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 THE 
 
 WORKS OF CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 VOLUME XVIII. 
 
 SANITARY AND SOCIAL 
 
 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
THE WORKS 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 ".//v^^^ 
 
 VOLUME XVIII. 
 
 p SANITARY AND SOCIAL jL/<UU>H^ 
 
 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 S0nb0n : 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1880. 
 
3 5-' J 
 
 ^1i 
 
 yj-^ SiJ 
 

 SANITARY AND SOCIAL 
 
 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
SANITARY AND SOCIAL 
 
 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 1^ K I V K H s 1 T y < ) 1^' 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 i88o. 
 
CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, 
 CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS. 
 

 -^^^;:::::-: 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 WOMAN'S WORK IN A COUNTRY PARISE . . . 3 '^ 
 
 THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH 21 '7 
 
 THE TWO BREATHS 49 ' ^ 
 
 THRIFT 77 ^ 
 
 NAUSICAA IN LONDON; OR, THE LOWER EDUCATION 
 
 OF WOMEN . . 107 Z 
 
 THE AIR-MOTHERS 13%^ 
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 167 § 
 
 A* 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 GREAT CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOR GOOD 
 
 AND EVIL 187 '^^ 
 
 HEROISM 225 S2i 
 
 THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS . . . . 257 ^^1 
 
 « A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS " 271 '^^ 
 
SANITARY AND SOCIAL 
 
 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
WOMAN'S WORK IN A COUNTRY PARISH. 
 
 S. E. 
 
' ^ '■ '■■■> / ■!■ , 
 
 /■; 
 
 l.\ 
 
 WOMAN'S WORK IN A COUNTRY PARISH/^ 
 
 I HAVE been asked to speak a few words to you on a 
 lady's work in a country parish. I skall 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 auyone cannot rule her own house- 
 hold,, 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 theu^ own ladies' maids, and house- 
 maids, and cooks. And why ? Because they can 
 treat the poor as things : but they must treat their 
 
 * This lecture was one of a series of " Lectures to Ladies," 
 given in London in 1855, at the Needlewoman's Institution. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 WOMAN'S WORK. [i. 
 
 servants as persons. A lady can go into a poor cottage, 
 lay down tlie law to tlie inhabitants, reprove tliem for 
 sins to wMcli slie 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 cha- 
 racters; 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 
 called — which they very probably will, do, unless she 
 keeps up a very high standard of self-restraint and 
 earnestness in her own life — and 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 
 
z.] IN THE HOUSEHOLD. 5 
 
 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 exagge- 
 ration enough and to spare) on the house-top. 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 esti- 
 mate 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 
 pocket-pistol, should try to better matters by using the 
 same quantity of ammunition in an eighty- four 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 
 
6 WOMAN'S WORK. [i- 
 
 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 key-note — whatever 
 else I may say to-day 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 /le?' 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 dependents. 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 fever-stricken cottage^ while your husband 
 leaves it in a state which breeds that fever. Your 
 business is to go to him and say, " ffere is a wrong ; 
 
I.] ON THE ESTATE. 7 
 
 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 beart to pity, but 
 to awaken it to duty. But the man must see tbat tbe 
 woman is m earnest : tbat if be will not repair tbe 
 wrong by justice, sbe will, if possible (as in tbose old 
 legends), by self-sacrifice. Be sure tbis metbod will 
 conquer. Do but say : " If you will not new-roof tbat 
 cottage, if you will not make tbat drain, I will. I will 
 not buy a new dress till it is done ; I will sell tbe borse 
 you gave me, pawn tbe bracelet you gave me, but tbe 
 tbing sball be done.'' Let bim see, I say, tbat you are 
 in earnest, and be will feel tbat your message is a 
 divine one, wbicb be must obey for very sbame and 
 weariness, if for notbing else. Tbis is in my eyes tbe 
 second part of a woman's parisb work. I entreat you 
 to bear it in mind wben you bear, as I trust you will, 
 lectures in tbis place upon tbat Sanitary Beform, with- 
 out wbicb all efforts for tbe bettering of tbe masses are 
 in my eyes not only useless, but hypocritical . 
 
 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 
 
8 WOMAN'S WOEK. [i. 
 
 and mercy. But you wisL. to do more : you wisli for 
 personal contact witli tlie poor round you, for the pure 
 enjoyment of doing good to them witli your own hands. 
 How are you to set about it ? First, there are clubs 
 — clothing-clubs, shoe-clubs, maternal-clubs; 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 penny-collector, once a week, should 
 blind you to your real power — your 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 thrifti- 
 ness 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 
 
I.] CHAEITABLE CLUBS. 9 
 
 life a little more possible ; they ligliten hearts, if but 
 for a moment ; they inculcate habits of order and self- 
 restrain t, 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 the sportula and universal almsgiving 
 was of the decadence of Rome. 
 
 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 house-visitation must do ; and the mere business 
 habits of accuracy and patience to which it compels 
 them, are a valuable practical schooling for them them- 
 selves in after-life. It is tiresome and unsentimental 
 •drudgery, no doubt ; but perhaps all the better training 
 on that account. And, after all, the magic of sweet- 
 ness, grace, and courtesy may shed a hallowing and 
 humanising light over the meanest work, and the smile 
 
10 WOMAN'S WORK. [i. 
 
 of God may spread from lip to lip^ and the liglit 
 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 f onnd the life 
 of my hand — I have found a sister for time and Jar 
 eternity/^ "^ 
 
 " 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 will — provided 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 Chris- 
 tianity, 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 every- 
 thing — matter 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 commentaries — even as Miss 
 Nightingale has preached Christ crucified to those poor 
 soldiers by acts of plain outward drudgery, more 
 
I.] SCHOOL-WOEK. 11 
 
 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 school-work, 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 co-heir 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 ill-use 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 some- 
 thing 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 in 
 heaven. 
 
 Now, there is one thing in school-work which I 
 wish to j)ress on you ; and that is, that you should not 
 
12 WOMAN'S WORK. [i. 
 
 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 freely — 
 tJie hoys. lam 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 
 grown-up 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, self- 
 restraint, 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 gentle- 
 man. 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 himself, between whom 
 and him there is a great and yet a blessed gulf fixed. 
 
 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 
 
I.] ' SYMPATHY. 13 
 
 miglit write volumes on it. All I can do this afternoon 
 is to keep to mj own key-note, and say, Visit wliom^ 
 when, and where you will ; but let your visits be those 
 of woman to woman. Consider to whom you go — to 
 poor souls whose life, compared with yours, is one long 
 malaise of body, and soul, and spirit — and do as you 
 would be done by ; instead of reproving and fault-find- 
 ing, encourage. In God^s name, encourage. They 
 scramble through lifers 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 turnpike-road 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, bare-footed and weary-hearted, 
 with half-a-dozen 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 yourself — even 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 life-journey. The heart 
 
14 WOMAN'S WOEK. [i. 
 
 knowetli its own bitterness, and a stranger inter- 
 meddletli not with its joy. But do not be a stranger 
 to lier. Be a sister to ber. I do not ask you to take 
 ber up in your carriage. You cannot ; perbaps it is 
 good for ber tbat you cannot. It is good sometimes 
 for Lazarus tbat be is not fit to sit at Dives's feast — 
 good for bim tbat be sbould receive bis evil tbings in 
 tbis bfe, and be comforted in tbe Kfe to come. All I 
 ask is, do to tbe poor soul as you would bave ber do to 
 you in ber place. Do not interrupt and vex ber (for 
 sbe is busy enougb already) witb remedies wbicb sbe 
 does not understand, for troubles wbicb you do not 
 understand. But speak comfortably to ber, and say : 
 " I cannot feel with you, but I do feel /or you : I sbould 
 enjoy belping you, but I do not know bow — tell me. 
 Tell me wbere tbe yoke galls ; tell me wby tbat fore- 
 bead is grown old before its time : I may be able to 
 ease tbe burden, to put fresb ligbt into tbe eyes ; and 
 if not, still tell me, simply because I am a woman, and 
 know tbe relief of pouring out my own soul into loving 
 ears, even tbougb in tbe deptbs of despair.''^ Yes, para- 
 doxical as it may seem, I am convinced tbat tbe only 
 way to belp tbese poor women bumanly and really, is 
 to begin by confessing to tbem tbat you do not know 
 bow to belp tbem ; to bumble yourself to tbem, and to 
 ask tbeir counsel for tbe good of tbemselves and of 
 tbeir neighbours, instead of coming proudly to tbem, 
 
I.] RESPECT FOR THE POOR. 15 
 
 witli nostrums ready compounded, as if a doctor should 
 "be so confident in his own knowledge of books and 
 medicine as to give physic before asking the patient's 
 symptoms. 
 
 Therefore, I entreat you to bear in mind (for 
 without this ail 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, eloquence — all 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 anyone 
 — no, not an angel from heaven, to come into our 
 
16 WOMAN'S WOEK. [l 
 
 houses without knocking at the door, and say : " I hear 
 you are very ill off — I will lend you a hundred jDounds. 
 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 horse-play, 
 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 bene- 
 volence, and where the last remaining virtues of the 
 poor, savage self-help 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 con- 
 sider 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, alilve, and 
 alike courteously, considerately, cheerfully, affec- 
 
I.] TRUE EMANCIPATION OF WOMAN. 17 
 
 tionately — so leaving a blessing and reaping a blessing 
 wheresoever lie went. 
 
 Approacli, then, these poor vfomen 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^ manners — even 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 woman — her 
 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 life-long tragedy, which goes on in more 
 cottages than in palaces — a vie a part, a vie incomprise 
 — a life made up half of ill-usage, half of unnecessary, 
 self-willed, self-conceited martyrdom^ instead of being 
 s. E. c 
 
18 WOMAN'S WOEK. [i. 
 
 (as God intended) half of the human universe, a help- 
 meet 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 bound- 
 less tenderness, consideration, patience, self-sacrifice^ 
 by which even the cup of cold water is a precious 
 offering — as God grant your labour may be ! 
 
f L T R K .ARy" 
 
 iJiN X V Kits IT V ()f^ 
 
 CAUFORNIA. 
 
 THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH. 
 
 c 2 
 
THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH/'^ 
 
 Whether tlie Britisli race is improving or degene- 
 rating ? 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 so-called education, ought to be 
 taught — the rudiments of it at least — in every school, 
 college, and university. 
 
 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 
 
 * The substance of this Essay was a lecture on Physical Educa- 
 tion, given at the Midland Institute, Birmingham, in 1872. 
 
22 THE SCIENCE OE HEALTH. [ii. 
 
 have been able to say of themselves — as tbey do in a 
 State paper of 1515^ now well known tbrougb tlie 
 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 
 f elde, 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 selec- 
 tion, 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, valiant, 
 and enterprising race. 
 
 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. 
 
Ti.] PEEIODS OF EXHAUSTION". 23 
 
 new generosities; new conceptions of duty, and of liow 
 tliat duty should be done. It is childisli to regret the 
 old times, when our soot-grimed manufacturing dis- 
 tricts 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 ground. 
 
 The old order chaiigeth, yielding place to the new, 
 
 And God fulfils himself in many ways, 
 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 
 
 Our duty is, instead of longing for the good old 
 custom, to take care of the good new custom, lest it 
 should corrupt the world in like wise. And it may do 
 so thus : 
 
 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 
 
24 THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH. [is. 
 
 during tlie 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 beginning of the nineteenth 
 
 century, was in an altogether new social situation. 
 
 At the beginning of the great French war ; and, 
 
 indeed, ever since the beginning of the war with Spain 
 
 in 1739 — often snubbed as the "war about Jenkinses 
 
 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 created — as 
 
 far as man can be said to create anything — the British 
 
 Empire. They won for us our colonies, our commerce, 
 
 the mastery of the seas of all the world. But at what 
 
 a cost ! 
 
 Their bones are scattered far and wide, 
 By mount, and stream, and sea. 
 
 Year after year, till the final triumph of Waterloo, not 
 battle only, but worse destroyers than shot and shell — 
 
II.] STEENGTH OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 
 
 s^ ^i /?^ 
 
 fatigue and disease — liad been carrying off our stoutest^ 
 ablest, healthiest young men, each of whom repre- 
 sented, 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 constitu- 
 tions, to injure, it may be, generations yet unborn. 
 The middle classes, being mostly engaged in peaceful 
 pursuits, suif ered less of this decimation of their finest 
 young men ; and to that fact I attribute much of their 
 increasing preponderance, social, political, and' intel- 
 lectual, 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 ^Chano-e. But it must be remem- 
 bered 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, country-bred men; and that the 
 
26 THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH. [ii. 
 
 question is^ not wliat they are like now, but wliat their 
 cliildren and grandchildren, especially the fine young 
 volunteer's, will be like ? A very serious question 
 I hold that to be, and for this reason. 
 
 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 fraught, though to a less degree, 
 with the very same ill effect. 
 
 In the first place, tens of thousands — who 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 atmo- 
 sphere 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 perma- 
 nently degraded, who does not know ? For who that 
 walks through the by-streets of any great city does 
 
11.] SURVIVAL OF THE WEAKEST. 27 
 
 not see ? Moreover^ and this is one of tlie most fearful 
 problems with which, modern civilisation has to deal — 
 we interfere w^ith 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 who — looking 
 at them from a merely physical point of view — are most 
 fit to die. Everything which makes it more easy to 
 live ; every sanatory reform, prevention of pestilence, 
 medical discovery, amelioration of climate, drainage 
 of soil, improvement in dwelling-houses, workhouses, 
 gaols ; every reformatory school, every hospital, 
 every cure of di'unkenness, every influence, in short, 
 which has — so I am told — increased the average length 
 of life in these islands, by nearly one-third, since the 
 first establishment of life insurances, one hundred and 
 fifty years ago ; every influence of this kind, I say, 
 saves persons ahve 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 preserved to produce in time a still less 
 powerful progeny. 
 
 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 
 
28 THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH. [ii, 
 
 botli ; and we must fulfil tlie duty^ and keep him in 
 life ; and^ if we can^ lieal^ strengtlien, develop him to 
 the utmost; and make the best of that which '^fate 
 and our own deserviugs '' 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 man — the 
 instinct which bids every human-hearted man or woman 
 to save life, alleviate pain, like Him who causes His 
 sun to shine on the evil and on the good, and His rain 
 to fall on the just and on the unjust. 
 
 But it ;s 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 opinion 
 — and I, after watching and comparing the histories 
 of many families, indeed of every one with whom I 
 have come in contact for now five-and-thirty years, in 
 town and country, can only fear that their opinion is 
 but too well founded on fact — that in the great majority 
 of cases, in all classes whatsoever, the children are not 
 equal to their parents, nor they, again, to their grand- 
 parents 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 
 
ir.] SELF-REFOEM. 29 
 
 antiquity of those towns^ and therefore in proportion 
 to tlie number of generations during which the 
 degrading influences have been at work. 
 
 This and cosrnate dano^ers 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 
 poor-law guardian has to face every day of his 
 life. 
 
 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 coercion — to which, by-the- I 
 bye, 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 free-will. 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 
 
30 THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH. [ii. 
 
 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 check — I do not say stop entirely 
 — though I believe even that to be ideally possible ; 
 but at least check the process of degradation which I 
 believe to be surely going on, not merely in these 
 islands, but in every civilised country in the world, in 
 proportion to its civilisation. 
 
 It is still a question whether science has fully dis- 
 covered those laws of hereditary health, the disregard 
 of which causes so many marriages disastrous to gene- 
 rations yet unborn. But much valuable light has been 
 thrown on this most mysterious and most important 
 subject during the last few years. That light — and I 
 thank God for it — is 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 wide- 
 spread private opinion will grow up, especially among 
 educated women, which will prevent many a tragedy 
 and save many a life. 
 
 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 
 
II.] IT IS NOT TOO LATE. 31 
 
 the preservation not only of tlieir own healtli, but of 
 that of tlieir children. 
 
 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 only — provided 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 over- 
 strain 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 facts 
 — their 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 civiHsation : ^' 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 
 
32 THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH. [ii. 
 
 pray, for wliom you would give your lives, — tliey 
 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 self-sacrifice ; — 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 
 others — Let them say, shall this thing be ? 
 
 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 cure. 
 
 Why, then — to come to practical suggestions — 
 should there not be opened in every great town in 
 these realms a public school of health ? It might 
 connect itself with — I hold that it should form an 
 integral part of — some existing educational institute. 
 
II.] LECTURES ON HEALTH. 3a 
 
 But it should at least give practical lectures, for fees 
 small enougli io 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 some- 
 thing 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 taught — 
 they are already being taught at Birmingham — some- 
 thing about the tissues of the body, their structure 
 and uses, the circulation of the blood, respiration, 
 chemical changes in the air respired, amount breathed, 
 
 S. E. D 
 
34 THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH. [ir. 
 
 digestion^ nature of food, absorption, secretion, struc- 
 ture of tlie nervous system — in fact, be taught some- 
 tliing of liow tlieir own bodies are made and bow 
 tbey 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 art, of 
 keeping oneself alive and well. 
 
 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 towns- 
 folk, 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 derange- 
 ment, 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? 
 
II.] WOMAN'S WOEK IX HEALING. 35 
 
 I saj — women as well as men. I sliould have said 
 women ratlier than men. For it is tlie women wlio 
 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 rejoin — Of course not, 
 unless they are taught by women — by 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 objec- 
 tions 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 secret 
 — the restoring woman to her natural share in that 
 sacred office of healer, which she held in the Middle 
 Ages, and from which she was thrust out during the 
 sixteenth century. 
 
