and without doing so he will not learn the little particulars which will probably have great effect in rendering her an efficient working member of the community, or an unhappy item in the pauper or criminal classes.

In some unions it is the practice of the matron or schoolmistress to visit the girls occasionally, but the pressing nature of their other duties makes this very uncertain, and it has also a further disadvantage, which will be mentioned shortly. Formerly, I learn, it was the practice in one district to employ several well-conducted pauper women to visit the girls in service. This was, in one respect, a step in the right direction, by affording a motherly influence to them, but, in all other respects, it was undesirable, because it is most important that the child should be led to cast away all ties which bind her to pauperism and to create in her a feeling of repugnance to that state. Now, to her unreasoning faculties all paupers are alike, whether they have become so by misfortune or by fault; and also as long as the visitation is kept up, either by workhouse matrons or by paupers, the girl's origin and connection with pauperism are very apparent, tending to foster the strong prejudice held by many mistresses against workhouse girls as servants.

Friendly supervision and assistance by Sunday or voluntary day school teachers, or by the managers of Preventive Missions, Free Registries, and institutions whose purpose it is to help young girls in service, is now so common that no singularity attaches to a girl from the circumstance of some female agent applying to the employer for permission to visit her, and thus the supervision can be easily maintained after the girl passes into her second place, usually when she is fourteen or fifteen, without necessarily proclaiming the fact that she has been a pauper, the visitor having no apparent connection with the workhouse. In this there is no injustice to the mistress, for she has had an opportunity of obtaining the girl's character from her first employer,

and must judge from that whether the girl be suitable for her. The large majority of mistresses prefer the visitation, recognizing the benefit it is to the child in her struggle upwards, and the assistance it is to themselves in the difficult task of training such an one into a good servant, and also that it is a guarantee they are performing their duty to their little charges. This fact is often disputed by persons who have either no knowledge or only that of official visitation, which is disliked because it is official; but we are now speaking from actual experience.

In a few places societies or individual ladies have kindly undertaken to exercise this influence upon those whom we have shown to be so much in need of it. Sometimes, when the number of girls coming out of the workhouse is small, the lady accomplishes the whole of the visiting herself. In other places, where the girls are numerous and discharged into large communities, it is desirable to place the chief visiting in the hands of a suitable paid female agent, leaving the superintendence and power to act upon emergencies with the lady, who also takes upon herself the entire responsibility with the Board of Guardians.

It is advisable that a personal acquaintance should be made with the girls on leaving the school, so that if they run away from their places before they can be visited for the first time there should be a possibility of recognizing them in the streets, of following them up, and trying to reclaim them back to respectable life.

The children principally of the feeble, the vicious, the drunken, and the insane, we cannot expect them to possess a healthy nervous temperament, especially when they have not experienced the wholesome detrition of home life. This probably in part accounts for the universal complaint that workhouse children are little-enduring and badtempered. Just a short explanation to a well-disposed mistress will often gain her over to the side of forbearance with her servant's temper until the latter has

become somewhat accustomed to her duties and their irritating properties.

Hot temper is often an indication that there is energy in the character, and also affection. One small woman who was known to err in that way sometimes, writes, after she had removed with her employer's family to another town, "I wished to stay with Mrs. R. to see her settled," probably considering her services to be of great value. In acknowledging the gift of a little sum of money as a reward, she says she has bought an umbrella with it; and, with a hopeful disposition not shared, I am afraid, by her elders, she adds, "because it won't wear out like other things!" Falsehood and equivocation are also common faults, and arise, perhaps, from the bullying of the strong over the weaker girls, and the many times in which an untruth is spoken and not found out, simply from the numbers with which the teachers have to deal. So again with the petty thefts of food, or the appropriation of some small article of finery, probably common to all children, but more particularly common to workhouse

ones. The first possibly arises from the unchanging diet upon which they have fed, while the other children have had the chance of obtaining the "sweeties" so delectable to the infant mind. The second propensity, though not created, is doubtless fostered by the practice of providing a uniform outfit for the girls, which makes them -or they think it does so-as they go along the streets to be the object of the boys' opprobrious epithets. "Workus gal, workus gal, when did you pick oakum last?" does not seem very formidable in itself, but such a cry has been a source of misery to many a girl who has been doing her best to throw off her involuntary degradation. Now, as we can never reasonably hope that even compulsory education will be competent to restrain street boys from the dear delights of teasing, the safer plan would be not to give them the chance of recognizing as their victims girls who might otherwise pass scot-free among them. One girl was, we believe, pre

vented from running away by her mistress kindly providing some new ribbon and re-trimming her bonnet, so that its origin became unnoticeable.

