patience waiting until the "supreme moment" of which our author speaks, but which is to them not an escape from the miseries of this world, but a joyful entrance into the world everlasting.

Ay, thank heaven, though the highest human intellect may fail to hear it, there are millions of human hearts yet living and throbbing, or mouldering

quietly into dust, who have felt, all through the turmoil or silence of existence, though lasting for threescore years and ten, a continual still small voice, following them to the end: "Fear not: for I am thy GOD."

Would that in some future book, as powerful as "The Mill on the Floss," the author might become a true "Ayyeλos,” and teach us this!

It is not as to a scene of touching pathos or tragic interest that we invite our readers, in asking them to examine the condition of our Workhouses. There is pathos there, and many an unwritten tragedy. Often have we thought, in hearing the tales so simply told from many a bed of suffering, "Talk of 'The Romance of the Peerage!'; 'The Romance of the Workhouse' would offer many a stranger and more harrowing incident." But these interests come later. We crave the reader's attention on this plea only: It is a DUTY laid on us all. In other countries the condition of the destitute poor is mostly determined by government. Here the whole community is answerable for their treatment. No system of democratic rule has ever been devised which, so effectually as the New Poor Law, casts the responsibility of action on the whole population, male and even female. What if it should some day be proved that under few despotisms have worse evils flourished?

In the present paper we cannot pretend to make anything like an exhaustive survey of the subject of the Poor Laws generally. We shall merely attempt a brief inquiry into three of the leading branches of workhouse arrangement, and state in conclusion the plans suggested, or in operation, for the removal of the more important evils in these.

We assume that the Poor Laws have

a treble aim. 1st. They should repress pauperism, by making the lives of the vicious and idle disgraceful and wearisome. Thus he who is yet outside the workhouse may be spurred to industry and frugality, by knowing that it is no Castle of Indolence, but a stern millround of labour, which awaits him if he enter there, and the pauper himself, if redeemable, may be goaded to better habits. 2dly. The Poor Laws should provide for the education of orphan and friendless children in such a manner as should secure them against becoming either criminals or paupers (as their parents commonly have been), and should fit them to earn their bread honestly. 3dly. The Poor Laws should extend to the sick, the aged, the disabled, to all who have no other asylum, and whose present case is helpless and suffering, a shelter which should partake of none of the penal elements which belong to the treatment of the idle and vicious pauper.

Such being, it is assumed, the legitimate ends of a Poor Law, it remains to be considered whether on the whole the system commonly adopted effects any of these objects in a reasonably satisfactory degree.

First, then-Is pauperism repressed by our treatment of adult able-bodied paupers, male and female?

"a

A pauper we may define to be "

person who can work, but will not work without coercion :" one who might have supported himself independently by his labour, but has been degraded by idleness or vice to fling himself on the community for maintenance. To those who properly belong to this class it is obvious that indulgent treatment is no real charity in the highest sense of the word. A workhouse, where they may gossip and idle, and drone and grumble, is neither a threat nor a correction. the other hand, the difficulty which already harasses us in our jails-to make confinement therein really penal, while forbearing all cruelty and affording all the means of health-is still more serious in the case of workhouses, where there is no crime to be punished, only the negative fault of idleness to be repressed.

On

On the whole, perhaps, as regards the male able-bodied paupers, the treatment pursued is less injudicious, and its results less unsatisfactory than in any other branch of workhouse discipline. Even here, however, the state of stagnation and hopelessness in which life is passed ought surely to be combated by the introduction of some system of rewards which should afford hope to the meritorious, and some penalties of a negative kind which should make the indolent feel that their position here was worse than that of the industrious. Captain Crofton has suggested that his system of marks, which has been found to work so wonderfully well among the convicts of Ireland, should be tried with some modifications in the workhouses. We should wish to see this subject properly considered.

But, whatever may be our judgment of the treatment of the male able-bodied paupers, very different must be our conclusions as regards the management of female adults, for whom it may be truly said that a residence in the workhouse is

commonly moral ruin. The last rags and shreds of modesty which the poor creature may have brought in from the outer world are ruthlessly torn away, ere many weeks are past, by the hideous gossip over the degrading labour of No. 18.-VOL. III.

oakum-picking, or in the idle lounging about the "women's yard." It is a common assertion that proper separations are made among the women, and the well-conducted freed from the contamination of the degraded. But, except in a few country unions, this rarely holds good, and perhaps could hardly be expected to do so. The case of one girl at this moment in a London workhouse (a case which we are sure might be paralleled in half the unions in England) offers to us a contemplation quite as horrible as if we were accustomed to shut up our destitute children in a fever hospital or a lazar-house. The girl of whom I speak had been decently educated in a district school. Forced to go into the workhouse, and there conducting herself irregularly, she was threatened with some usual penalty. "I shall take my discharge," she answered, "and go out of the house." "But how will you support yourself, my poor girl?" inquired the kindly-disposed master. The answer was horrible enough-she indicated bluntly the sinful "livelihood," whose secret she said she had learned since she came to the workhouse.1

Every master and matron could multiply cases like this, and corroborate the assertion that a "girl is ruined if once she passes into the adult ward." In well-ordered houses efforts are always made to save the children by passing them directly from school to service. But what then are the places which we support at public cost, and wherein it is contamination for a girl once to set her foot?