 I am most happy to see^ for instance, that the 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH. [ii. 
 
 National Healtli Society,* wliicli I earnestly recommend 
 to tlie attention of my readers^ announces a " Course 
 of Lectures for Ladies on Elementary Physiology and 
 Hygiene/^ by a lady, to wliich. I am also most 
 happy to see, governesses are admitted at half -fees. 
 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 poor — for the rich, strange 
 to say, need them often as much as the poor do — and 
 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 
 fellow-citizens, as champions in the battle against dirt 
 and drunkenness, disease and death. 
 
 There may be those who would answer — or rather, 
 there would certainly have been those who would have 
 so answered thirty years ago, before the so-called 
 piaterialism 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, 
 
 * 9, Adam Street, Adelphi, London. 
 
II.] BODY AND MIND. 37 
 
 And if it were so^ what matter ? Mind makes tlie 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 ath- 
 lete." 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 ? W^hat 
 if, for want of obeying the laws of nature, parents bred 
 up neither a genius nor an athlete, but only an in- 
 capable unhappy personage, with a huge upright fore- 
 head, 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 
 
38 THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH. [ii. 
 
 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 ideas — 
 all the more quick, perhaps, on account of its own 
 secret malaise and self -discontent ; but it will be irri- 
 table, 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, in- 
 dividuality, 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 weak- 
 nesses 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 
 
51.] SINS OF THE FATHERS VISITED. 39 
 
 tliose wlio 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 joraiseworthy ; 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, prac- 
 tical 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 done — there 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 com- 
 plaining, 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 
 vwe make them discontented ; discontented with their 
 
40 THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH. [n. 
 
 liouses_, their occupations, tlieir food, their whole social 
 arrangements ; and all in vain. 
 
 I should answer, in all courtesy and humility — for I 
 sympathise deeply with such men and women, and 
 respect them deeply likewise — but are not people dis- 
 contented 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 any- 
 thing 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 self- 
 control, 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; 
 
II.] THE DIYIXE DISCONTENT. ^T ^1 
 
 to be discontented with their circumstances — file things 
 which stand around them ; and to cry, '^ Oh that I had'' 
 this!'' " Oh that I had that ! " But by that w4y V^ 
 dehverance lies. That discontent only ends in revolt ' 
 and rebellion, social or political ; and that, again, still 
 in the same worship of circumstances — but this time 
 desperate — which ends, let it disguise itself under 
 what fine names it will, in what the old Greeks called 
 a tyranny ; in which — as in the Spanish republics of 
 America, and in France more than once — all have 
 become the voluntary slaves of one man, because 
 each man fancies that the one man can improve his 
 circumstances for him. 
 
 But the wise man will learn, like Epictetus the 
 heroic slave, the slave of Epaphroditus, Nero's minion 
 — and 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 
 }ielp — ^^ I will make myself that which God has shown 
 me that I ought to be and can be." 
 
 Ten thousand a year, or ten million a year, as 
 Epictetus saw full well, cannot mend that vulgar dis- 
 content with circumstances which he had felt — and 
 
42 THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH. [ii. 
 
 wlio witli more right ? — and conquered, and despised. 
 For tliat is the discontent of children, wanting always 
 more holidays and more sweets. But I wish my 
 readers to have, and to cherish, the discontent of men 
 and women. 
 
 Therefore I would make men and women discon- 
 tented, 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 heir- 
 looms of the human race, the statues of the old Greeks ; 
 to their tender grandeur, their chaste healthfulness, 
 their unconscious, because perfect might : and say — 
 There ; 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 gar- 
 ments, 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 them — You 
 call the three Royal R^s education ? They are not 
 education : no more is the knowledge which would 
 
II.] TRUE EDUCATION. 43 
 
 enable you to take tlie 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, for making practical 
 use of your education : but not the education itself. 
 
 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 say — There : that 
 is an education fit for a really civilised man, even 
 though he never saw a book in his life; the full, 
 proportionate, harmonious educing — that is, bringing 
 out and developing — of all the faculties of his body, 
 mind, and heart, till he becomes at once a reverent yet 
 
44 THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH. [ii. 
 
 a self-assuredj a graceful and yet a valiant, an able 
 and yet an eloquent personage. 
 
 And if any should say to me — " But wliat lias tliis 
 to do witli science ? Homer's Greeks knew no science;'^ 
 I should rejoin — But tliey had, pre-eminently 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 world — the 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 imper- 
 fections, 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 Godward — all 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 
 
II.] GREEK EDUCATION. 45 
 
 strain. It made divinity attainable; and tlius it 
 effectually directed the thought and aim of man 
 
 Along the line of limitless desires. 
 
 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 self-respect, 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 educa- 
 tion, without science and without Christianity. We 
 Avho have both : what might we not do, if we would be 
 true to our advantages, and to ourselves ? 
 
THE TWO BKEATHS. 
 
LI B H, A K \ 
 
 THE T¥0 BREATHS.-^^ 
 
 LadieSj — I liave 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 wbicli may seriously affect your 
 liealth and liappiness, and tbat of tbe children with 
 whom you may have to do. I must apologise if I say 
 many things which are Avell 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; and at the same tioiC:, if possible^ 
 interesting. 
 
 I should wish to call this lecture '^ The Two 
 
 * A Lecture delivered at Winchester, May 31, 1869. 
 S. E. E 
 
50 THE TWO BREATHS. [iii. 
 
 Breaths :^^ not merely "The Breath;" and for this 
 reason : every time yon breathe yon breathe two 
 different breaths ; yon take in one, yon give ont 
 another. The composition of those two breaths is 
 different. Their effects are different. The breath 
 which has been breathed ont mnst not be breathed in 
 again. To tell yon 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 pro- 
 bably grow up large, strong, ruddy, cheerful, active, 
 clear-headed, fit for their work. Those who habitually 
 take in the breath which has been breathed out by them- 
 selves, 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 continually to 
 resort to stimulants, and become drunkards. 
 
 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 own — a mouse, for instance — and 
 force it to breathe no air but what you have breathed 
 already ; if you put it in a close box, and while you 
 
■in.'] THE TWO BREATHS. 51 
 
 take in breath from tlie outer air, send out your breath, 
 through a tube, into that box, the animal will soon 
 faint : if you go on long with this process, it will 
 die. 
 
 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 
 dn 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 undoubted fact. 
 
 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 faint — so faint that you may require 
 smelling-salts 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 like- 
 wise, 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 
 
52 THE TWO BREATHS. [in. 
 
 Simpson tells in his lectnres to the working-classes 
 of Bdinburgh_, when at a Christmas meeting thirty-six 
 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 descrip- 
 tion ; 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 run the risk of 
 becoming ghosts, and the candles of actually going' 
 out. 
 
 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 
 
III.] THE TWO BREATHS. 53 
 
 give out ? And next, why lias it a similar effect on 
 animal life and a lighted candle ? 
 
 The difference is this. The breath which you take 
 in is, or ought to be, pure air, composed, on the whole, 
 of oxygen and nitrogen, with a minute portion of 
 carbonic acid. 
 
 The breath which you give out is an impure air, to 
 which has been added, among other matters which will 
 not support life, an excess of carbonic acid. 
 
 That this is the fact you can prove for yourselves 
 by a simple experiment. Get a little lime-water at 
 the chemist^s, and breathe into it through a glass 
 tube ; your breath will at once make the lime-water 
 milky. The carbonic acid of your breath has 
 laid hold of the lime, and made it visible as 
 white carbonate of lime — in plain English, as common 
 chalk. 
 
 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 car- 
 bonic acid gas ; and to remember that, as surely as 
 oxygen feeds the fire of life, so surely does carbonic 
 acid put it out. 
 
 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 
 
64 THE TWO BEEATHS. [in.. 
 
 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 case — carbonic acid and 
 steam. 
 
 These facts justify the expression I just made use 
 of — which may have seemed to some of you fantas- 
 tical — that 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 gas-burner — pray attend to this, you 
 who live in rooms lighted with gas — consumes as much 
 oxygen as several candles. All alike are making car- 
 bonic acid. The carbonic acid of the fire happily 
 escapes up the chimney in the smoke : but the car- 
 bonic acid from the human beings and the candles 
 remains to poison the room, unless it be ventilated. 
 
 Now, I think you may understand one of the 
 simplest, and yet most terrible, cases of want of ven- 
 tilation — death by the fumes of charcoal. A human. 
 
III.] THE TWO BEEATHS. 55 
 
 being siut up in a room, of whicli every crack is 
 closed, with a pan of burning cliarcoal, falls asleep, 
 never to wake again. His inward fire is competing 
 witli tke fire of cliarcoal for tlie oxygen of the room ; 
 botli are making carbonic acid out of it : but tke 
 cliarcoal, being the stronger of the two, gets all the 
 oxygsn 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 half-consumed 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 of his own 
 carbonic acid. 
 
 Now, I think, we may see what ventilation means, 
 and why it is needed. 
 
 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 
 
56 THE TWO BREATHS. [in. 
 
 ligliter ; as it cools^ it contracts^ and becomes 
 heavier. 
 
 'Now the carbonic acid in tlie breath which comes 
 out of our mouth is warm^ hghter 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 foul, and therefore more injurious, than 
 down below. 
 
 Where, again, work-people are employed in a 
 crowded house of many storeys, the health of those 
 who work on the upper floors always suffers most. 
 
 In the old monkey-house of the Zoological Gardens, 
 when the cages were on the old plan, tier upon tier, 
 the poor little fellows in the uppermost tier— so I have 
 been told — always died first of the monkey^s constitu- 
 tional 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, consumption — I understand 
 — has vastly diminished among them. 
 
 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 
 
III.] THE TWO BEEATHS. 57 
 
 not, this happens : The carbonic acid gas cools and 
 becomes heavier ; for carbonic acid, at the same tem- 
 perature as common air, is so much heavier than 
 common air, that you may actually — if you are handy 
 enough — turn 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, kill- 
 ing 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 
 
58 THE TWO BEEATHS. [iii. 
 
 of tliese ventilators from twenty-five years' experience. 
 Living in a house witli low ceilings, liable to become 
 overcliarged witli carbonic acid, wliicli produces sleepi- 
 ness in the evening, I have found that these ventilators 
 keep the air fresh and pure ; and I consider the pre- 
 sence 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 per- 
 manently open; proving thereby that there is an up- 
 draught 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 
 
III.] THE TWO BREATHS. 59 
 
 builders of houses : If possible^ let bedroom windows 
 open at the top as well as at the bottom. 
 
 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 emply 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 1 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 present but future generations. 
 
 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 WahFs '^ Practical Hints on the Moral, 
 
60 THE TWO BREATHS. [m. ! 
 
 Mental, and Physical Training of Girls/^ to procure 
 certain tracts published by Messrs. Jarrold, Pater- 
 noster Eow, for the Ladies^ Sanitary Association; 
 especially one which bears on this subject: '"''The 
 Black-hole in our own Bedrooms ; '' Dr. Lankester s 
 "School Manual of Health; ^^ or a manual on 
 ventilation, published by the Metropolitan Working 
 Classes Association for the Improvement of Public 
 Health. 
 
 I look forward — I say it openly — to 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 im- 
 provements 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 
 
III.] THE TWO BREATHS. 61 
 
 not matters for whicli they are not, more or less_, 
 responsible to their country and their God. 
 
 And if any excellent person of the old school should 
 answer me : " Why make all this fuss about ventila- 
 tion ? 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 because they had good ventilation 
 in spite of themselves. 
 
 First. They got on very ill. To quote a few remark- 
 able 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, plague — all 
 diseases which were caused more or less by bad air — 
 
62 THE TWO BREATHS. [in 
 
 devastated tliis laud and Europe in those days witli a 
 horrible intensity, to wMcli even tlie clioleras 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 
 twenty-five per cent, since the reign of George I., 
 owing simply to our more rational and cleanly habits 
 of life. 
 
 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 
 ill-built; their doors and windows would not shut. 
 They had lattice-windowed 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 Win- 
 
III.] THE TWO BEEATHS. 63 
 
 Chester 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 o£ Old 
 England choose the river-banks 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 enemy — bad 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 plate-glass 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 sitting-room by the high screen round 
 the fire, and in the sleeping-room by the thick 
 curtains of the four-post bedstead, which is now 
 
64 THE TWO BEEATHS. [iii, 
 
 rapidly disappearing before a liiglier civilisation. We 
 tlierefore absolutely require to make for ourselves the 
 very ventilation from wliicli our ancestors tried to 
 escape. 
 
 But^ ladieSj 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 ill-filled 
 lungs. For without well-filled lungs, robust health is 
 impossible. 
 
 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 
 organ — the 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. 
 
'J I' I 
 
 in.] THE TWO BEEATHS, ■* 'i 165, 
 
 and soonest of all^ as everyone knows wTio nas't^ied to 
 work his brain wlien liis digestion W^fe khp least out of ( ^ 
 order. Nay, tlie very morals will suffer. From \iil^ 
 filled lungs, which signify ill-repaired blood, arise year ' • 
 by year an amount not merely of disease, but of folly, 
 temper, laziness, intemperance, madness, and, let me 
 tell you fairly, crime — the 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 
 Combers " Physiology,^' especially chapters iv. and vii.; 
 and also to chapter x. of Madame de WahFs excellent 
 book. I will only say this shortly, that the three 
 most common causes of ill-filled 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 
 
 s. E. F 
 
66 THE TWO BREATHS. [iii. 
 
 inside. The diapliragm 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 deeply — 
 Nature'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 fully- expanded chest, was not 
 in itself essentially graceful, and to be seen in every 
 reposing figure in Greek bas-reliefs and vases ; grace- 
 ful, and like all graceful actions, healthful at the same 
 time. The only tolerably wholesome attitude of repose, 
 which I see allowed in average school-rooms, 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 of the back : or the spine will 
 be strained at its very weakest point. 
 
III.] THE TWO BREATHS. 67 
 
 I now go on to the second mistake — enforced 
 silence. Moderate reading aloud is good : but wliere 
 tliere is any tendency to irritability of tliroat or lungs, 
 too mucli moderation cannot be used. You may as 
 well try to cure a diseased lung by working it, as to 
 ■cure a lame liorse by galloping kim. But wkere tke 
 breatking organs are of average kealtk let it be said 
 once and for all, tkat ckildren and young people 
 cannot make too muck noise. Tke parents wko cannot 
 bear tke noise of tkeir ckildren kave no rigkt to kave 
 brougkt tkem into tke world. Tke sckoolmistress wko 
 enforces silence on ker pupils is committing — unin- 
 tentionally no doubt, but still committing — an offence 
 against reason, wortky only of a convent. Every 
 skout, every burst of laugkter, every song — nay, in 
 tke case of infants, as pkysiologists well know, every 
 moderate fit of crying — conduces to kealtk, by rapidly 
 filling and emptying tke lung, and ckanging tke blood 
 more rapidly from black to red, tkat is, from deatk to 
 life. Andrew Combe tells a story of a large ckarity 
 sckool^ in wkick tke young girls were, for tke sake of 
 tkeir kealtk, skut up in tke kail and sckool-room 
 during play kours, from November till Marck, and no 
 romping or noise allowed. Tke natural consequences 
 were, tke great majority of tkem fell ill; and I am 
 afraid tkat a great deal of illness kas been from time to 
 time contracted in certain sckool-rooms, simply tkrougk 
 
 p 2 
 
68 THE TWO BREATHS. [iii. 
 
 tliis one cause of enforced silence. Some cause or 
 otlier there must be for the amount of ill-health 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 in- 
 volves too much unwholesome stooping. — Even a game 
 of ball, if milliners and shop-girls had room to indulg^e 
 in one after their sedentary work, might bring fresh 
 spirits to many a heart, and fresh colour to many a 
 cheek. 
 
 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 races ; and, next to his Bible, thanks 
 God for Greek literature. 
 
 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 : but — to 
 come to my third point — they wore no stays. The first 
 mention of stays that I have ever found is in the letters 
 
III.] THE TWO BEEATHS. 69 
 
 of dear old Synesius, Bishop of Cyrene^ on tlie Greek 
 coast of Africa, about four hundred years after the 
 Christian era. He tells us how, when he was ship- 
 wrecked 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 wasp-waist, 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 pretend to admire, but refuse to imitate. 
 
 It seems to me that a few centuries hence, when man- 
 kind has learnt to fear God more, and therefore to obey 
 more strictly those laws of nature and of science which 
 are the will of God — it 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, 
 
70 THE TWO BREATHS. [iii. 
 
 denoting a very low level of civilisation in the peoples 
 wliicli have practised it. That for generations past 
 women should have been in the habit — not to please 
 men^ who do not care about the matter as a point of 
 beauty — but simply to vie with each other in obedience 
 to something called fashion — that 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 
 guilty — this, I say, is an instance of — what 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 
 
III.] THE TWO BEEATHS. 71 
 
 to tliat will be tlie animaFs general healtliiness,, power 
 of endurance, and value in many otlier 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 them- 
 selves, 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 reply — if he was a 
 really educated man — that to comply with your request 
 would involve his giving up public work, under the 
 probable penalty of being dead within the twelve- 
 month. 
 
 And how much work of every kind, intellectual as 
 
72 THE TWO BREATHS. [iii. 
 
 well as physical, is spoiled or liindered ; liow many 
 deaths occur from consumption and other complaints 
 wliicli 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 folly. 
 