Dress takes up so large a place in the thoughts of these girls that many indications of character may be learnt from it. A girl having been sent to a lady visitor for "a good talking-to" was seen to be wearing on her head the workhouse bonnet, it is true, but disguised as much as possible by the piece of gingham, with which it is trimmed, being disposed in a fashionable frill, and the crown cut out to admit of the protrusion of a chignon, which, however, was not there, as it was not possible to fasten it to her closely-cut crop of hair. This showed that the girl was determined to cast off all workhouse appearance, and that she was not going back if she could help it (which supposition her subsequent history has borne out), and the "talking" was adapted accordingly.

What is desired is, that there should be an absence of peculiarity; and though we may laugh, we cannot help half sympathising with the little boardedout child, who had been exceedingly proud of her first new frock not in workhouse uniform, until one day she came back from school with her hitherto unclouded face bathed in tears. "What is the matter, Sally?" said her fostermother. "Polly Smith's new frock has got an Alexandra bend, and mine hasn't!"-some mysterious flounce or other being known under that appellation, and fashionable for the moment at the school.

Another and a terrible danger occasionally assails them. It is well known that there are bad women on the lookout for friendless children for their Own purposes. They (owing probably to the utter impossibility of keeping the adults and the children entirely apart when they are under one roof) become acquainted with the faces of the girls, and know when they meet them in the streets that these children in all probability will not be eagerly sought for and rescued out of their vile

clutches. These persons accost the child when out on an errand for her mistress, take her to the nearest public-house or sweetmeat shop, and, treating her, induce her to commit some petty theft which will ruin her character and force

her to run away. Then she is at once in the miscreant's power, who will bring her sooner or later to the life which may be outwardly attractive, but subjects its followers to the reckless tyranny of most unscrupulous persons. It is a fact, that a few years ago persons putting on a show of respectability actually repaired to the work house of one of our large towns, ostensibly to engage girls for service, but really to make use of them for a life of shame. Effectual measures against this atrocity were immediately taken on its discovery.

It is often believed that the workhouse officials are legally compelled to afford a knowledge of the whereabouts of these children to their near relatives on their applying for it. But this is not the case; and Boards of Guardians would do well to follow the example of the Birmingham Board, which declines to allow relatives to know where their children are placed at service unless after investigation they are found to be respectable people.

Most of these children behave well for the first month or so, and then pass through a period when they give trouble and anxiety in every possible way. It therefore cheers and encourages a mistress to learn that this is what has been observed in many households, and by no means proves that the girl will ultimately fail, especially if she be gently and firmly dealt with.

The kindly help of the matron can also be employed to find a new place for the girl when she is leaving, and thus prevent her return to the workhouse as the only home she knows.

Those who undertake this visitation must not shrink from following their protégées into penitentiaries or prisons, should their bad conduct have placed them there; for the chance, though lessened, is not yet destroyed of saving them from utter ruin.

The motive for this superintendence should rest on other grounds than the object of obtaining the gratitude of the visited; although it is pleasant to find that it is evinced by many of these poor girls in various ways. One lassie brought a book which her master, a bookseller, had given her to present to her friend, and another, with a mysterious countenance, drew forth from sundry wrappings a mince-pie that had been the joint production of maid and mistress, for which the latter was famous. Sometimes the feeling is shown in a still more gratifying manner, by taking their friends at their word. One came to a lady, about seventeen months ago, with a sorrowful tale. She had been imprisoned twice, as the lady well knew; had, on her second enlargement, rejected the lady's offer of assistance; but she found that without character she was without honest means of existence, and there was only before her a life of shame, which she owned, though not yet quite sixteen, she had followed for some months, and had probably found out the misery of it. Then, remembering the lady's proffers, she sought her out and found her with some difficulty, and asked for what the lady had promised, i.e. help her to earn a character. She asked for nothing else, not even food, though she was almost starving, and the help was to be given in this way that the lady was to write a note, which the girl was to take to the Refuge, saying, in her own words, "that she was to be kept against her will if she tried to run away." request was complied with, and the girl is still in the institution doing well.

The

Honourable feeling is not always wanting in these girls. One who had a passionate temper had, when the lady visitor's name had probably been used as a bugbear by an equally passionate and very harsh mistress, declared, "She did not want to see Miss ; what did she care about her?" This was triumphantly told in the girl's presence to Miss when she visited at the end of the year for the purpose of extracting, if possible, the permission

to present the reward from this most unpleasant mistress. But the request was refused, and, what was even worse, the child's belief that Miss would continue her friendly disposition towards her almost destroyed. The girl left the place before the guardians, on becoming acquainted with the facts, could remove her, and after some trouble was again found, with a poor but kindly mistress. Miss put the reward, a work-box, into the girl's hands. She hesitated to take it, and, looking up into her friend's face, said, "But I did say I did not care for you." "And you said it when you were angry, and did not mean it?" "Yes, but I said it" -a confession which endeared her to her friend. Poor girl! she sent for a few months afterwards on

Miss

her deathbed!