Again, for these miserable fallen women themselves. What are we doing to save them, now they have been cast up by the Dead Sea of vice, and left stranded for a time within our reach upon the shore? Here and there a few efforts are made, and warm, kind hands stretched out to draw them up. But usually we leave these most miserable beings unaided in their sin and shame -sin felt now, perhaps for the first time, in all its horror, under that iron monotony of life, and bound to the com1 Workhouse Visiting Journal. No. 11, p. 532. G G

though the room was large and airy, and clean as whitewash could make it, and the babiesthere were about twenty altogether-showed no sign of ill-usage or neglect. Most of them looked healthy and well fed, and all scrupulously neat and tidy.

"But it was the unnatural stillness of the little things that affected me painfully. They sat on benches hardly raised from the floor, except a few who were lying on a bed in a corner of the room. All remained perfectly grave and noiseless, even when the basket of toys was brought in and placed in the midst of the circle. There was no jumping up, no shouting, no eager demand for some particularly noisy or gaudy plaything. They held out

their tiny hands, and took them when they were bid, just looked at them listlessly for a minute, and then relapsed into quiet dulness again, equally regardless of the ladies' simulated expressions of delight and surprise made for their imitation, or the good clergyman's exhortation to them 'to be good children, and deserve all the pretty things the kind ladies gave them.' I saw only two children who looked really pleased, and understood how to play with the toys given them; and they, I was told, had only been in the house a few days.

"I went to the bed, where three tiny little things were lying fast asleep; a fourth was sitting up wide awake, looking demurely at the strangers and unwonted display of toys, but not asking for anything. She was a pretty little girl of some two years old, with curly flaxen hair, and soft blue eyes,-a fair delicate little creature, who seemed made to be some fond mother's pet, but with the same languid spiritless look all the other children wore. I lifted her from the bed, and tried hard to bring a brighter expression to the childish face. I gave her one of the gayest toys, but it soon dropped from her passive hand. I showed her my watch; she looked and listened as I bade her, but gave no sign of pleasure. 'Ah,' said the nurse, that one's an orphan, and never knowed father or mother. She don't understand being made of or petted.' Poor little friendless one, and must she pass through all her desolate childhood, ignorant of what love or petting means? God help her! It was very pitiful to look at that innocent's face, and to think that it might be no look of love would ever rest on it! As I put her down again on the bed, I kissed her, whispering at the same time some words of baby endearment, and then she nestled a little closer to me, and looked up into my eyes with the first faint glimmer of a smile on her lips, as if my words and looks had roused some answering feeling in her baby heart. I do not think any one could have borne that appealing wistful gaze unmoved. I confess my heart felt very heavy, as I left her to relapse again into that mournful gravity, more touching to see in such young creatures than tears or noisy complaints. I must repeat again that I saw

no signs of harshness or unkindness on the part of the two nurses; but they were both old women, one paralytic; and it is naturally their first object to hush their charges into the state of stupid joyless inactivity, which gives them the least fatigue and trouble. 'Goodness' and dull quiet are with them synonymous terms. I remembered the many complaints made to us by mistresses of workhouse girls, 'that those girls never so much as knew how to handle an infant, and could not be trusted for a minute alone with the children;' and I longed to turn some of the elder girls from the school into the nursery, for at least some hours every week, under the charge of some good motherly woman, who would teach them both by precept and example how to manage young children. I am told this plan has been tried in some workhouses and found to succeed. Surely, it would be well to adopt it in all.

"Leaving the nursery, strewed with neglected rattles, rag-dolls, &c., we passed on to the large school-room, where all the children, girls, boys, and infants, were to be regaled with tea and plum-cake. The room was, like the other, spotlessly clean and tidy, as were also the children, who stood in long hushed rows before the tables, waiting to sing their grace before they began. The children of the infant school were as still and solemn as the babies; not a smile among them. A little fellow, half hidden by a huge round plumcake, which stood on the table before him, attracted my attention by his woe-begone face, and piteous efforts to repress an occasional sob. He was one of the healthiest-looking of all the children there, with a brown rosy face, sturdy brown legs, and fat, dimpled arms-a great contrast to some of his poor, pallid, stunted companions. I lingered behind the rest of the party to ask what ailed him. The sobs came louder as he faltered out 'Mammy!' I enlarged on the glories of the coming Christmas tree, hoping to direct his mind from his grief for a little; but my eloquence was quite wasted; he only looked up and wailed out, 'Mammy! mammy!' The sugar-plum I gave him was disdainfully thrown on the floor, as he begged, in passionate, broken accents, to be taken to 'mammy.' I was quite at a loss; but the mistress came up to us, and quieted him with the often repeated and often broken promise that, if Jemmy would be a good boy and leave off crying, she would take him very soon to see his mammy. The poor little fellow manfully choked down his sobs, and sat with eager black eyes fixed on the mistress, evidently trying hard to show her how good he was, in hopes of earning the promised reward.

"In answer to my questions, the mistress told me that Jemmy had only been in the house two days. He was brought in with his mother, a respectable woman from the country, who had been forced by adverse circumstances to seek shelter in the workhouse. She further said it was hard work getting mother and