 And now— to end this lecture with more pleasing 
 thoughts — What 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 
 well-made world. The carbonic acid which passes from 
 your lips at every breath — ay, even that which oozes 
 from the volcano crater when the eruption is past — is 
 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 go — in such a 
 world of transformations do we live — to 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 
 
ni.] THE TWO BREATHS. ' 73 
 
 of men, and resolved into tlieir original elements. 
 Coal, wise men tell us, is on the wliole 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 life-giving 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 breath 
 which he needs. 
 
74 THE TWO BREATHS. [iii. 
 
 So are the services of all things constituted accord- 
 ing to a Divine and wonderful order_, and knit together 
 in mutual dependence and mutual helpfulness — a 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. 
 
THRIFT. 
 
THRIFT.* 
 
 Ladies, — I liave cliosen for tlie 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 aspirations, or Utopian dreams. 
 
 It is a practical question, on which depends not 
 merely money or comfort, but too often health and lif e^ 
 as the consequences of a good education, or disease 
 and death — I know too well of what I speak — as the 
 consequences of a bad one. 
 
 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, 
 
 * Lecture delivered at Wincliester, March 17, 1869. 
 
78 THRIFT. [IV. 
 
 are far too ill-tauglit stilly in spite of all recent im- 
 provements, for me to wisH that British girls should 
 be taught in the same way. 
 
 Moreover, whatever defects there may have been — 
 and defects there must be in all things human — in the 
 past education of British women, it has been most cer- 
 tainly 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 discover, has yet seen. 
 
 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, and — but too 
 often — from 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 
 cultivated British woman. 
 
 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. 
 
IV.] THE SECRET OF THRIFT. 79 
 
 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 gotten — in a word^ the 
 marks of a man's thriving. 
 
 How, then, did the word Thrift get to mean parsi- 
 mony, frugality, the opposite of waste ? Just in the 
 same way as economy — which first, of course, meant 
 the management of a household — got to mean also the 
 opposite of waste. 
 
 It was found that in commerce, in husbandry, in 
 any process, in fact, men throve in proportion as they 
 saved their capital, their material, their force. 
 
 Now this is a great law which runs through life ; 
 one of those laws of nature — call them, rather, laws of 
 God — which apply not merely to political economy, to 
 commerce, and to mechanics ; but to physiology, to 
 society ; to the intellect, to the heart, of every person 
 in this room. 
 
 The secret of thriving is thrift ; saving of force ; to 
 get as much work as possible done with the least 
 expenditure of power, the least jar and obstruction, 
 least wear and tear. 
 
 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, success- 
 fully ; instead of wasting your money or your energies 
 
80 THRIFT. [iv. 
 
 in mistaken scliemes^ irregular efforts, wliicli end in 
 disappointment and exliaustion. 
 
 The secret of thrift, I say, is knowledge. The more 
 you know, the more you can save yourself and that 
 which belongs to you ; and can do more work with less 
 effort. 
 
 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 tele- 
 graph saves time ; knowledge of writing saves human 
 speech and locomotion ; knowledge of domestic eco- 
 nomy 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 spirit — what does it not save ? 
 
 A well-educated moral sense, a well-regulated cha- 
 racter, saves from idleness and ennui, alternating with 
 sentimentality and excitement, those tenderer emo- 
 tions, 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 deve- 
 loped into graceful, harmonious^ self-restraining 
 strength, beautiful in themselves, and a blessing to 
 all who come under their influence. 
 
 What^ therefore, I recommend to ladies in this lee-- 
 
IV.] THEIFT IN DOMESTIC JICONOMY. ^^ sf^ T" 
 
 ture is thrift : thrift of themselves and of their own ^, 
 powers : and knowledge as the p.aretif V)f thrift. ^ 
 
 And because it is well to begin with the lot^if . \ 
 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 economy. 
 
 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, 
 as — being a German — he 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 know — how you may see in 
 Germany young ladies living in what we more luxu- 
 rious British would consider something hke 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 tempta- 
 tion — I do not, of course, say they all yield to it — but 
 s. E. G 
 
82 THRIFT. [iv. 
 
 their temptation is_, to waste of tlie very simplest — I 
 had almost said, if I may be pardoned the expression^ 
 of the most barbaric — kind; 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 the mark of a lady to sit 
 idle and let servants do everything for her. 
 
 But it is not of this sort of waste of which I wish 
 to speak to-day. I only mention the matter in passings 
 to show that high intellectual culture is not incom- 
 patible 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 have been lately broached in 
 various quarters. 
 
 The programme to these lectures expressly dis- 
 claims any such intentions ; and I, as a husband 
 and a father, expressly disclaim any such intention 
 likewise. 
 
 "To fit women for the more enlightened per- 
 
IV.] THRIFT IN" THE KITCHEN. 83 
 
 f ormance of their special daties ; '' 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 object of the promoters of this 
 scheme. 
 
 Let us see now how some of these special duties 
 can be better performed by help of a little enlighten- 
 ment as to the laws which regulate them. 
 
 Now, no man will deny — certainly no man who is 
 past forty-five, 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 wiU 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 mil- 
 liners and mantua-makers ; and, by making their own 
 clothes gracefully and well, exercise thrift in clothing. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 THKIFT. [iv. 
 
 But, beside tins thrift in clotliing, I am not alone, 
 I believe, in wishing for some tlirift in tlie energy 
 wliicli produces it. Labour misapplied, you will agree, 
 is labour wasted ; and as dress, I presume, is intended 
 to adorn tlie person of tbe wearer, the making a dress 
 wliicli only disfigures ber 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 witliout passing young people wlio 
 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 pheno- 
 mena 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 
 
IV.] LAWS OF BEAUTY IN DEESS. 85 
 
 most common in — I had almost said they are confined 
 to — those classes of well-to-do 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 consequeuce, dress 
 themselves blindly according to what they conceive to 
 be the Paris fashions, conveyed at third-hand through 
 an equally uneducated dressmaker ; in innocent igno- 
 rance of the fact — for fact I believe it to be — that 
 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 holiday, nailing up the head of the 
 weather-glass to insure fine weather. 
 
 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. Euskin 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 themselves, without importing tawdry and 
 expensive ugliness from France. 
 
 Let me now go a step farther, and ask you to 
 
86 THRIFT. [iv. 
 
 consider tliis : There are in England now a vast 
 number, and an increasing number, of young women 
 who, from various circumstances whicb 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 principles 
 of political economy. 
 
 When we consider that every mistress of a house- 
 hold 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 
 hard- worked brain might be clearer, and her hard-tried 
 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 
 
;iv.] POLITICAL ECONOMY FOR WOMEN". 87 
 
 capitalist, a commercialist, an employer of labour, and 
 an accountant — every mistress of a liouseliold is all 
 these, whetlier slie likes it or not ; and it would be 
 surely well for lier^ in so very complicated a state of 
 society as tliis, not to trust merely to tliat motlier-wit, 
 that intuitive sagacity and innate power of ruling 
 lier fellow-creatures, wMcli carries women so nobly 
 through their work in simpler and less civilised 
 societies. 
 
 And here I stop to answer those who may say — as I 
 have heard it said — That 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 unrea- 
 sonable, than regular men of business would be : that — 
 as 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 ques- 
 tions on personal grounds, often offending those with 
 whom she has to do, and oftener still making herself 
 
88 THRIFT. [iv. 
 
 miserable over matters, of law or of business, on which 
 a little sound knowledge would set her head and her 
 heart at rest. 
 
 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 am- 
 bition, 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 for whom she labours, not always 
 with success.^' 
 
 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 sub- 
 ject, which I see promised in these lectures : "Natural 
 philosophy, in its various branches, such as the 
 
IV.] NATURAL PHILOSOPHY FOR WOMEN. S9 
 
 chemistry of common life^ Hglit, heat, electricity, 
 etc. etc.^' 
 
 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 time. 
 
 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 know- 
 ledge of the laws of electricity, one thrift I am sure it 
 would produce — thrift 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 coffin — a probable shortening, though it may 
 be a very small one, of her mortal life ; because the 
 
90 THKIFT. [IV. 
 
 food of the next twenty-four liours, whicli should have 
 gone to keep the vital heat at its normal standard, 
 will have to be wasted in raising it up to that standard, 
 from which it has fallen by a chill. 
 
 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 earnest 
 — that, 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 high-minded class in 
 these realms, then they would oppose by all means in 
 their power the delivery of lectures on natural philo- 
 sophy to women. For if women act upon what they 
 learn in those lectures — and 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 earnestness — Are 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 unneces- 
 sary and preventable diseases than were killed at 
 
IV.] PHYSIOLOGY FOR WOMEN. 91 
 
 Waterloo or at Sadowa ? Are you aware that tlie 
 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 tliem_, 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 sleeping-room 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 one — that 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 way — by 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 earnestly 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 J but wholly ignorant of the laws of physiology, 
 
93 THRIFT. [iv. 
 
 complained that tlie 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 dead of brain-disease within the 
 year." 
 
 Now, in the face of such facts as these, is it 
 too much to ask of mothers, sisters, aunts, nurses, 
 governesses — all who may be occupied in the care of 
 children, especially of girls — that they should study 
 thrift of human health and human life, by studying 
 somewhat the laws of life and health ? There are 
 books — I may say a whole literature of books — 
 written by scientific doctors on these matters, which 
 are in my m'ind far more important to the schoolroom 
 than half the trashy accomplishments, so-called, 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 imme- 
 diate death, too often leaves the constitution impaired 
 for years to come. Ah the waste of health and 
 
re.] INTELLECTUAL THRIFT. 93 
 
 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, ladles, 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 like- 
 wise, or else for ever hereafter hold my peace. 
 
 Let me pass on from this painful subject — for 
 painful it has been to me for many years — to a ques- 
 tion of intellectual thrift — by which I mean just now 
 thrift of words ; thrift of truth ; restraint of the 
 tongue ; accuracy and modesty in statement. 
 
 Mothers complain to me that girls are apt to be — 
 not intentionally untruthful — but exaggerative, preju- 
 diced, incorrect, in repeating a conversation or de- 
 scribing 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 ; 
 
94 THEIFT. [iv, 
 
 that tliey cannot take the calm judicial view of matters 
 whicli 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 hear — 
 I 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 argu- 
 ment for some education which will correct this sup- 
 posed 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 accu- 
 rately, judge them calmly, and describe them care- 
 fully, without adding or distorting : and that is, some 
 training in natural science. 
 
 I beg you not to be startled : but if you are, then 
 test the truth of my theory by playing to-night 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 
 and — forgive me if I say it — uneducated 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^ 
 
IV.] NATURAL SCIENCE FOR WOMEN. 95- 
 
 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 mischievous 
 earnest. 
 
 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, and to imprint its leading features strongly 
 and clearly on his memory. 
 
 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 reason- 
 able antipathy to smells, blackened fingers, and occa- 
 sional explosions and poisonings. But you may make 
 them something of botanists, zoologists, geologists. 
 
 I could say much on this point : allow me at least 
 to say this : I verily 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 sea- coast 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 
 
96 THRIFT. [iv. 
 
 tlie esplanade,, reading wortMess novels^ and criticising 
 dresses — that sucli 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 
 habit — I had almost said the necessity — of 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. '^ Grod 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 mis- 
 representing them they should be tempted to say that 
 God has done that which He has not ; and in that 
 wholesome discipline I long that women as well as 
 men should share. 
 
 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. 
 
IV.] THRIFT OF THE EMOTIONS. 97 
 
 You hear sucli, I doubt not^, in cliurcli every Sundaj_, 
 far better than I can preach to you. I am g6ing 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 literature — all that the best 
 hearts and intellects among our forefathers have be- 
 queathed to us — is neglected for light fiction, the 
 reading of which is, as a lady well said, '''the worst 
 form of intemperance — dram-drinking and opium- 
 eating, intellectual and moral." 
 
 I know that the young will delight — they have 
 delighted in all ages, and will to the end of time — in 
 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 learn — and that she can only 
 learn by cultivation — to 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 s-trong 
 womanhood from the bad, the ugly, and the false. 
 And if any parent should be inclined to reply : 
 s. E. H 
 
98 THRIFT. [iv 
 
 " Why lay so mucli stress upon educating a girl in 
 British literature? Is it not far more important to 
 make our daughters read religious books V I answer 
 — Of 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 pre- 
 vent 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 ending — as I have known too many end — with 
 broken hearts, broken brains, broken health, and an 
 early grave. 
 
 Take warning by what you see abroad. In every 
 country where the women are uneducated, unoccupied ; 
 where their only literature is French novels or transla- 
 
// 
 
 '^An J 
 
 IV.] UNEDUCATED WOMEN^. ' V ' /, , , 99 
 
 tions of them — in every one of t^os^ jbpiiijtries, the 
 women, even to the highest, are the slaves' Cf 
 superstition, and the puppets of priests. In pro- 
 portion as, in certain other countries — notably, I 
 will say, in Scotland — the 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 own husband or to her own 
 family. 
 
 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 religious — and there are too many of both just 
 now — they 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 is — I 
 know too well what I am saying — to go astray. 
 
 The time of depression, disappointment, vacuity, 
 all but despair must come. The immortal spirit, 
 finding no healthy satisfaction for its highest aspira- 
 tions, is but too likely to betake itself to an unhealthy 
 and exciting superstition. Ashamed of its own long 
 
 H 2 
 
100 THEIFT. [IV. 
 
 self-indulgence, it is but too likely to flee from itself 
 into a morbid asceticism. Not baving been taugbt its 
 God-given and natural duties in tbe world, it is but 
 too likely to betake itself, from tbe mere craving for 
 action, to self-invented and unnatural duties out of 
 tbe world. Ignorant of true science, yet craving to 
 understand tbe wonders of nature and of spirit, it is 
 but too likely to betake itself to non-science — nonsense 
 as it is usually called — wbetber of spirit-rapping and 
 mesmerism, or of miraculous relics and winking 
 pictures. Longing for guidance and teacbing, and 
 never baving been taugbt to guide and teacb itself, 
 it is but too likely to deliver itself up in self- despair 
 to tbe guidance and teacbing of tbose wbo, wbetber 
 tbey be quacks or fanatics, look on uneducated women 
 as tbeir natural prey. 
 
 You will see, I am sure, from wbat I bave said, 
 tbat it is not my wisb tbat you sbould become mere 
 learned women ; mere female pedants, as useless and 
 unpleasing as male pedants are wont to be. Tbe 
 education wbicb I set before you is not to be got by 
 mere bearing lectures or reading books : for it is an 
 education of your wbole cbaracter ; a self-education ; 
 wbicb really means a committing of yourself to God^. 
 tbat He may educate you. Hearing lectures is good, 
 for it will teacb you bow mucb tbere is to be known, 
 and bow little you know. Reading books is good, foi? 
 
is:.] WOMAN'S INFLUENCE. 101 
 
 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 know- 
 ledge, wisdom, active usefulness, must come — and may 
 it come to you — by the inspiration of the Spirit of God. 
 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 those — and 
 in so doing I speak of every woman, young and old — 
 who exercise as wife, as mother, as aunt, as sister, or 
 as friend, an influence, indirect it may be, and uncon- 
 scious, 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 consider — and I agree 
 with them — that the education of boys under the age 
 
102 THRIFT. [IV. 
 
 of twelve years ouglit to be entrusted as mucli as 
 possible to women. Let me ask — of wbat 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 culti- 
 vated 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 God-given 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 say — Let 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 man — what, I believe, she has been 
 teaching him all along, even in the savage state — 
 namely, that there is something more necessary than 
 the claiming of rights, and that is, the performing of 
 duties ; to teach him specially, in these so-called 
 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 self-assertion, but 
 the higher and the diviner calling of self-sacrifice ;. 
 and let her never desert that higher life, which lives in 
 others and for others, like her Redeemer and her Lord. 
 
IV.] WOMAN'S CALLING— TO TEACH MAN. 103 
 
 And if auj sliould answer that tMs doctrine would 
 keep woman a dependent and a slave^ I rejoin — Not 
 so : it w^ould keep her what she should be — the 
 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 calling — to 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 self-assertive nature, by the 
 contact of her gentleness, purity^ self-sacrifice. 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 self- distrust, by silent labour, by lofty self-con- 
 trol, by that charity which hopeth all things, belie veth 
 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^ 
 
104. THRIFT. [it. 
 
 if sucli be Ler happy lot — to quote tlie words of a 
 great poet, a great pliilosoplier, and a great Clmrcli- 
 marij William Wordswortli — let lier begin^ I say — 
 
 With all things round about her drawn 
 From May-time and the cheerful dawn ; 
 A dancing shape, an image gay, 
 To haunt, to startle, and waylay. 
 
 Let her develop onwards — 
 
 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 self-education alone can bring 
 — that which makes her once and for ever — 
 
 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 command. 
 And yet a spirit still and bright 
 With something of an angel light. 
 