It is found very advisable to offer some reward for good conduct, and that this reward should be given for attainment to a certain standard, so that the girl be not put in competition for moral excellencies with her fellows. A reward for twelve months' service with good conduct has now been given to the girls sent out from a large workhouse for six years, and is producing the gratifying result of slowly increasing the percentage of those who entitle themselves to it. The first year the number of girls who came out of the workhouse was fifty, the number rewarded thirteen. Last year the number rewarded was seventeen out of thirty. This has its encouraging aspect; but, on the other hand, it is sad enough to think that out of every hundred girls leaving a workhouse possessing an undoubtedly good school, forty in the next twelve months should have either

run away from their places, returned to the workhouse, have been lost sight of, or have even made their appearance in the police court, and that not more than sixty should have remained steadily at work! Subsequent years, too, will show that while some of those who failed at first will succeed at last, others of the sixty will have fallen away and made utter shipwreck of themselves.

When the proper care and training of these children was first under consideration, the argument was often used that it was enough to separate them from adult pauperism, to secure their immunity from evil association. But I have shown that it is by no means enough-the evil associates are in the schools themselves-and that these children, infected with hereditary disease and proclivity to vice, labouring under the disadvantage of what is so truly called the pauper taint, and whose rela tives are oftener a curse than a blessing to them, require more care than the children of the steady labouring man to render them working members of the community. Instead of more care, however, the State can perforce afford only less, and throws them as mere children upon their own resources, to struggle as they best may out of their difficulties, or fall under the weight of them.

Although the State can do little, voluntary workers can do much towards lightening the load upon these little backs; assisting them in trouble, protecting them from wrong, and encouraging them in well-doing. This is a labour which will be found to bring fully its own reward.

JOANNA M. HILL.

HERMES, the "editor" of the remarkable book which bears the above title, is certainly an extraordinary personso extraordinary, indeed, that those who agree to believe that he has actual knowledge of the goings-on in a planet which is not ours, and which appears to be Mars, may consistently carry their faith a degree further, and believe likewise that he calls himself by his real name, and is in some way an Avatar of Hermes Trismegistus.

Varying opinions have been expressed as to the purpose of the book, though there is no disagreement as to the fact that from beginning to end it is amusing and suggestive. Some look upon this "Other World" as one of the numerous Utopias which imaginative philanthropists have devised as models to which less perfect communities should at least endeavour to approximate; others have arrived at the conclusion that a satire on the defects of our present civilization is intended, and that the "editor" is less an aspiring Plato than a polite Swift. If, as Voltaire said, Swift was Rabelais in his senses, assuredly Hermes is Swift in his most mannerly condition.

To neither of these opinions do we give assent. If it had been the design of Hermes to embody his ideal of a perfect commonwealth, he would naturally have given us a more distinct account of the political institutions of Montalluyah, the city to which his fragmentary communications refer, and which comprises the most habitable portion of the planet. But with such institutions we are made less acquainted than with any other particular connected with this veritable New-foundland. We learn, indeed, that Montalluyah is governed by one Supreme

1 Another World; or, Fragments from the Star-city Montalluyah. By Hermes. Third edition. London: Samuel Tinsley.

Ruler, who bears the singular title "Tootmanyoso," and is assisted by twelve inferior kings; but with respect to the functions of these inferior potentates-whether they are executive, legislative, or administrative, or are mere privy-councillors with a royal handle to their names-we are left in utter ignorance. Neither do we find the slightest hints of any representative institution, oligarchic or democratic, that in the least resembles our notions of a senate or parliament. We are taught that a great and beneficent revolution was effected by what is commonly called a "virtuous despot ;" but we are wholly in the dark as to the character of the political superstructure which he raised on the site left open by the extirpation of old abuses.

On the other hand, the opinion that a fanciful satire is intended, rather than the presentation of an Utopia, is more plausible; for if Hermes scarcely grazes upon politics, he is profuse in his description of those details of manners and customs which are ordinarily the mark of the social satirist. If we have not heard how the favoured race are governed, we at any rate know to a nicety how they are brought up, how they are physicked, how they go courting, how they are married, how they are treated when they come into the world, how pleasantly they slide out of it, how they play music, how they pay compliments, and how they cook. Few Cockneys are more familiar with life in London than anyone who has mastered the communications of Hermes is familiar with life in Montalluyah.

Now the general impression made by the minute description of the state of society in the star-city is, that it is far better, and indicates a far higher civilization than any to be found on the surface of our own globe. Vice has