigantic scale. There is occupation enough for all hands, if we know how to economize it with method. 4. At this crisis we find it advisable to avail ourselves of the assistance rendered by organized societies. Perpetual innovation is far less advantageous than that noble conservatism which is willing to work out the plans of others.

We do not want fresh societies when there are so many within our reach that their machinery only needs fresh hands to set them going.

It is impossible to refer to more than a few of these social schemes. The Refuges which have lately been established in some of the worst parts of London for the admission and training of young girls (who have hitherto been left to wander about our lanes and alleys, totally unassisted, and hopeless for the future) are institutions which need special encouragement. The number of girls who are thus rescued from misery and sin, and at a proper age drafted off, as respectable members of society, to commence a new life in our foreign colonies, is by no means small. Most of them turn out well.

Mr. Maurice's classes in Great Ormond Street, for the instruction of working women, and the Ladies' National Association for the Diffusion of Sanitary Knowledge, as also hopeful features in

the times. The establishment of institutions for the training of pupil teachers, and the nurses of children, have fulfilled our utmost expectations.

The plan of introducing Bible-women, to act as female missionaries in some of the parishes of London, is already working well; and it appears advisable that such women should organize lodging-houses, to provide respectable and inexpensive maintenance for those of their own grade in life.

A new society has lately been organized for promoting the employment of women.' It is its intention to establish a large school for girls and young women, where they may be specially trained to wait in shops, and where they may be thoroughly instructed in book-keeping. 'Girls educated in this school will be capable of becoming clerks, cashiers, and ticket-sellers at railway stations.'

It is also contemplated to establish workshops in connexion with schools, where girls might be taught other trades, now almost exclusively in the hands of men, such as printing and hairdressing. Those who apply to this society are expected to bring certificates of good character, and certificates of health from medical men. Its present resources will not extend far, but the Institution is decidedly a step in the right direction, which in due time must meet with assistance and support.

5. When such spontaneous local effort and organized association can be brought to bear upon the question, we shall hear no more of a want of sympathy between the rich and the poor. Men will no longer work together in 'strife, rivalry, and hate,' and women will cease to be treated with degradation, as if they were mere 'wagesreceiving animals.' Those complex varieties of fraud, which betray the cunning selfishness of the savage' in the midst of civilization, will be ashamed to manifest themselves in their grosser forms The different orders of society will be bound together by 'links of gratitude and esteem.' The poor will be emancipated from the tyranny of wealth, and we shall learn to show proper reverence for that which is beneath us. Then our gallantry will not be that false flattery which seeks to raise one woman above another. It will be a feeling proving the origin of man, who was made in the image of his Maker, and testifying that generosity by which the stronger protects the weaker, which finds the greatest pleasure in giving to those who have not, and which covers as a thick cloud the deficiencies of the erring. Then our charity (to use an old comparison) will be as a river which gathers as it flows onward, and depends not on the quality of the soil through which it passes; and our government will be, as it professes, the executive fulfilment, by formal human methods, of the will of the Father of mankind respecting His children.'

ART.

Lyrical Poetry in France.

325

ART. III.-1. La Légende des Siècles. By Victor Hugo. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris. M. Levy.

2. Essais sur le Génie de Pindare et sur la Poésie Lyrique. By M. Villemain. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris. Firmin Didot.

THIS

one.

HIS last work of Villemain's is in many respects a curious It is curious from its subject, from its writer, and from the period of its publication as from the country in which it is published. It is in prose the panegyric of poetry, the homage rendered to inspiration by intelligence, and to original composition, by perhaps (since Goethe's death) the foremost æsthetician of the age. It is a hymn to whatever is most immaterial in this most seemingly material epoch, and the deliberate recognition of the superiority of the beautiful and heroic over the useful in the most calculating country on the face of the globe. Scarcely a sentiment or rule of conduct can we point to whereby modern France has shaped her course which is not reproved in these eloquent pages; and scarcely an example of intellectual dignity do they hold up to admiration which has not been repudiated by the acts of the nation in whose language such examples are recorded. M. Villemain has, we believe, said himself-and if so, has said with perfect truth-that his Essay on Lyrical Poetry might be denominated 'a History of Enthusiasm in its Influence on the Human Race.'

It is not impossible that the very lowness of the level to which the public pre-occupations of France have sunk (what we would fain term the inferiority of the national thought), has acted upon a mind of natural nobility, and forced it beyond even its wonted worship of mere beauty. "There comes a time,' says one of the greatest prose-poets of this or any age-the author of Eöthen,' there comes a time for thinking that Shakspere and Shelley, and other mere dead people were greater in death than the first living lord of the treasury;' and we sincerely believe nothing conduces so much towards the preference given to the ideal over the real by certain minds as the base tendencies of the crowd by whom they are every day surrounded. It is when the living lords of the treasury' are more than usually corrupt that the offended sense of the generous few ardently reverts to the Shaksperes, Shelleys, and other mere dead people,' and finds a sort of passionate satisfaction in the utter disinterestedness of its admiration. Opposition is so much one of our most natural instincts that between the elevation of spirit and tone of the men, who in an age of grandeur think and write grandly, and those who, in a lesser epoch, PROTEST by every thought and written line against the narrowness of their age, there can be but slight room for comVol. 2.-No. 8. parison:

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