NAUSICAA IN LONDON, 
 
MUSICAA IN LONDON; 
 
 OK, 
 
 THE LOWER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 
 
 Feesh from the Marbles of tlie Britisli Museum^ I 
 went my way througli 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 self-restraint 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 ta 
 rich and poor, amid our artificial, unwholesome, and 
 it may be decaying pseudo-civilisation, saying with 
 looks more expressive than all words — Such men and 
 women can be ; for such they have been ; and such 
 yon may be yet, if you will use that science of which 
 you too often only boast. Above all, I had been 
 
108 NAUSICAA IN LONDON; [v. 
 
 pondering over tlie awful and yet tender beauty of 
 tlie 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 none — but 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, pro- 
 portion and grace, in every faculty of mind and body 
 — that was their notion of education. To produce 
 that, the text-book of their childhood was the poetry 
 
 of Homer, and not of But I am treading on 
 
 dangerous ground. It was for this that the seafaring 
 
V.J OE, THE LOWER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 109 
 
 Greek lad was taught to find liis 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 not — for he had no 
 voice — himself 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 tender, of Homer^s idyllic episode. 
 
 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 yares among a community 
 of merchants, who are called ^^ kings ^^ likewise ; and 
 Mayor for life — so to speak — of 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 the polished door ^' have beauty from the 
 Graces.^^ 
 
110 NAUSICAA IN LONDON; [v. 
 
 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 forth — and 
 wash the clothes.* 
 
 ]^ausicaa, 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 well-drest, 
 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 Phceacian 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. 
 
 Startled by her dream, Nausicaa awakes, and goes 
 to find her parents — 
 
 One by the hearth sat, with the maids around, 
 And on the skeins of yarn, sea-purpled, spent 
 Her morning toil. Him to the council bound, 
 Called by the honoured kings, just going forth she found. 
 
 * I quote from the translation of the late lamented Philip Stanhope 
 Worsley, of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. 
 
T.] OE, THE LOWER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. Ill 
 
 And calling him^ as slie might now, Pappa phile, 
 Dear Papa, asks for tlie mule-waggon : but it is ter 
 father's and her five brothers' clothes she fain would 
 wash, — 
 
 Ashamed to name her marriage to her father dear. 
 
 But he understood all — and she goes forth in the 
 mule-waggon, 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 
 Whicli 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 stream-filled trenches stamped them clean. 
 
112 NAUSICAA IN LONDON; [v. 
 
 Which, havmg washed and cleansed, they spread before 
 The sunbeams, on the beach, where most did lie 
 Thick pebbles, by the sea-wave washed ashore. 
 So, having left them in the heat to dry, 
 They to the bath went down, and by-and-by, 
 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 white-armed Nausicaa leads the choral lay. 
 
 The mere beauty of tliis scene all will feel, wlio 
 have the sense of beauty in tbem. Yet it is not on that 
 aspect wbicli I wisli 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 educa- 
 tion; 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 ball-play, and a teacher of the 
 art, were integral parts of every gymnasium ; and the 
 Athenians went so far as to bestow on one famous ball- 
 player, Aristonicus of Carystia, a statue and the rights 
 of citizenship. The rough and hardy young Spartans, 
 
V,] OE, THE LOWER EDUCATION (>F'^OMEN. ' ll/l V 
 
 wlien passing from boyliood into manliood, receive'd tlife 
 title of ball-players, seemingly from tlie game wliic|i it 
 was tlien tlieir special duty to learn. In tlie case 6f 1 ^ 
 Xausicaa and lier maidens, tlie game would just bring - ^^ 
 into tlieir right places all tliat is liable to be contracted 
 and weakened in women, so many of wliose occupations 
 must needs be sedentary and stooping ; while the song 
 whicli accompanied tlie game at once filled tlie 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 half-barbarous 
 Greeks had found them out for themselves, and, more- 
 over, acted on them. 
 
 But fair Nausicaa must have been — some will say — 
 surely a mere child of nature, and an uncultivated 
 person ? 
 
 So far from it, that her whole demeanour and speech 
 show culture of the very highest sort, full of " sweet- 
 ness 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. 
 
 S. E. 
 
114 NAUSICAA IN LONDON; [v. 
 
 Clear of intellect, prompt of action, modest of 
 demeanour, shrinking from tlie 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,* and judge 
 whether Nausicaa is not as perfect a lady as the poet 
 who imagined her — or, it may be, drew her from life — 
 must 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 her — who acts more by emotion than by 
 calculation — manners 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 
 
 * Odyssey, book vi. 127-315 ; vol. i. pp. 143-150 of Mr. Worsley's 
 translation. 
 
v.] OE, THE LOWER EDUCATION OE WOMEN. 115 
 
 manners^ most higlily- cultivated men. Reading and 
 writings 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 com- 
 mercial 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,^' ^^ educational '^ and other, 
 of that Greek Nausicaa of old. 
 
 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 country-bred, or born 
 of country parents ] and this suspicion was strengthened 
 
 I 2 
 
116 NAUSICAA IN LONDON; [v. 
 
 by the fact tliat, wlien compared witli 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 well-grown 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 
 height — that is a little matter — but 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 brain 
 itself. 
 
 Poor little things. I passed hundreds — I 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 hide — it must be 
 
v.] OK, THE LOWER EDUCATION OF WOMEX. 117 
 
 presumed — deficiencies of form. If that chignon and 
 tliose lieels liad been taken off_, tlie 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 so-called civilisation : the power of aping the 
 '' fashions ^' by which the worn-out '' 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 gaslight-sightseers, but fatten on free air 
 ujDon the open moor. 
 
 But the face which is beneath that chignon and 
 that hat ? Well — it is sometimes pretty : but how 
 seldom handsome, which is a higher quality by far. 
 It is not, strange to say, a well-fed face. Plenty of 
 money, and perhaps too much, is spent on those fine 
 clothes. It had been better, to judge from the com- 
 plexion, if some of that money had been spent in solid 
 
118 NAUSICAA IN LONDON; [v. 
 
 wholesome food. She looks as if she lived — as she 
 too often does, I hear — on tea and bread-and-butter, 
 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 knows — that 
 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 cod-liver 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 more. 
 
 Ah well — there was once a science called Phy- 
 
v.] OE, THE LOWER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 119 
 
 siognomy. Tlie Greeks^ from wliat I can learu^ knew 
 more of it than any people since : tliougli tlie Italian 
 painters and sculptors must have known muck ; far 
 more tkan we. In a more scientific civilisation tkere 
 will be suck a science once more : but its laws, tkougk 
 still in tke empiric stage, are not altogetker 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 voice — which last is 
 too often most harsh and artificial, the breath beiag 
 sent forth through the closed teeth, and almost entirely 
 at the corners of the mouth — and, 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. 
 
120 KAUSICAA IX LONDON; [v. 
 
 Not such, one tliinks, must have been the mothers o£ 
 Britain during the latter half of the last century and 
 the beginning of the present; when their sons, at 
 times, were holding half the world at bay. 
 
 And if Nausicaa has become such in town : what is 
 she when she goes to the seaside, not to wash the 
 clothes in fresh-water, but herself in salt — the very 
 salt-watei', 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 salt-water; 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 
 
v.] OE, THE LOWER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 121 
 
 father — tradesman, or clerk^ or what not — wlio has 
 (lone good work in his day, and hopes to do some 
 more, sitting by your old mother, who has done good 
 work in her day — among the rest, that heaviest work 
 of all, the bringing you into the world and keeping' 
 you in it till now — honest, kindly, cheerful folk 
 enough, and not inefficient in their own calling y 
 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 ^' Lebens- 
 gliickseligkeit,^^ 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 be 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 plea- 
 sure. 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 
 
122 XAUSICAA IN LONDON; [v. 
 
 in fancy in situations in whicli you will never stand, 
 and inspires you with emotions, some of wMcli, it may 
 be, you had better never feel. Poor Nausicaa — 
 old, some men think, before you have been ever 
 young. ■* 
 
 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 employ- 
 ment 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 her — as she never 
 looked. Copy in your own person ; and even if you do 
 not descend as low — or rise as high — as washing the 
 household clothes, at least learn to play at ball; and 
 sing, in the open air and sunshine, not in theatres and 
 concert-rooms 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 
 
Y.] OR, THE LOWER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 123 
 
 Highland lassie ; and try to look like lier^ and loe like 
 her, of whom Wordsworth sang : 
 
 A mien and face 
 In which full plainly I can trace 
 Benignity, and home-bred sense, 
 Eipening 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 he beyond the reach 
 Of thy few words of English speech. 
 A bondage sweetly brooked, a strife 
 That gives thy gestures grace and life. 
 
 Ah_, yet nnspoilt Nausicaa of the North; descendant 
 of the dark tender-hearted Celtic girl_, and the fair 
 deep-hearted Scandinavian Yiking, thank God for thy 
 heather and fresh air^ and the kine thou tendest, and 
 the wool thou spinnest ; and come not to seek thy for- 
 tune, 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. 
 
124 Is^AUSICAA IN LONDON; [v, 
 
 into thy Highland liome; 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, high-heeled 
 boots, and other women^s hair. 
 
 It is proposed, just now, to assimilate the education 
 of gu'ls 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 toler- 
 ably rational country, all imperfect and ill-considered 
 schemes are sure to gravitate. But if the proposal be 
 a bona-fide 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 con- 
 sidered 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 
 
v.] OE, THE LOWER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 125 
 
 school; and tliat notliing is worse for a boy tliau to fall 
 into that loafing^, tuck-shop-hannting set, who neither 
 play hard nor work hard, and are usually extravagant, 
 and often vicious. Moreover, they know w6ll that 
 games conduce, not merely to physical, but to moral 
 health ; that in the playing-field boys acquire virtues 
 which no books can give them ; not merely daring and 
 endurance, but, better still, temper, self-restraint, fair- 
 ness, honour, unenvious approbation of another^s suc- 
 cess, 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 partial. 
 
 Now : if the promoters of higher education for women 
 will compel girls to any training analogous to our public- 
 school 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 games — ball or what not — which 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 " half-time system '' by 
 
126 NAUSICAA IN LONDON; [v. 
 
 Mr. Chadwick and others ; and accept tlie certain phy- 
 sical law tliat^ in order to renovate tlie brain day by 
 day, tlie growing creature must liave plenty of fresli 
 air and play, and tliat tlie cliild wlio 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 coming generation of English 
 women. 
 
 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.^^ * I trust that the 
 subject will be taken up methodically by those gifted 
 
 * 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 institution — a swimming-bath. A 
 paper, moreover, read before the London Association of School- 
 mistresses in 1866, on " Physical Exercises and Kecreation for Girls," 
 deserves all attention. May those who promote such things prosper 
 as they deserve. 
 
v.] OE, THE LOWER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 127 
 
 ladies^ wlio 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 unwhole- 
 some stimulant of competitive examinations, and so 
 
 forth, from '^ developing ^' into so many Chinese 
 
 dwarfs — or idiots. 
 
 October, 1873. 
 
THE AIE-MOTHEKS. 
 
 S. E. 
 

 THE AIR-MOTHERS. 
 
 1869. 
 Die Natur ist die Bewegung. 
 
 Who are these who follow us softly over the moor 
 in the autumn eve ? Their wings brush and rustle in 
 the fir-boughs_, and they whisper before us and 
 behind, as if they called gently to each other, like 
 birds flocking homeward to their nests. 
 
 The woodpecker on the pine-stems 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 cry of weary things which 
 long for rest. 
 
 "Take us home, take us home, you soft air- 
 mothers, now our fathers the sunbeams are. grown 
 dull. Oar 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, 
 
 K 2 
 
132 THE AIE.MOTHEES. [vi. 
 
 from our seats. Waft us down, you soft air-motliers, 
 upon your wings to tlie quiet earth, that we may go 
 to our home, as all things go, and become air and 
 sunlight once again/' 
 
 And the bold young fir-seeds know them, and 
 rattle impatient in their cones. "Blow stronger, 
 blow fiercer, slow air-mothers, and shake us from our 
 prisons of dead wood, that we may fly and spin away 
 north-eastward, 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 once again. 
 
 And the air-mothers hear their prayers, and do 
 their bidding : but faintly ; for they themselves are 
 tired and sad. 
 
 Tired and sad are the air-mothers, and their 
 
VI.] FEOM SOUTH TO NORTH. 133 
 
 gardens rent and wan. Look at tliem as tLey stream 
 over tlie black forest^ before the dim soutli-western 
 sun; long lines and wreatlis 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 air-mothers 
 when, invisible to mortal eyes, they started on their 
 long sky- journey, 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 north- 
 eastward they rushed aloft, across the gay West 
 Indian isles, leaving below the glitter of the flying- 
 fish, and the sidelong eyes of cruel sharks ; above the 
 cane-fields and the plantain-gardens, and the cocoa- 
 groves which fringe the shores ; above the rocks 
 which throbbed with earthquakes, and the peaks of 
 old volcanoes, cinder-strewn ; while, far beneath, the 
 ghosts of their dead sisters hurried home upon the 
 north-east breeze. 
 
 Wild deeds they did as they rushed onward, and 
 struggled and fought among themselves, up and down^ 
 
134 THE AIR.MOTHERS. [vi. 
 
 and round and backward, in tlie fury of their blind 
 hot youth. They heeded not the tree as they snapped 
 itj 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 sea-spray, 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 rain-laden clouds. Then they drew their white 
 cloud-garments 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 wash the soiled world clean. ^' 
 
 So they are wandering past us, the air-mothers, to 
 weep the leaves into their graves ; to weep the seeds 
 into their seed-beds, and weep the soil into the plains ; 
 to get the rich earth ready for the winter, and then 
 creep northward to the ice-world, and there die. 
 
VI.] FROM NORTH TO SOUTH. 136 
 
 Weary^ and still more weary^ slowly and more slowly 
 stilly they will journey on far north ward^ across fast- 
 chilling 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 snow- clad ghosts. 
 
 But will they live again, those chilled air-mothers ? 
 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 snow-storms, as 
 they hurtle from the black north-east, bear back the 
 ghosts of the soft air-mothers, as penitents, to their 
 father, the great sun. 
 
 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 thunder-peal. And, please God, 
 before many weeks are over, as we run Westward-Ho, 
 we shall overtake the ghosts of these air-mothers, 
 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. 
 
136 THE ATR-MOTHEES. [vi. 
 
 new life, new power, and set forth about tlieir work 
 once more. Men call tliem ttie south- west wind, those 
 air-mothers ; and their ghosts the north-east 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 liviog creatures? 
 They, too, are thoughts of God, to whom all live." 
 
 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 tears — just not too late; through man- 
 hood not altogether useless ; through slow and chill old 
 age, we return from Whence we came ; to the Bosom of 
 God once more — to 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 south-western 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 foolish man. 
 
 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 stock-dove broods, 
 
 The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters, 
 
 And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters. 
 
Ti,] BAEBAEISM AND WASTE. 137 
 
 But was I a gloomy and distempered man, if, 
 upon sucli 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 to-day ; 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 cattle- 
 plague, 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 civilised people.^' 
 
 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 
 
138 THE AIR-MOTHERS. [vi. 
 
 had so often, fisliiiig up and down full many a stream, 
 whispered my story to those same river-reeds; 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 rule — or think they rule — the 
 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. 
 
 So I might have said to him, but did not 
 
 And then men pray for rain : 
 
 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 
 
VI.] WASTE OF RAIN. 139 
 
 to tlie Sultan, and cried tliat they were starving. 
 '^ Bnt wliat have you done with the seed-corn which I 
 gave you ? ^^ ^''0 Light of the Age, we ate it in 
 the summer.''^ ^''And what have you done with the 
 ploughs which I gave you t'' ^'0 Glory of the 
 Universe, we burnt them to bake the corn withal/^ 
 
 Then said that great Sultan — *' Like the butterflies 
 you have lived; and like the butterflies you shall 
 wander/^ So he drove them out. And that is how 
 the Gipsies came hither from the East. 
 
 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 profitably in other 
 directions.''^ 
 
 It is not for me to say what answer might be made 
 to such an excuse. I think a child's still unsophisti- 
 cated sense of right and wrong would soon supply 
 one; and probably one — considering the complexity, 
 and difficulty, and novelty, of the whole question — 
 somewhat too harsh ; as children's judgments are wont 
 to be. 
 
140 THE AIR-MOTHERS. [vr. 
 
 But would it not be well if our children, witliout 
 being tauglit to blame anyone for wliat is past, were 
 tauglit sometbing about wliat ougbt to be done now, 
 what must be done soon, witli tlie rainfall of tliese 
 islands ; and about other and kindred bealtb- questions, 
 on tlie solution of wbicb depends, and will depend 
 more and more, tbe 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 holidays, talk now and then, I hope, 
 somewhat after this fashion : 
 
 '' You must understand, my boy, that all the water 
 
VI.] HIGH AND LOW GROUNDS. 141 
 
 in tlie country comes out of tlie skj, and from nowliere 
 else ; and tliat_, therefore, to save and store tlie 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. 
 
 '' Then why do I not do it ? 
 
 ^^ Only because the field lies higher than the house; 
 and if — now here is one thing- which you and every 
 civilised man should know — if you have water- 
 meadows, 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 
 
142 THE AIR-MOTHERS. [vi. 
 
 have to do witli tlie 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 moor-smell 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 water, 
 must run down-hill.^^ 
 
 '^ But what about the rainfall ? ^' 
 
 " 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^ 
 
■ 1 / 'I 
 
 VI.] LESSON OF THE CATTLE PLAGUE. ' 148 
 
 Do you remember — tliough you are hardly old enougli 
 — tlie cattle-plague ? How tlie beasts died, or bad to • 
 be killed and buried, by tens of thousands ; and bow 
 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 cattle-plague; and 
 how there was none — as far as I recollect — in 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 up- 
 landers, are in such a country as Palestine was before 
 the foolish Jews cut down all their timber, and so 
 destroyed their own rainfall — a Hand 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 clay-lands of Cheshire^ and in the 
 Cambridgeshire fens — which were drained utterly dry 
 — the 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 cattle-plague. 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 
 
144 THE AIR-MOTHERS. [vi. 
 
 you plenty of proof — some from tlie lierds of your own 
 kinsmen — that wliat I say is true. 
 
