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. And not only in the lower class, but in the middle class, when one sees an unhealthy family, in three cases out of four, if one takes 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 a stupid neglect, a stupid ignorance, and what is just as bad, a stupid indulgence.

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Now, I do believe that if those tracts which you are publishing, and 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 school mistresses, 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, 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 God-wasted. Oh! 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 cast 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 battle, that 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 doing his duty by his country, or by his king, or by his queen. 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 to see a man dying in a good old age, even though it be painful at the last, as it 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, 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 classes or our middle classes were not worth saving; bear in mind that the physical beauty and strength and intellectual power of the middle classes,the shopkeeping class, the farming class, and down to the working class lower and lower still,-whenever 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 laboring man, to the navigator ;—why 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, all that is drawing them back, all that is 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 races 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 puny, stunted, and diseased.

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Let me refer again to that word that I used: death-the 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 cannon balls and gunpowder and red coats, and because it costs a great deal of money and makes a great deal of noise 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 or folly, the most expensive act that you can commit is to contrive to shoot your fellowmen in war. So it seems; 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 protocol, nor any diplomatic advances, whereby she warns her enemy that war is coming. Silently, I say, and insidiously she goes; she does not even go forth, she does not step out of her path, but quietly, by the very same laws by which she makes alive, she kills and kills and kills. 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.

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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 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 child, with as little remorse as she would strike the strong man, with the spade or the pickaxe 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 melodramatic 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 all,-God only knows that, but to stop, as I believe, three fourths of it.

"It is in the power, I believe, of any woman in this room to save three or four lives, human lives, during the next six months. It is in your power, ladies, and it is so easy. You might save several lives a piece, if you chose, 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, that you shall go away and forget for the next book or the next amusement? Or will you be in earnest ? Will you learn-I say it openly-from 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, and a noble work to do, and a chivalrous work to do,—just as chivalrous as if you lived in any old fairy land, such as Spenser talked of in his 'Faery Queene;' how you can be as chivalrous now, and as true a knight-errant, or lady-errant 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 or in soul?"

We have selected Mr. Kingsley's speech, because the excellent address delivered by Lord Shaftesbury in his capacity of chairman has been duly reported in the daily papers. Various other gentle

men also spoke on the occasion, and bore emphatic testimony to the value of woman's work in sanitary reform.

LIX.-RIGHT OR WRONG?

A TRUE STORY.

E

(Concluded from page 339.)

“We had now reached to within a fortnight or so of the time when it was announced that Alice's cure would be complete, and no obstacle remain to our return to Guernsey, a few days after which our marriage was to take place. I had informed all my relations in the island of my engagement, and received their congratulatory letters and presents in return; and Eustace being obliged to repair to London upon business, I took advantage of his absence to get ready my wedding clothes, expecting these preparations would amuse my little Alice, who was soon to be entirely emancipated from medical control. But to my surprise she showed no interest in anything that was going forward, and though allowed to leave her room for a few hours every day, the unsightly wrappers and bandages that had so long disfigured her being also gradually laid aside, a restless dissatisfied spirit took the place of her recent cheerfulness. New dresses, and all the girlish finery she had before so eagerly counted upon were also prepared for her, but she scarcely looked at them; while if anything was brought for me to try on, she would say, 'Ah! how changed you are, Anne! Poor mamma would not know you again.' And then would hurry away without bestowing a glance upon what I had wished to show her.

"I ought perhaps to have had more strength of mind than to make myself unhappy about these little manifestations of temper, but I could not prevent their preying upon my spirits. Coupled with my often finding her in tears, they now caused me to fear that long confinement to the house had affected her health, and suggested the torturing doubt whether I had not been too much engrossed with Eustace to maintain due watchfulness over her. In her strange waywardness she reminded me of a sick child, jealous of everything that can rob it of its mother's care. Whenever a letter from Eustace was brought to me in her presence, she would pout and complainingly predict that I should now be abstracted and unmindful of her the whole day, only thinking about him. 'He never writes to me,' she once said, 'I suppose he thinks me too much of a child.'

"I mentioned this when I next wrote, saying how kind a few lines from him would appear, and by return of post a letter came directed to Alice, written in a frank pleasant style, as of an elder brother to a younger sister, with an account of some of the London exhibitions he had been visiting. She was evidently gratified at receiving it, and insisted on breaking the seal and reading the contents herself, though this was still a forbidden employment; but