 ^' And as for pure water being life to liuman beings : 
 wliy have we never fever here, and scarcely ever 
 diseases like fever — zymotics, 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 cattle-plague. 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 eye, 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 
 Lacedasmonians 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 well-water was 
 giving them the pestilence : but they had not sense to 
 
VI.] VICTIMS OF WAR OE WANT OF WATER. 145 
 
 see tliat they were poisoning tlie 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 
 battle-field, and men shot down, writhing and dying 
 in hundreds by shell and bullet, would not that seem to 
 you a horrid sight ? Then — I do not wish to make 
 you sad too early, but this is a fact that everyone 
 should know — that 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 Registrar- 
 General^s reports, blue-books, pamphlets, and so on, 
 without end.-" 
 
 " But why do not people stop such a horrible loss 
 of life ? '' 
 
 " Well, my dear boy, the true causes of it have 
 only been known for the last thirty or forty years j 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 
 
 S. E. L 
 
146 THE AIR-MOTHERS. [vi. 
 
 tliat in tliis matter — we have been so in most matters 
 as yet — we sliall be like tlie tortoise in tlie fable, and 
 not the hare ; and by moving slowly, but surely, win 
 the race at last. 
 
 "But now think for yourself: and see what you 
 would do to save these people from being poisoned 
 by bad water. Eemember that the plain question is 
 this : The rain-water comes down from heaven as 
 water, and nothing but water. Rain-water 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 some of this beautiful and precious 
 water which is roaring away into the sea.^' 
 
 ?jC ^ ^ ^ ^ 
 
 " Well ? What would you do ? Make ponds, you 
 say, like the old monks' ponds, now all broken down. 
 Dam all the glens across their mouths, and turn them 
 into reservoirs. 
 
 " ' 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 Griasgow did it first, I think ; and now the good 
 people of Manchester, and of other northern towns, 
 ha.ve 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 
 
Ti.] WATER STORES ON THE MOOR. 147 
 
 tlie 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 is — water. 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 sheep -pond, 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.^^ 
 
 L 2 
 
148 THE AIE-MOTHERS. [ti. 
 
 '' But wliy sliould we not make dams at once : and 
 save tlie water ? " 
 
 *' Because we cannot afford it. No one would buy 
 tlie water wlien we had stored it. The rich in town 
 and country will always take care — and quite right 
 they are — to have water enough for themselves, and 
 for their servants too, whatever it may cost them. 
 But the poorer people are — and therefore usually, alas! 
 the more ignorant — the 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 sell — in London 
 at least — the stop-cocks and lead-pipes which bring 
 the water into their houses. So that keeping a water- 
 shop is a very troublesome and uncertain business; 
 and one which is not likely to pay us or anyone round 
 here.^' 
 
 " But why not let some company manage it, as 
 they manage railways, and gas, and other things ? '^ 
 
 "Ah — you 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 water-supply of England into 
 the hands of fresh companies, but to help to take out 
 of their hands what water-supply they manage already^ 
 
tl] companies or government? 149 
 
 especially in London; and likewise tlie gas-supply; 
 and the railroads; and everytMng else^ in a word, 
 wMcli everybody uses, and must use. For you must 
 understand — at least as soon as you can — tliat tliougli 
 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 
 inspected — in plain English, watched — at a very heavy 
 expense to the nation by Government ofiicers ; 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 
 cattle-yard 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 
 
150 THE AIR-MOTHEKS. [vi. 
 
 done by a public authority, as is fit and proper in a 
 free self-governing country. In this matter, as in all 
 others, we will try to do what the Koyal 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 nine-tenths 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 well- 
 governed city of London ; each managing its own 
 water-supply, gas-supply, 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 companies can do it for them.''^ 
 
 " But where shall we get water enough for all these 
 millions of people ? There are no mountains near 
 London. But we might give them the water off our 
 moors.^^ 
 
 " No, no, my boy, 
 
 " He that will not when he may, 
 When he will, he shall have nay. 
 
 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 
 
VI.] NATUEAL KESEEVOIES. 151 
 
 growing so populous aud so valuable that it wants 
 all its little rainfall for itself. So tliere 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.''"' 
 
 ^^ Why, they are always dry.''^ 
 
 '' 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 green- 
 sands, 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 
 
152 THE AIR-MOTHERS. [vi. 
 
 — too brave_, I am sorry to say, for some wlio might 
 have supported them — that it is not for me to gainsay 
 their opinion/^ 
 
 '^ But if there was not water enough in the chalk, 
 are not the Londoners rich enough to bring it from 
 any distance ? '''' 
 
 '' My boy, in this also we will agree with the Com- 
 mission — that 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 water-fields. 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 Hills — the 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 mountains — the finest 
 water-field 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 
 
VI.] MOUNTAIN EAIN STOEES. 153 
 
 last come the Snowdon mountains, a noble water-field, 
 whicli 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 happier — prouder I dare 
 not say — than if I had painted nobler pictures than 
 Haffaelle, 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 
 ^ right to claim the nearest rainfall for itself ? And 
 now, when we have got the water into its proper place, 
 let us see what we shall do with it."*^ 
 
 " But why do you say ^ we ^ ? Can you and I do 
 all this ? " 
 
 " My boy, are not you and I free citizens ; part of 
 the people, the Commons — as the good old word runs 
 — of this country ? And are we not — or ought we not 
 to be in time — beside that, educated men ? By the 
 people, remember, I mean, not only the hand-working 
 man who has just got a vote ; I mean the clergy of all 
 
154. THE AIR-MOTHERS. [vi. 
 
 denominations ; and tiie gentlemen of tlie press ; and 
 last^ but not least_, tlie scientific men. If tliose 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 
 children— most of those latter your own wives and 
 your own children ? ' " 
 
 '^ But what shall we do with the water ? ^' 
 '^ 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 
 
VI.] WATER AT HIGH PRESSUEE. 15& 
 
 tlie water in little cisterns, wliere it gets foul and 
 putrid only too often/^ 
 
 '' But will tliey not waste it then ? ^^ 
 
 ^^ So far from it, wlierever the water lias been laid 
 on at higli pressure, the waste,, which is terrible now — 
 some say that in London one-third of the water is 
 wasted — begins 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 high-pressure 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 come home, man and house 
 would have been washed away." 
 
 '''But if it saves money, why do not the water 
 companies do it ? ^^ 
 
 " Because — and 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 
 water-supply, like a poor horse set to draw a load 
 which he feels is too heavy for him — because, to keep 
 everything in order among dirty, careless, and often 
 drunken people, there must be officers with lawful 
 authority — water-policemen we will call them — who 
 can enter people's houses when they will, and if they 
 find anything wrong with the water, set it to rights 
 
156 THE AIK-MOTHERS. [vi. 
 
 witli a higli liandj 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 Government/'' 
 
 '' And what shall we do with the rest of the water V 
 " 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 not — and 
 ought not, if they be hard-worked folk — bathe 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 atmo- 
 sphere of foul vapour, which drives the father to the 
 public-house and the children into the streets ; and 
 which not only prevents the clothes from being tho- 
 roughly dried again, but is, my dear boy, as you will 
 know when you are older, a very hot-bed 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 
 
Ti.] EEAL FOUNTAINS. 157 
 
 fountain; not like tlie drinking-fountains — tliougli 
 they are great and needful boons — wliicli you see liere 
 and tliere about the streets, with a tiny dribble of 
 water to a great deal of expensive stone : but real 
 fountains, wbicli 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 songs — save the song of a mother over her 
 child — the song of ' The Laughing Water/ " 
 
 ^'But will not that be a waste V^ 
 
 " 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 all — 
 save Her Majesty the Queen — are 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 believe — for the world, as you will find, is full not 
 only of just but of generous souls — that if the water- 
 supply were set really right, there would be found, in 
 many a city, many a generous man who, over and 
 above his compulsory water-rate, would give his poor 
 fellow-townsmen such a real fountain as those which 
 ennoble the great square at Carcasonne and the great 
 square at Nismes; to be *" a thing of beauty and a joy 
 for ever.^ 
 
 ^^ And now^ if you want to go back to your Latin 
 
158 THE AIR-MOTHERS. [vi. 
 
 and G-reek, you shall translate for me into Latin — I do 
 not expect you to do it into Greeks thougli it would 
 turn very well into Greek, for tlie Greeks knew all 
 about tlie matter long before the Eomans — what fol- 
 lows 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 since the days of Mr. Canning.^^ 
 
 JJC ^ 5|C ^ ?|C 
 
 I have often amused myself, by fancying one ques- 
 tion 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 a while, 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 
 
Ti.] MODERN BAEBARIANS. 159 
 
 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 wash-houses 
 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 Eome, 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 Constantino, built baths, and yet more 
 baths; and connected with them gymnasia for exercise, 
 lecture -rooms, libraries, and porticoes, wherein the 
 people might have shade, and shelter, and rest ? I 
 remark, by-the-bye, that I have not seen in all your 
 
160 THE AIR-MOTHEES. [vr. 
 
 London a single covered place in wliicli the people may 
 take shelter during a shower. Are you aware that 
 these baths were of the most magnificent architec- 
 ture^ 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 ; and, indeed, taught 
 little but Greek and Latin at your public schools ? " 
 
 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 written — a great deal of it, I fear, by pedants 
 who seldom washed even their hands and faces — about 
 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 sets all our antiquaries buzzing with 
 interest.''^ 
 
 ^^ Then why," the shade might ask, " do you not 
 copy an example which you so much admire ? Surely 
 England must be much in want, either of water, or of 
 fuel to heat it with ? '' 
 
 *' 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 coal-mines make us the great fuel- exporting^ 
 people of the world.^^ 
 
 i 
 
vr.] THE AIE-MOTHEES. 161 
 
 Wliat a quiet sneer might curl the lip of a Con- 
 stantine as lie 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 wise — for 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 Eomans 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 Constan- 
 tinople : then, at least, you saw baths, and used them ; 
 and felt, after the bath, that you were civilised men, 
 and not 'sordid! ac foetentes,^ as we used to call 
 you when fresh out of your bullock-waggons and 
 cattle-pens. How is it that you have forgotten that 
 lesson ? '^ 
 
 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 
 s. E. M 
 
162 THE AIR-MOTHEES. [vr. 
 
 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, were — to their honour — the representa- 
 tives of Eoman civilisation and the protectors of its 
 remnants, were the determined enemies of its cleanli- 
 ness ; that they looked on personal dirt — like the old 
 hermits of the Thebaid — as a sign of sanctity; and 
 discouraged — as they are said to do still in some 
 of the Romance countries of Europe — the 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 barbarian, look clean enough. You do 
 not look on dirt as a sign of sanctity ? ^^ 
 
 ^^ On the contrary, sire, the upper classes of our 
 empire boast of being the cleanliest — perhaps the only 
 perfectly cleanly — people 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 men— than whom the world has never seen 
 wiser — have proved to us, for a whole generation past^- 
 that dirt is the fertile cause of disease and drunken- 
 ness, misery, and recklessness." 
 
 J 
 
VI.] THE AIR-MOTHERS. 163 
 
 ^^And, therefore/^ replies tlie shade^ ere lie dis- 
 appears, " of discontent and revolution : followed by a 
 tyranny endured_, as in Eome and many another place^ 
 by men once free ; because tyranny will at least do for 
 tbem wbat 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 dirt — and your own 
 shame. Till then, abstain from judging too harshly a 
 Constantino, or even a Caracalla ; for they, whatever 
 were their sins, built baths, and kept their people 
 clean. But do your gymnasia — your schools and 
 universities, teach your youth naught about all 
 this?'^ 
 
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
LIBRAR 
 
 V )■: I ■ - 
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 The more I have contemplated tliat ancient story of 
 tlie Fallj tlie 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 often — as 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 
 
168 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. [vii, 
 
 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 
 w^hether he be a god or an ape j 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 fact — as is to be 
 expected — of his fellow-men, 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 feel — if not to be — somewhat ^^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. 
 
VII.] THE TEEE OF KNOWLEDGE. 169 
 
 or expressing all tlie emotions wliicli he himself longs 
 to express ; a dull brain and dull senses, which cramp 
 the eager infinity within him ; as — so Goethe once 
 said with pity — the 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 tempter — be he who he may — says 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 ? 
 In vain we say to man : 
 
 'Tis Hfe, not death, for which you pant ; 
 'Tis life, whereof your nerves are scant ; 
 More hfe, and fuller, that you want. 
 
 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, insufiicient thing I am; and live." 
 
170 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. [vii. 
 
 He — did I say ? Alas ! I must say slie likewise. 
 Tlie sacred story is only too true to fact^ when it 
 represents tlie 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 
 peoples also, the usual course of the world-wide 
 tragedy. 
 
 But — paradoxical as it may seem — the woman^s 
 yielding before the man is not altogether to her dis- 
 
VII.] THE TEEE OF KNOWLEDGE. 171 
 
 honour, 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 thereby — though at 
 an awful cost — a 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 been — as some learned men have 
 guessed — the 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 con- 
 cerning 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 
 
172 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. [vii. 
 
 smile^ the theory that the wines mentioned in Scripture 
 were not intoxicating. And yet — as a fresh corrobora- 
 tion of what I am trying to say — ^how 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 Mgenads and half -human 
 Satyrs ; and the Bacchee tore Pentheus in pieces on 
 Cith^eron, 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 
 to-morrow, 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 bush-poisons wherewith the tropic sorcerer 
 
VII.] THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. 173 
 
 initiates Ms dupes into the knowledge of good and evil, ^ y^ 
 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 sub- 
 stitutes for alcohol, opium, and the rest ; and give the 
 white races, in that state of effeminate and godless 
 quasi-civilisation 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, if we cannot 
 eradicate 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 
 
 / 
 
174 THE TKEE OF KNOWLEDGE. [vii. 
 
 goes on all around us, eacli man is tasked more and 
 more — if lie be really worth buying and using — to tlie 
 utmost of Ms 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 earth — it 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 them- 
 selves ; 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, when — as 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 
 
til] the tree of knowledge. 175 
 
 wMcli tempts toward drink ; by every circumstance 
 wliicli depresses tlie vital energies^ and leaves tliem an 
 easy prey to pestilence itself; by bad lights bad air, 
 bad food, bad water, bad smells, bad occupations, 
 whicli weaken tke muscles, cramp the cbest, disorder 
 tlie digestion. Let any rational man, fresb from the 
 country — in wliicli I presume God, having made it, 
 meant all men, more or less, to live — go througli tlie 
 back streets of any city, or througb wbole districts of 
 tke " black countries " of England ; and tken ask 
 bimself : Is it tke will of God that His human children 
 should live and toil in such dens, such deserts, such 
 dark places of the earth ? Let 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 iron-producing country — 
 streets of furnaces, collieries, slag heaps, mud, slop, 
 brick house-rowsj smoke, dirt — and that is all; and 
 when I am told, whether truly or falsely, that the main 
 thing which the well-paid and well-fed men of those 
 abominable wastes care for is — good fighting-dogs : I 
 can only answer, that I am not surprised. 
 
 I say — as I have said elsewhere, and shall do my 
 best to say it again — that the craving for drink and 
 
176 THE TEEE OF KNOWLEDGE. [vii. 
 
 narcotics, especially that engendered in our great 
 cities, is not a disease, but a symptom of disease ; of a 
 far deeper disease than any wliicli 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 them — who always 
 settled in the lowest grounds — in 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 many — to 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 'Hhe water of life,^' the '''usque- 
 
VII.] THE TEEE OF KNOWLEDGE. 177 
 
 loagh/' or wMsky, as we have contracted tlie old name 
 now. But I should have thought that the white man, 
 by introducing among these poor creatures iron, fire- 
 arms, blankets, and above all, horses wherewith to 
 follow the buffalo-herds, which they could never follow 
 on foot, must have done ten times more towards 
 keeping them alive, than he has done towards de- 
 stroying 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, they 
 would never have got. 
 
 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 gallows — 
 and here I know what I say, and dare not tell what I 
 know, from eye-witnesses — have been the cause of the 
 Hed 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 whisky — and 
 usually very bad whisky — not 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, 
 
 S. E. N • 
 
178 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. [vii. 
 
 and perhaps even more prolific, tlian tliey are now. 
 They sliow 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, and — as 
 far as ignorance and vested interests will allow him, 
 procures — for the masses, pure air, pure sunlight, pure 
 water, pure dwelling-houses, pure food. Not merely 
 every fresh drinking-fountain, 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 window — each 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 some- 
 thing 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 in- 
 
VII.] THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. 179 
 
 creased only one-nintli in the last fifty years, tliere are 
 now practically eight public-houses, where fifty years 
 ago there were but two. One, that is, for every hundred 
 and ten — or rather, omitting children^ farmers, shop- 
 keepers, 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 England — though never so well 
 off, for several generations, as they are now — are grow- 
 ing 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^ smock-frocks. 
 
 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 after them, to help in bringing about that 
 change as speedily as possible. 
 
 Again : I said just now that a probable cause of 
 
 N 2 
 
180 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. [vn. 
 
 increasing drunkenness was tlie increasing material 
 prosperity of thousands who knew no recreation beyond 
 low animal pleasure. If I am right — and I believe 
 that I am right — I must urge on those who wish 
 drunkenness to decrease^ the necessity of providing 
 more, and more refined,, recreation for the people. 
 
 Men drinkj 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 hand-working class, but absorbed all 
 day by business, who drink heavily at night in their 
 own comfortable homes, simply to recreate their over- 
 burdened 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 science — in all this lies recreation, in the 
 true and literal sense of that word, namely, the re- 
 creating and mending of the exhausted mind and 
 
YJi.] THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. 181 
 
 feelings, sucb. as no rational man will now neglect, 
 either for himself, his children, or his workpeople. 
 
 But how little of all this is open to the masses, all 
 should know but too well. How little opportunity the 
 average hand-worker^ 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 many average orators. 
 
 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 the — to me — dis- 
 graceful 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 '^ 
 
182 THE TEEE OF KNOWLEDGE. [vii.. 
 
 by all meanSj if we can. But let us remember tbat by 
 closing the public-houses 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 eight-and-forty hours. And let 
 us see — in the name of Him who said that He had made 
 the Sabbath for man, and not man for the Sabbath — 
 let 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 of most dulness, of the whole seven. 
 
 And here, perhaps some sweet soul may look up re- 
 provingly 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 said — who only has the right to say : "Come 
 unto Me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I 
 will give you resf ? 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, 
 self-contained, self-denying 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 
 
Til.] THE TEEE OF KNOWLEDGE. 183 
 
 cliaracter, in a word^ wliicli is truly temperate, not in 
 drink or food merely, but in all desires, tliouglits, and 
 actions ; freed from tlie wild lusts and ambitions to 
 wMch 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 already found ifc. 
 
 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 them — if we would let Him 
 — His 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 prison- 
 house is a world which God, not man, has made; wherein 
 grows everywhere that tree of knowledge, which is like- 
 wise 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. 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 UJ,-1 VKI.-SITV OF 
 
 CAUKC'i; 
 
 , , . v; i 
 
 GREAT CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE 
 FOR GOOD AND EVIL. 
 
GREAT CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE 
 FOR GOOD AND EVIL.* 
 
 The pleasure^ gentlemen and ladies^ of addressing you 
 here is mixed in my mind witli very solemn feelings ; 
 the lionour whicli you have done me is tempered by 
 humiliating thoughts. 
 
 For it was in this very city of Bristol, twenty-seven 
 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 other. 
 
 I was a school-boy 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 
 
 * Lecture delivered at Bristol, October 5, 1857- 
 
188 GEE AT CITIES [viii. 
 
 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 fog I saw a bright mass of flame — almost 
 like a half -risen sun. 
 
 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 increased — multiplied — at 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 that sea of fire. 
 
 Right behind Brandon Hill — how 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, and the infernal hiss and crackle of the flame. 
 
 Higher and higher the fog was scorched and 
 
VIII.] AXD THEIR IXFLUEXCE FOE GOOD AND EYIL. 189 
 
 shrivelled upward by tlie 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 below — and 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 birth-throes 
 of a new age. Yes. — Why did I say just now, despair ? 
 I was wrong. Birth-throes, 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 command 
 
 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 humanity — even on these late 
 Indian, ones — and take our share, faithful and hopeful, 
 in supplying the new and deeper wants of a new and 
 nobler time. 
 
 I 
 
190 GEEAT CITIES [viii. 
 
 But to return. It was on the Tuesday or Wednesday 
 after,, if I recollect rights 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 corpse-fragments. I have no more wish 
 than you to dilate upon that sight. But there was 
 one charred fragment — with 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 lies in living after the 
 likeness of God. 
 
 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 years — years, too, of personal inter- 
 course with the poor — to explain to me the true meaning 
 of what I saw here in October twenty-seven 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 
 
VIII.] AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND EVIL. 191 
 
 directly on its moral state, and — I fear dissenting voices, 
 but I must say wliat I believe to be truth — that the 
 moral state of a city depends — how far I know not, 
 but frightfully, to an extent as yet uncalculated, and 
 perhaps incalculable — on the physical state of that 
 city; on the food, water, air, and lodging of its 
 inhabitants. 
 
 But that lesson, and others connected with it, was N 
 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 charity-schools. 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, physiciaDS, priests ; and the admirable 
 book which assumed that title did but re-echo the 
 feeling of thousands of earnest hearts. 
 
 Ever since that time, scheme on scheme of im- 
 provement 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 
 
^r 
 
 192 GREAT CITIES [viii. 
 
 opened to her neglect of tliese classes, without whose 
 
 f 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,* in spite of 
 shame and sorrow which may be yet in store for us^ 
 save alive both the soul and the body of this ancient 
 people. 
 
 Let us then, that we may learn how to bear our 
 part in this great work of Social Eeform, 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 
 * This was spoken during the Indian Mutiny. 
 
VIII.] AND THEIR IXFLUEXCE FOR GOOD AND EYIL. 193 
 
 of A or B in it, is just wliat we ouglit most carefully 
 to forget, if we wisli to look at tlie real root of tlie 
 matter. If consumption, latent in tlie constitution, 
 have broken out in active miscliief, tlie 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 fourth — 
 perhaps even, as in Byzantium of old, no more im- 
 portant 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 the powder which is ignited. 
 
 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 
 
 S. B. ,0 
 
194 GEEAT CITIES [vm. 
 
 means of rapid and clieap distribution of goods, wlaetlier 
 imports or manufactures, save by this crowding of 
 liuman beings into great cities, for tbe more easy de- 
 spatch 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, penny-posts, electric tele- 
 graphs, men were compelled to be as close as possible 
 to each other, in order to work together. 
 
 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 vapour-bath 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 a-mayiug, and children gathered flowers. 
 
/ 
 
 VIII.] AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOR GOOD A^D EVIL/ '195 ' 
 
 and sober burghers with tlieir wives took the 'e4;^ning 
 walk; there were the butts, too, close outside, where 
 stalwart prentice-lads ran and wrestled, and pitched the 
 bar, and played backsword, and practised with the 
 long-bow; and sometimes, in stormy times, turned out 
 for a few months as ready-trained soldiers, and, like 
 Ulysses of old. 
 
 Drank delight of battle with then' peers, 
 
 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 leaping-pole, 
 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 city — and 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 
 unwittingly in every bedroom. 
 
 They fasted, they prayed ; but in vain. They called 
 
 2 
 
196 GREAT CITIES [viir. 
 
 tlie pestilence a judgment of God; and they called it 
 by a true name. But they knew not (and wlio are we 
 to blame them for not knowing?) wbat it was that Grod 
 was judging thereby— foul air, foul water, unclean back- 
 yards, stifling attics, bouses banging over tbe narrow 
 street till light and air were alike shut out — that 
 there lay the sin; and that to amend that was the 
 repentance which God demanded. 
 
 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 con- 
 tact with their fellow-men, forced at least the loftier 
 and tender souls to know their fellow-men, and there- 
 fore to care for them, to love them, to die for them. 
 Yes — from one temptation the city life is free, to which 
 the country life is sadly exposed — that isolation which, 
 self-contented 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, be- 
 come, however tragical, still beautiful and heroic ; and 
 we read of noble-hearted 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 
 shame have fled. 
 
VIII.] AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND EVIL. 197 
 
 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 gain-;-who perhaps had been 
 really absorbed in it — till that fearful hour awakened 
 in him his better self, and taught him, not self- 
 aggrandisement, but self-sacrifice ; 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 pallia- 
 tion, not even for the cure, but for the prevention, yea, 
 the utter extermination, of pestilence. 
 
 About the middle of the sixteenth century, as far as 
 I can ascertain, another and even more painful pheno- 
 menon appears in our great cities — a 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 conver- 
 sion 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 
 
198 GEE AT CITIES [viii. 
 
 whole period is as yet obscure, and I Lave 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 sea-port 
 towns; and Bristol, as one of the great starting-points 
 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 language — of 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 Shakes- 
 peare had seen in Alsatia and the Mint. 
 
VIII.] AND THEIll INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND EVIL. 199 
 
 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 dan- 
 gerous class ; into the one property common to all its 
 members, whether thieves, beggars, profligates, or 
 the merely pauperised — we find it to be this loss of 
 self-respect. As long as that remains, poor souls may 
 struggle on heroically, pure amid penury, filth, degra- 
 dation 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 self-respect. 
 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 con- 
 taminated, 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 
 
200 GREAT CITIES [viii. 
 
 half despises himself for being so. In all ragged schools 
 and reformatories, so they tell me, the first step toward 
 restoring self-respect is to make the poor fellows clean. 
 From that moment they begin to look on themselves 
 as new men — with 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 self- 
 respect, and manliness, and a clear conscience ; of the 
 free forehead, and the eye which meets boldly and 
 honestly the eye of its fellow-man. 
 
 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 
 myself — this solemn question : We, who have so 
 many comforts, so many pleasures of body, soul, and 
 spirit, from the lowest appetite to the highest aspira- 
 tion, that we can gratify each in turn with due and 
 wholesome moderation, innocently and innocuously — 
 
VIII.] AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND EVIL. 201 
 
 who are we tliat we should jadge 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 cause — a cause of endless crime and 
 misery ; but I am convinced that to cure, you must 
 inquire, not what it causes, but what causes it ? And 
 for that we shall not have to seek far. 
 
 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 cheek — namely, light. Be- 
 lieve 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 
 
202 GREAT CITIES [viii. 
 
 all cases) the laws of the visible world are the counter- 
 parts 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 remedy — the passing stimulus of alcohol ; — a pass- 
 ing 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 intel- 
 lectual 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 the tavern, and the company which 
 the tavern brings ; God help him ! 
 
 Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is easy to say, Grod 
 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 of this country. And what has caused 
 the improvement ? 
 
VIII.] AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND EVIL. 203 
 
 Certainly, in tlie first place,, tlie spread of education. 
 Every man lias now a hundred means of rational 
 occupation and amusement wliicli were closed to Ms 
 grandfather ; and among the deadliest enemies of 
 drunkenness, we may class the printing-press^ the rail- 
 road, 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 four- 
 post bed has given place to the airy curtainless one ; 
 and what is more than all — we wash. That morning 
 cold bath which foreigners consider as Young Eng- 
 land's strangest superstition, has done as much, believe 
 me, to abolish drunkenness, as any other cause whatso- 
 ever. 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, 
 cceteris paribus, a man's sobriety is in direct proportion 
 to his cleanliness. I believe it would be so in all 
 classes had they the means. 
 
 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 
 
204 GREAT CITIES [viii. 
 
 to liis neiglibours. He lias a riglit to water^ to air, to 
 light. In demanding tliat, lie 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 fellow-men, 
 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 
 
Tin.] AND THEIE INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND EVIL. 205 
 
 physical conditions of the class ; by abolisliing foul air, 
 foul water, foul lodging, overcrowded dwellings, in 
 wMcli morality is difficult and common decency im- 
 possible. You 'may breed a pig in a sty, ladies and 
 gentlemen, and make a learned pig of Mm after all ; 
 but you cannot breed a man in a sty, and make a 
 learned man of bim ; or indeed, in tbe true sense of 
 that great word, a man at all. 
 
 And remember, that these physical influences of 
 great cities, physically depressing and morally degrad- 
 ing, influence, though to a less extent, the classes above 
 the lowest stratum. 
 
 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 con- 
 tact 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 
 
206 GREAT CITIES [vm. 
 
 and gentlemen; if tliere be one class for wliom above 
 all otliers I will plead, in season and out of season ; if 
 tliere be one social evil wliicli I will din into the ears 
 of my countrymen wlienever God gives me a cliance^it 
 is tbis : 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 wives — their stern uncom- 
 plaining, valorous self-denial ; 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 o£ old used to bind together the dead corpse and 
 
VIII.] AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND EVIL. 207 
 
 tlie living yictim. But let the man wlio 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 dead, that the plague may be stayed. 
 
 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 
 
208 GEE AT CITIES [v^ii, 
 
 lioles_, 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 business was 
 their business, his honour theirs, his prosperity theirs. 
 
 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 ; therefore their right education is a matter 
 of national importance. 
 
 The lad who stands behind a Bristol counter may 
 be, five-and-twenty years hence, a large employer — 
 an owner of houses and land in far countries across 
 the seas — a member of some colonial parliament — 
 the 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 educations. 
 
 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 Fundi so 
 ruthlessly holds up to just ridicule. He is sometimes 
 a vulgar fop, sometimes fond of low profligacy — of 
 betting-houses and casinos. Well — I know no class 
 
VIII.] AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOE GOOD AND HVJL. 209 ^ ^ 
 
 in any age or country among whicli a fool mq^ ];iot t)(^ / . 
 found here and there. But tliat the " gent'* is'tlie ' 
 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 per- 
 petual stream of human faces, the innumerable objects 
 of interest in every shop-window, 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 city-bred 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) 
 i s. E. p 
 
210 GREAT CITIES [viir, 
 
 composed^ silent^ self-contained, often stately^ often 
 listless; the latter mobile^ eager^ observant,, often 
 brilliant, often self-conscious. 
 
 Now if you keep tbis rapid and tense mind in a 
 powerful and bealthy body, it would do right good 
 work. Right good work it does, indeed, as it is ; but 
 still it might do better. 
 
 For what are the faults of this class ? What do the 
 obscurantists (now, thank God, fewer every day) allege 
 as the objection to allowing young men to educate 
 themselves out of working hours ? 
 
 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 
 spouting themselves, and hearing others spout. 
 
 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 middle-class young men 
 whom I know are most in danger. 
 
 But one 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 
 
Till.] AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND EVIL. 211 
 
 have been excited at the expense of their lungs, their 
 digestion, and their whole nutritive system. Their 
 complexions show a general ill-health. 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 ill-health 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 early-closing movement ; not so much 
 
 r 2 
 
212 GREAT CITIES [viii. 
 
 because it enables young men to attend meclianics' 
 institutes^, as because it enables tliem_, if tliey clioose^ 
 to get a good game of leap-frog. You may smile ; but 
 try the experiment, and see liow, 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 society for evils which as yet she knows not how 
 to cure. 
 
 There is a class, again, above all these, which is 
 doubtless the most important of all ; and yet of which 
 I can say little here — the 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 old — as I doubt not there 
 are now — who nobly fulfilled that ideal. I cannot 
 forget that Bristol was the nurse of America; that 
 more than two hundred years ago, the daring and 
 
VIII.] AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND EYIL. 213 
 
 genius of Bristol converted yonder narrow stream into 
 a miglity artery, down wliicli flowed tlie young life- 
 blood of that great Transatlantic nation destined to be 
 hereafter, I believe, the greatest which the world ever 
 saw. Yes — were 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 new-found lands by arts 
 instead of arms ; they can beget new nations ; and 
 replenish and subdue the earth from pole to pole. 
 
 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 
 
214 GREAT CITIES [viii. 
 
 and to tlie 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 schools — I 
 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 port-wine. 
 
 My only regret when I see so pleasant a sight is : 
 Oh that the good man could have taken his workmen 
 with him ! 
 
 Taken his workmen with him ? 
 
 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 cannot bring the country into the city, the 
 city must go into the country. 
 
 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 
 
Tin.] AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND EVIL. 215 
 
 impossible in England. We have liere no Eastern 
 despotism (and it is well we liave not) to destroy an old 
 Babylon, as tbat migMy genius Nabuclionosor did, and 
 build a few miles off a new Babylon, one-lialf the area 
 of wliicli was park and garden, fountain and water- 
 course — a diviner work of art, to my mind, than tlie 
 finest picture or statue whicli tlie world ever saw. We 
 Iiave not eitlier (and it is well for us tliat we liave not) 
 a model republic occupying a new uncleared land. We 
 cannot, as tliey do in America, plan out a vast city on 
 some delicious and liealtliy site amid the virgin forest, 
 witk streets one hundred feet in breadth, squares and 
 boulevards already planted by Grod'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 
 
216 GEEAT CITIES [ynu 
 
 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 lodging- 
 houses springing up, not in the heart of the town, but 
 on the hills around it; and those will be — economy, a& 
 well as science and good government, will compel them 
 to be — not ill-built 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 eating-house, bar, baths, washhouses^ 
 reading-room, common conveniences of every kind_y 
 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, labour, or 
 health. 
 
 ^ Then the city will become what it ought to be; the 
 workshop, and not the dwelling-house, of a mighty and 
 healthy people. The old foul alleys, as they become 
 gradually depopulated, will be replaced by fresh ware- 
 houses, 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 
 
VIII.] AND THEIR INFLUEXCE FOR GOOD AND EVIL. 217 
 
 and a poison-trap, but merely a place for honest 
 labour. 
 
 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 ujDon 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 
 
1218 GREAT CITIES [viii. 
 
 and purifying influences of tliose common natural 
 sights and sounds whicli 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, perhaps a burden to tliose around him. 
 
 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 money-loving 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 G od 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 prone — charity 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 
 
 ( 
 
Tin.] AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND EVIL. 219 /:> 
 
 the profitableness of any scheme a test of its/rigMne^. 
 It is a rough test ; not an infallible one at all, but it is / 
 a fair one enough to work by. 
 
 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 
 poor-rates. They will pay by exterminating epidemics, 
 and numberless chronic forms of disease which now 
 render thousands burdens on the public purse; con- 
 sumers, instead of producers of wealth. They will pay 
 by gradually absorbing the dangerous classes ; and 
 removing from temptation and degradation a genera- 
 tion 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 
 self -helping man ; give him but the chances of main- 
 taining the same physical strength and health as the 
 
220 GREAT CITIES [viir, 
 
 countryman J and he will support tlie honour of tlie 
 British arms as gallantly as the Highlander or the 
 Connaughtman, and restore the days when the 
 invincible prentice-boys 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 intel- 
 lectual progress ; perhaps^ as a clergyman^ more also 
 of spiritual and moral regeneration. 
 
 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 know — con- 
 cerning matters which are to me articles of faith 
 altogether indubitable, irreversible. Divine. 
 
 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 self-interest. 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 
 
VIII.] AND THEIR INFLUENCE FOR GOOD AND EVIL. 221 
 
 questions not merely of interest,, but of cluty^ honour, 
 cMvalry. 
 
 I cannot but see, moreover, liow many plienomena, 
 wliicliare supposed to be spiritual, are simply pbysical ; 
 bow 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 im- 
 possible 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 calamities which spring from their own 
 greed, haste, and ignorance. 
 
 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 ofiice of a priest — 
 namely, 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 ^ 
 
222 GEEAT CITIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE, ETC. [viii. 
 
 from one end of the universe to tlie otlier ; tliat who- 
 soever persists in breaking those laws, reaps his sure 
 punishment of weakness and sickness, sadness and self- 
 reproach ; that whosoever causes them to be broken 
 by others, reaps his sure punishment in finding that he 
 has transformed his fellow-men 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 exter- 
 minated 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 im- 
 portance 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 thy life here; and judge from thence its 
 fitness for thy nobler life hereafter. 
 
HEROISM. 
 
f LIBRARY 
 
 ' AMI.-: 
 
 HEROISM. 
 
 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 o£ justice and 
 safety^ the complete '' preservation of body and 
 goods/^ may not reduce the educated and comfortable 
 classes into that lap-dog 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, 
 s. E. Q 
 
226 HEEOISM. [ix. 
 
 as we do in the results of arbitration, as tlie 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. Bat 
 arbitration prevents war ; and that, in three cases out 
 of four, is full reason for employing it. 
 
 On the other hand, the lap-dog 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 
 self- originating, the earnest. They give to such a 
 clear stage and no favour, wherein to work unhindered 
 for their fellow-men. 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, and any just praise, 
 to think of such things.^' 
 
 This pettiness and dulness of our modern life is 
 just what keeps alive our stage, to which people go to 
 
IX.] HEROISM. 227 
 
 see something a little less petty, a little less dull, tlian 
 what they see at home. It is, too_, the cause of — I 
 had almost said the excuse for — the 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 well-ordered 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 men and women like themselves 
 can play, and how they play them. 
 
 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 
 ^nd ashamed of themselves to want to hear of people 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 HEROISM. [ix. 
 
 like themselves ; who want to liear 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 
 May-dew, and feel themselves thereby, if but for an 
 hour, more fair. 
 
 If any such shall chance to see these words, let me 
 ask them to consider with me that one word Hero, and 
 what it means. 
 
 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 interest- 
 ing 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 brutalised by self-indulgence. 
 
 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 fellow-men 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 was — to understand 
 the true meaning of the words which were in their 
 
IX.] HEROISM. 229 
 
 moutlis all day long ; and Socrates was a wiser man 
 tlian we shall ever see. So^ instead of beginning an 
 oration in praise of heroism, I shall ask my readers to 
 think with me what heroism is. 
 
 Now, we shall always get most surely at the meaning 
 of a word by getting at its etymology — that 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 
 fellow -creatures. Gods, heroes, and men, is a threefold 
 division of rational beings, with which we meet more 
 than once or twice. Those grand old Greeks felt deeply 
 the truth of the poet's saying — 
 
 Unless above himself he can 
 Exalt hmiself, how poor a thing is man. 
 
 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 
 
230 HEROISM. [rx. 
 
 approximation between the divine and the human 
 natures ; and whether or not they agree with the author 
 altogether, all will agree^ I thinks that the first idea of a 
 hero or a heroine was a godlike man or godlike woman. 
 
 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 master-sculptors 
 and draughtsmen of their own, and, indeed, of any 
 age, would, of course, require in their hero, their god- 
 like man, beauty and strength, manners too, and elo- 
 quence, 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 see. 
 
 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 
 self-will ; 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 
 
IX.] HEROISM. 231 
 
 gods, and all laws of riglit and wrong, till lie perished 
 
 in his aTao-daXir) 
 
 Smitten down, blind in his pride, for a sign and a terror to 
 mortals. 
 
 But he ought to have, he must have, to be true to his 
 name of Hero, justice, seK-restraint, and albas — 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 self- 
 respect. And he must have too — if he were to be a 
 hero of the highest type — the 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 sea-beast ; Heracles 
 with his twelve famous labours against giants and 
 monsters ; and all the rest — 
 
 Who dared, in the god-given might of their manhood, 
 Greatly to do and to suffer, and far in the fens and the forests 
 Smite the devourers of men, heaven-hated brood of the giants ; 
 Transformed, strange, -without like, who obey not the golden- 
 haired rulers. 
 
232 HEROISM. [ix. 
 
 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 re-discovery 
 of Greek literature. So far from contradicting the 
 Christian ideal, they harmonised with — I 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 
 
IX.] HEROISM. 233 
 
 live, mytlis tliougli they be^ and fables, and fair 
 dreams ? What — though they have no body, and, 
 perhaps, never had — has given them an immortal 
 soul, which can speak to the immortal souls of all 
 generations to come ? 
 
 What but this, that in them — dim it may be and 
 undeveloped, but still there — lies the divine idea of 
 self-sacrifice as the perfection of heroism, of self-sacri- 
 fice, as the highest duty and the highest joy of him 
 who claims a kindred with the gods ? 
 
 Let us say, then, that true heroism must involve 
 self-sacrifice. 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 beauty — the highest form, and yet one 
 possible to all. 
 
 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 China- 
 man 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. 
 
231 HEROISM. [ix. 
 
 Or, to go across tlie Atlantic — for tliere are heroes in 
 the Far West— Mr. Bret Harte's " Flynn of Virginia," 
 on the Central Pacific Railway — the place is shown to 
 travellers — who sacrificed his life for his married 
 
 comrade : 
 
 There, in the drift, 
 
 Back to the wall. 
 
 He held the timbers 
 
 Eeady to fall. 
 
 Then in the darkness 
 
 I heard him call : 
 
 " Eun for your life, Jake ! 
 
 Eun for your wife's sake ! 
 
 Don't wait for me." 
 
 And that was all 
 Heard in the din- 
 Heard of Tom Flynn— 
 Flynn of Virginia. 
 
 Or the engineer_, again, on the Mississippi, who, 
 when the steamer caught fire, held, as he had sworn he 
 would, her bow against the bank, till every soul save 
 he got safe on shore : 
 
 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. 
 
IX.] HEROISM. 235 
 
 He weren't no saint — but 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 duty — a dead sure thing — 
 
 And went for it there and then; 
 And Christ is not going to be too hard 
 
 On a man that died for men. 
 
 To which gallant poem of Colonel John Hay^s — and lie 
 has written many gallant and beautiful poems — I 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 Cross — as 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 
 against duty. 
 
 Nay, on the strength of that same element of self- 
 sacrifice, 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 
 
236 HEROISM. [ix. 
 
 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, sprang in turn upon his dreaded enemy, and bit 
 and shrieked till help arrived. 
 
 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 monkey-nature in 
 man, as there is a peacock-nature, and a swine-nature, 
 and a wolf -nature — of 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 lion — and 
 not unwisely — as 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 fable — glide insensibly into speech and reason. 
 Birds — the most wonderful of all animals in the eyes of 
 a man of science or a poet — are sometimes looked on 
 as wiser, and nearer to the gods, than man. The Norse- 
 man — the noblest and ablest human being, save the 
 Greek, of whom history can tell us — was not ashamed 
 to say of the bear of his native forests that he had 
 '' ten men's strength and eleven men's wisdom." How 
 
IX.] HEROISM. rj 2; 
 
 r. / ' 
 
 could Reinecke Fuclis have gained immortality, in tHe 
 
 Middle Ages and since, save by the truth of its too 
 
 solid and humiliating theorem — that the actions of the 
 
 world of men were, on the whole, guided by passions 
 
 but too exactly like those of the lower animals t 
 
 I have said, and say again, with good old Vaughan : 
 
 Unless above himself he can 
 Exalt himself, how mean a thing is man. 
 
 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 philo- 
 sophic formulas which I read nowadays — and had 
 been thus raised for the moment above his abject 
 selfish monkey-nature, 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 wait a century or two before it 
 comes into fashion again. 
 
 And now, if self-sacrifice and heroism be, as I 
 believe, identical, I must protest against the use of 
 the word ^' sacrifice ^^ which is growing too common in 
 newspaper - columns, in which we are told of an 
 
 ^^^ 
 
238 HEROISM. [ix. 
 
 " enormous sacrifice of life ; '' an expression whicli 
 means merely tliat a great many poor wretches have 
 been killed^ quite against their own will, and for no 
 purpose whatsoever; no sacrifice at all, unless it he. 
 one to the demons of ignorance, cupidity, or mis- 
 management. 
 
 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 to be a martyr to the gout/^ 
 
 And I must protest, in like wise, against a misuse 
 of the words "hero,^' "heroism,^^ "heroic,^^ which is be- 
 coming 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 self-conceit, to frame some such 
 syllogism as this: "Courage is heroism: every French- 
 man is naturally courageous : therefore every French- 
 man 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 engine — human speech. 
 
IX.] HEEOISM, 239 
 
 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 onr 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 dis- 
 covered 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 
 
240 HEROISM. [ix, 
 
 liuman being, not mere courage, not tlie mere doing 
 of duty, but tlie 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 excep- 
 tional 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 im- 
 pertinent 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 give an instance or two of what I 
 mean : 
 
 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 Ther- 
 
IX.] HEROISM. 241 
 
 mopylse, when they sat ^^ combing their yellow hair for 
 death " on the sea- shore ? They devoted themselves 
 to hopeless destruction ; but why ? They felt — I 
 must believe that, for they behaved as if they felt — 
 that 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 tlie officers of 
 the Great King were driving with whips up to their 
 lance-points, 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 Platgea 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 
 
 s. E. R 
 
242 HEROISM. [rx. 
 
 tliey played; and to count their lives worthless, if 
 Sparta liad sent tliem 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 
 Mars -la-Tour, 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 bull- dogs to their work, and would hardly 
 leave, even at the bugle-call, 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 con- 
 strained to them by duty or pity ; have never deemed 
 
IX.] HEROISM. 243 
 
 it possible to act otlierwise ; and did not once tliink of 
 themselves in tlie matter at aW 
 
 These last true words bring us to another element 
 in heroism : its simplicity. Whatsoever is not simple ; 
 whatsoever is affected, boastful, wilful, covetous, tar- 
 nishes, 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 done — nobler 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 pro- 
 test against applying the word " heroic"' to any deeds, 
 however charitable, however toilsome, however dan- 
 gerous, 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 doubt- 
 less often are, mixed up with that selfish one : womanly 
 pity and tenderness ; love for, and desire to imitate, a 
 certain Incarnate ideal of self-sacrifice, who is at once 
 
 R 2 
 
244 HEROISM. [ix. 
 
 human and divine. But tliat 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 gain — what is 
 this but selfishness extended out of this world into 
 eternity ? " Not worldliness," indeed, as a satirist 
 once said with bitter truth, "but other-Avorldliness.^^ 
 
 Moreover — and the young and the enthusiastic 
 should also bear this in mind — though 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 first. Do your duty first ; it will be time 
 after that to talk of being heroic. 
 
 And therefore one must seriously warn the young, 
 lest they mistake for heroism and self-sacrifice what is 
 merely pride and self-will, 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 oldj " Corbau, it is a gift, by 
 
IX.] HEROISM. 245 
 
 whatsoever thou miglitest 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 house- 
 holds 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 self-conceit; 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 gaudy or as beneficent as it may. 
 
 But I cannot go so far as to say the same of the love 
 of approbation — the 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 excludes it less than that true hero, St. Paul. 
 
246 HEROISM. [ix. 
 
 If those brave Spartans, if those brave Germans, 
 of whom I spokejust now, knew that then' 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 self-devotion 
 more easy, and death more sweet ? 
 
 And yet — and yet — is not the highest heroism that 
 which is free even from the approbation of our fellow- 
 men, 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 
 fellow- creatures 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 
 the woman transcends the man, that it would hide if it 
 €Ould. 
 
sx.] HEEOISM. - , i- 24.7 ^i 
 
 And it was a pleasant tlioaglit to me, when I glanced v 
 lately at tlie golden deeds of women in Miss Yonge's '' 
 book — it was a pleasant thought to me, that I could say 
 to myself — Ah ! 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 who — But 
 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 them — why go on, I say, save to commemorate one 
 more form of great little heroism — the commonest, and 
 yet the least remembered of all — namely, 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. 
 
2-i8 HEROISM. [ix, 
 
 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 draw — would to heaven he, or rather, alas ! she 
 would find some more chivalrous employment for his 
 or her pen — for were they not, too, born of woman ? — 
 I only say to myself — having had always a secret fond- 
 ness for poor Rebecca, though I love Esau more than 
 Jacob — Let 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, com- 
 mits a few basenesses, even tells a few untruths, what 
 does all that come to, save this — that in the confused 
 intensity of her motherly self-sacrifice, she will sacrifice 
 for her daughters even her own conscience and her 
 own credit ? We may sneer, if we will, at such a poor 
 hard-driven soul when we meet her in society; our 
 duty, both as Christians and ladies and gentlemen, 
 seems to me to be — to do for her something very 
 different indeed. 
 
 But to return. Looking at the amount of great 
 
IX.] HEROISM. 24«> 
 
 little lieroisms, wliicli are being, as I assert, enacted 
 around us every day, no one lias a riglit to say, what 
 we are all tempted to say at times : " Ho¥/ can I be 
 beroic ? This is no beroic age, setting me beroic ex- 
 amples. We are growing more and more comfortable, 
 frivolous, pleasure-seeking, money-making ; more and 
 more utilitarian ; more and more mercenary in our 
 politics, in our morals, in our religion ; tbinking less 
 and less of bonour and duty, and more and more of loss 
 and ajain. I am born into an uuberoic time. You 
 must not ask me to become beroic in it.^^ 
 
 I do not deny tbat it is more difficult to be beroic, 
 wbile circumstances are unberoic round us. We are 
 all too apt to be tbe puppets of circumstances ; all too 
 apt to follow tbe fasbion ; all too apt, like so many 
 minnows, to take our colour from tbe ground on wbicb 
 we lie, in bopes, like tbem, of comfortable concealment, 
 lest tbe new tyrant deity, called Public Opinion, sbould 
 spy us out, and, like Nebucbadnezzar of old, cast us 
 into a burning fiery furnace — v/bicb public opinion can 
 make very bot — for daring to worsbip any god or man 
 save tbe will of tbe temporary majority. 
 
 Yes, it is difficult to be anything but poor, mean, 
 insufficient, imperfect people, as like eacb otber as so 
 many sbeep ; and, like so many sbeep, having no will 
 or character of our own, but rushing altogether blindly 
 over the same gap, in foolish fear of the same dog^ 
 
250 HEROISM. [ix. 
 
 who^ after all_, dare not bite us ; and so it always was 
 and always will be. 
 
 For the third time I say, 
 
 Unless above himself he can 
 Exalt himself, how poor a thing is man. 
 
 But, nevertheless, any man or woman who will, in 
 any age and under any circumstances, can live the 
 heroic life and exercise heroic influences. 
 
 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 MulocVs " John Halifax, Gentle- 
 man,^^ and Mr. Thackeray's " Esmond,'' two books 
 which no man or woman ought to read without being 
 the nobler for them. 
 
 ^' John Halifax, Gentleman," is simply the history 
 of a poor young clerk, who rises to be a wealthy mill- 
 owner 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 mill-owner; 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 
 
IX.] HEEOISM, 251 
 
 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 counting-house, the bank, or the manufactory. 
 
 The other — an even more striking instance of the 
 possibility, at least, of heroism anywhere and every- 
 wheTe — is 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 inter- 
 pretation of it was the true one ; that this was the 
 lesson which he meant men to learn therefrom. 
 
 Esmond is a man of the first half of the eighteenth 
 century; living in a coarse, drunken, ignorant, pro- 
 fligate, and altogether unheroic age. He is — and here 
 the high art and the high morality of Mr. Thackeray's 
 genius is shown — altogether a man of his own age. 
 He is not a sixteenth-century or a nineteenth-century 
 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 pre- 
 judices and faults, are those of his age. The tempta- 
 
252 HEROISM. [ix. 
 
 tions wliich lie conquers are just those under whicli 
 tlie 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 
 eighteenth-century gentleman, an eighteenth-century 
 hero. This was what Mr. Thackeray meant — for he 
 told me so himself, I say — that it was possible, even 
 in England's lowest and foulest times, to be a gentle- 
 man and a hero, if a man would but be true to the 
 light within him. 
 
 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 circum- 
 stances, at the very moment when those circumstances 
 were most against him. 
 
 How and why he did so is a question for philosophy 
 in the highest sense of that word. The fact of his 
 having done so is matter of history. Shall I solve my 
 own riddle ? 
 
 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 self-sacrifice, 
 a heroism such as the world had never seen before ; 
 did raise the ideal of human nobleness a whole stage — 
 
IX.] HEROISM. 253 
 
 ratlier say, a wliole lieaven — higlier tliau 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 deities ? 
 
 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 shame — cities, 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 ; when — to give an instance which 
 scholars, and perhaps, happily, only scholars, can 
 appreciate — I 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 con- 
 gregation, some of whom — for St. Paul makes no 
 secret of that strange fact — may have been, ere 
 their conversion, partakers in just such vulgar and 
 bestial orgies as those which were going on in the rich 
 f reedman's halls ; after that, I say, I can put no limit 
 to the possibility of man^s becoming heroic, even though 
 
254 HEEOISM. [ix. 
 
 lie 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 every-day life ; and in the 
 most commonplace circumstances, and the most menial 
 occupations, to live worthy of — as I conceive — our 
 heavenly birthright, and to imitate the heroes, who 
 were the kinsmen of the gods. 
 
THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS. 
 
THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS. 
 
 Speech in behalf of Ladies' Sanitary Association.* 
 
 Let me begin by asking tlie 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 over-peopled, 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 
 
 * Delivered at St. James's Hall, London, 1859. 
 
 S. E. 8 
 
258 THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS. [x. 
 
 yearly before they are five years old ? Have they con- 
 sidered wliat 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, and let the children die, as they 
 have been in the habit of dying. 
 
 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, maybe 
 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 Eoman, ever has had in the world; if they con- 
 
I.] DIPFICULTIBS OF SANITARY LEGISLATIOlf. 259 '^ _, 
 
 sider with me tliat it is worth the while of political 
 economists and social philosophers to look at the map, 
 and see that about four-fifths 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 Institution — small now, but I do 
 hope some day to become great and to become the 
 mother institution of many and valuable children — is 
 one of the noblest, most right-minded, straightforward, 
 and practical conceptions that I have come across for 
 some years. 
 
 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 per- 
 sons in whom the ownership of the small houses has 
 
 s 2 
 
260 THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS. [x. 
 
 become more aud more vested, and wlio are becoming 
 more and more, I liad almost said, tlie arbiters of tlie 
 popular opinion, and of every election of parliament. 
 However, that is no business of ours bere ; tliat 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 workins^ man lives. I must 
 speak, too, of the wealthy tradesman ; I must speak — 
 it is a sad thing to have to say it — of 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 
 
X.] WOMEN AND SANITARY EEFOEM. 2G1 
 
 families^ may do wliat 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 house-to-house visitation by some govern- 
 ment officer, Vv'ith 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 from this institution more and more. 
 
 I see this, that three persons out of every four are 
 utterly unaware of the general causes of their own ill- 
 health, and of the ill-health 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 
 
262 THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS. [x. 
 
 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 God — 
 
■X.'] PRICELESS BOON OF LIFE. 263 
 
 wasted. 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 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 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 
 
264 THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS. [x. 
 
 classes were not wortli saving : bear in mind that tlie 
 physical beauty, strength, intellectual power of the 
 middle classes — the shopkeeping class, the farming 
 class, down to the lowest working class — 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 labouring 
 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, dragging them down, tending to 
 give them rickets and consumption, and all the miser- 
 able 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 mor© 
 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 
 
X.] OUTKAGED NATUEE. 265 
 
 allow English people to grow up pmij, stunted^ and 
 diseased. 
 
 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 Shaftes- 
 bury told you just now that there were one hundred 
 thousand T)reventable 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, 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 fellow-men 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; 
 
266 THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS. [x. 
 
 no ! slie does not even go forth ; slie does not step out 
 of lier path ; but quietly_, by tlie very same means by 
 wliicli she makes alive^ she puts to death; and so 
 avenges herself of those who have rebelled agamst her. 
 By the very same laws by which every blade of grass 
 growSj 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 sufferings 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 
 
X.] HOW TO SAVE LIFE. 267 
 
 higher class, I will not say to stop it all — God onlj 
 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 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 whatso- 
 ever. 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 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, 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 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 
 
268 THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS. [x. 
 
 use tlie position^ and tlie station^ and tlie talent tliat 
 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 ? 
 
A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." 
 
'A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS."* 
 
 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 
 * Eraser's Magazine, No. CCOXXXYII. 1858. 
 
272 "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." [xi. 
 
 fancies, demand mercy also for the British workman, 
 and immunity for his wife and family. One is there- 
 fore 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, women, and children. 
 
 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 pecu- 
 niary interest in disturbing what they choose to term 
 the poison-manufactories 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 
 awhole generation. Public opinion has declared against 
 the necessity of sanitary reform : and is not public opi- 
 nion known to be, in these last days, the IthurieFs 
 spear which is to unmask and destroy all the follies, 
 superstitions, and cruelties of the universe? The 
 
XI.] "A MAD WOELD, MY MASTERS." I 3 21% 
 
 immense majority of tlie Britisli nation will neither 
 cleanse themselves nor let others cleanse' the^n : 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 philo- 
 sophasters? 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 com- 
 plain 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 doctrine. 
 
 For, misled by this ignorance of human nature, they 
 
 S. E. T 
 
274 "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." [xi. 
 
 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 inex- 
 pressibly 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 body. 
 
 A little more reflection would have quashed their 
 vain hope. They would have recollected that each of 
 these preachers was already connected with a congre- 
 gation ; 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 in- 
 terest, not to defraud his flock of his labours by spend- 
 
XI.] "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." 275 
 
 ing valuable time on a secular subject like sanitary 
 reform, in tlie hope of possibly preserving a few buman 
 beings, whose souls be might hereafter (and that again 
 would be merely a possibility) benefit. 
 
 They would have recollected, again, that these con- 
 gregations 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 over-work and 
 vestry quarrels — nay, even that preachers who got 
 their bread by pew-rents, and whose life-long struggle 
 was, therefore, to keep those pews filled, and those 
 renters in good humour — should 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 might — many of the poor men, 
 too, with a wife and seven children ! Truly has it been 
 said^ that nothing is so cruel as the unreasonableness of 
 ^ fanatic. 
 
 They forgot, too, that sanitary science, like geology, 
 
 T 2 
 
276 "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." [xi. 
 
 must be at first siglit " suspect '^ in the eyes of the 
 priests of all denominations, at least till tliey shall have 
 arrived at a much higher degree of culture than they 
 now possess. 
 
 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 them — this, in 
 every age, has seemed to the majority of jDriests a 
 doctrine to be defended at all hazards ; for without it, 
 so they hold, their occupation were gone at once.* 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 
 
 * We find a most honourable exception to this rule in a sermon by 
 the Rev. C. Richson, of Manchester, on the Sanitary Laws of the 
 Old Testament, with notes by Dr. Sutherland. 
 
XI.] "A MAD WOELD, MY MASTERS." 277 
 
 with facts whicli do not come under that canon thej 
 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 not for 
 those whose kingdom is '^ not of this world. ^' 
 
 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 euphuistic version of 
 
 The more the merrier ; but the fewer the better fare — 
 
 cannot be expected to lend their aid in increasing the 
 population by saving the lives of two-thirds of the 
 children who now die prematurely in our great cities ; 
 
278 "A MAD WOELD, MY MASTEES." [xu 
 
 and so still further overcrowding this unhappy land 
 with those helpless and expensive sources of national 
 poverty — rational human beings^, in strength and 
 health. 
 
 Moreover — and this point is worthy of serious 
 attention — that 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 forefathers built five 
 thousand years ago. 
 
 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. " Laissez- 
 
XI.] *'A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." 279 
 
 faire," says tlie " 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 
 facts — as 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 speciis" which ever entered the head of a dehu- 
 manised pedant — namely, that once famous '^Preven- 
 tive Check,^' which, if a nation did ever apply it — as 
 it never will — could issue, as every doctor knows, in 
 nothing less than the questionable habits of abortion, 
 child-murder, and unnatural crime. 
 
 The only explanation of such conduct (though one 
 which the men themselves will hardly accept) is this — 
 that they secretly share somewhat in the doubt which 
 many educated men have of the correctness of their 
 
280 "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." [xi. 
 
 inductions ; that these same laws of political economy 
 (where they leave the plain and safe subject-matter 
 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 leastj 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 (what- 
 ever the stump-orators 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 inertige 
 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 Poor-law was greeted with 
 

 XI.] "A MAD WOELD, MY MASTERS."^/- 2^1^ 
 
 tlie curses of those very farmers and sqnii^esr wlio ip^, 
 not only carry it out lovingly and willingly to' tte very 
 letter, but are often too ready to resist any improveme»t, 
 or relaxation in it which may be proposed by that very *. 
 Poor-law 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 neigh- 
 bour's field they might double their produce and 
 their profits ? Did they not know that the adaptation 
 of sfceam 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 manu- 
 facture, 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 
 
282 "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." [xi. 
 
 Bull ! To expect tliat you would accept sucli 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, dis- 
 tinct from the mass, and priding itself so much on 
 that distinctness that it was ready to say at times — of 
 course in more courteous — at least in what it considered 
 more Scriptural language : ''^This people which knoweth 
 not the law is accursed." To it therefore — to the 
 religious world — some over-sanguine Sanitary Eef or mors 
 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 religious 
 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 shalt 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 clergy- 
 men by fair hopes of deaneries and bishoprics. Its 
 members were no clique of unpractical fanatics — no men 
 
XI.] «A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." 28* 
 
 less. Thougli it miglit number among them a few 
 martmet ex-post- captains,, and noblemen of question- 
 able sanity, capable of no more practical study tlian 
 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 w^hole 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 charities — what 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 ex- 
 pected from the money-holding classes of this great 
 commercial nation. 
 
 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. 
 
^84 "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." [xi. 
 
 What if the religious world should take up the cause of 
 Sanitary Eeform ? What if they should hail with joy 
 a cause in which all^ whatever their theological differ- 
 ences, 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 Hocal 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 
 twenty — ay, in the last three years ? 
 
 What it has done, is too patent to need comment 
 here. 
 
 The reasons of so strange an anomaly are to be ap- 
 proached with caution. It is a serious thing to impute 
 motives to a vast body of men, of whom the majority 
 
XL] "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." 2&& 
 
 are really respectable, kind-hearted, 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 self-satisfied 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 por- 
 tion 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 
 
286 "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." [xi. 
 
 religion is too often one of " Loss and G-ain/^ as mncli 
 as Father Newman^s own ; and their actions, whether 
 they shall call them '^ good works '^ or " f rnits of faith/' 
 are so mnch spiritual capital,, to be repaid with interest 
 at the last day. 
 
 Theref ore^ 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 assist — and 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 obliga- 
 tions as to give you spiritual power over him. There- 
 fore 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 pro- 
 selytism; 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. 
 
XI.] "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." 287 
 
 and of baiting for the body in order to catcli tlie soul. 
 A fair sample of too mucli 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, scientific — of subjects, end 
 by a few words of pious exhortation, inserted by a dif- 
 ferent hand from that which indites the " carnal '^ mass 
 of the book. They did not invent the science, or the 
 art of story-telling, or the woodcutting, or the plan of 
 getting books up prettily — or, indeed, the notion of 
 instructing the masses at all ; but finding these things 
 in the hands of ^' the world,^^ they have " spoiled the 
 Egyptians,^^ and fancy themselves beating Satan with 
 his own weapons. 
 
 If, indeed, these men claimed boldly all printing, 
 all woodcutting, all story-telling', 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 
 
288 "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." [xi. 
 
 you cannot put your finger on one of tliem : and tliey 
 know you not ; know not even their own danger, mucli 
 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 proselyte. 
 
 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 snarl — that man has no Father in 
 heaven : but that if he becomes a member of the 
 religious world, by processes varying with each 
 denomination, he may — strange paradox — create a 
 Father for himself ? 
 
XI.] "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTESS." 289 
 
 But SO it is. The religious world lias lost the 
 belief which even the elder Greeks and Romans had^ 
 of a " Zeas, 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 lake-side in Galilee, and told men that 
 not a sparrow fell to the ground without their Father's 
 knowledge — and that they were of more value than 
 many sparrows. Do those words now seem to some so 
 self-evident 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 so-called ^^age of unbelief,^' or 
 fill a sad, but an instructive chapter in some future 
 enlarged edition of Adelung's ^^ History of Human 
 Folly.'' 
 
 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. 
 
 s. E. u 
 
290 "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." [xi. 
 
 It will create a new department. It will give tliem 
 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 self-preservation 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 whicli 
 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 
 
XI.] "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." 291 
 
 majority of those constituents are small houseowners 
 — tlie poorer portion of tlie middle class. Were lie 
 to support Government in any tiling 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 too much, and that it shall 
 not compel his constituents to do anything at all. 
 
 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, and should sigh for a strong despotism. 
 
 There is an answer, nevertheless, to such senti- 
 mentalists, and one hopes that people will see the 
 answer for themselves, and that the infection of Im- 
 perialism, which seems spreading somewhat rapidly, will 
 be stopped by common sense and honest observation 
 of facts. 
 
 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, there- 
 fore, 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 
 
292' "A MAD WOELD, MY MASTEES." [xi; 
 
 will be certain not to be sucli as will embroil bim witb 
 tlie middle classes,, while tliey will win bim no additional 
 favour witb tbe masses^ utterly unaware of their 
 necessity. Would tbe masses of Paris bave thanked 
 Louis Napoleon tbe more if, instead of completing the 
 Tuileries, he had sewered the St. Antoine? All argu- 
 ments to tbe 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 class — that 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 to-morrow, 
 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 ill-will 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 '' 
 
XI.] "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTEES." 293 
 
 wlio talk of Eepresentative institutions being on tlieir 
 trial, and let it be made boldly just now. 
 
 It will be time to talk of Representative institutions 
 being good or bad_, when the people of England are 
 properly represented. 
 
 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 
 fvoletaires. 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 feel- 
 ings of ^^ ten-pound Jack,^' or of the local attorney 
 who looks after JacVs vote. And therefore the House 
 of Commons does not represent public opinion. 
 
 For, to enounce with fitting clearness a great but 
 much-forgotten truth, To have an opinion, you must 
 have an opinion. 
 
294 "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." [xi. 
 
 Strange : but true, and pregnant too. For, from 
 it may be deduced tbis corollary, tbat nine-tentbs of 
 wliat is called Public Opinion is no opinion at all ; for 
 on tlie matters wbicli come under tbe cognizance of 
 the House of Commons (save where superstition, as in 
 tbe case of tbe Sabbatb, or tbe Jew Bill, sets folks 
 tbinking — generally on tbe wrong side), nine people 
 out of ten bave no opinion at all ; know notbing about 
 tbe matter, and care less ; wberefore, baying no 
 opinions to be represented, it is not important wbetber 
 tbat notbing be represented or not. 
 
 Tbe true public opinion of England is composed of 
 tbe opinions of tbe sbrewd, bonest, practical men in 
 ber, wbetber educated or not ; and of sucb, tbank God, 
 tbere are millions : but it consists also of tbe opinions 
 of tbe educated men in ber ; men wbo bave bad leisure 
 and opportunity for study ; wbo bave some cbance of 
 knowing tbe future, because tliey bave examined tbe 
 past ; wbo can compare England witb otber nations ; 
 Englisb creeds, laws, customs, witb tbose of tbe rest of 
 mankind; wbo know somewbat of bumanity, buman 
 progress, buman existence ; wbo bave been practised 
 in tbe processes of tbougbt ; and wbo, from study, bave 
 formed definite opinions, differing doubtless in infinite 
 variety, but still all founded upon facts, by sometbing 
 like fair and scientific induction. 
 
 Till we bave tbis class of men fairly represented in 
 tbe House of Commons, tbere is little bope for Sanitary 
 
XI.] «A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." 205 
 
 Reform : when, it is so represented, we sliall liave no 
 reason to talk of Representative institutions being on 
 their trial. 
 
 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 
 Grovernment 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 
 professions — legal, 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 pro- 
 gressive 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 plan — 
 
296 "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." [xi. 
 
 the 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 self-restraint; 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 
 
XI.] "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." 297 
 
 of all men wliom lie meets^ those wlio least command 
 his respect are those among his constituents to secure 
 whom he takes most trouble ; unless, indeed, it be the 
 pettifoggers who manage his election for him ? 
 
 Whether this is the class to whose public opinion 
 the health and lives of the masses are to be entrusted, 
 is a question which should be settled as soon as 
 possible. 
 
 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 Eeforms, 
 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 
 
 S. E. X 
 
298 ''A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." [xt. 
 
 removes tliat dull fear and suspicion with wliicli 
 Englislimen 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 
 subjects — Law Reform, for instance — which are neces- 
 sary 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 up — Heaven 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. 
 
XI.] "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS." 299 
 
 to give the working man liis riglits. Water, air, light. 
 A riglit 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 destruction by unnecessary poison. 
 
 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 
 
500: "A MAD WORLD, MY MASTEES." [xr. 
 
 whicli it miglit have liad tlie 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 
 f aithj as St. Paul says all true men die, " not having 
 received the promises ;" worn out, perhaps, by ill-paid 
 and unappreciated labour, as that truest-hearted and 
 most unselfish of men, Charles Eobert Walsh, died but 
 two years ago. But his works will follow him — not, 
 as the preachers tell us, to heaven — for 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, life — laws 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 as yet teach 
 to a selfish, perverse, and hypocritical generation. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 CHABLES DICKERS Alffl EVANS, CEXSTAL I'ALACE TRESS. 
 
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