AMELIA WILHELMINA SIEVEIMTG.* AMID the endless and sometimes very foolish

talk about woman's "rights," "mission," and " capabilities," it is quite re- freshing to meet with a book so healthy in its prevailing tone, so fruitful in practical suggestion, and so illustrative of the good which can really be (lone by an earnest, clearsighted woman, as that which now lies before us—the Lffe of Amelia Wilhelmina Sieveking.

Miss Sieveking—the daughter of an intelligent and cultivated merchant—was born at Hamburgh in 1794. Before she had completed her fifth year her mother was carried off by con- sumption—a calamity which, of course, the child was too young to realize, but which told with such crushing power on the husband that he never seems to have rallied from the

* Lifeof Amelia Wilhtlin■na &gutting. From the German. Edited, with the Author's sanetmn, by Catherine Winkworth. London: Longman. lEIGS.

* The Principles of Charitable Work, Lose, Truth, and Order, as set forth in The Writ- ings of Amelia Wilhelmina Sieceking. London: Longman. 1869.

blow. He died in 1809, leaving Miss Sieveking, in her fifteenth, year, a penniless orphan, for in the political tur- moils of the period his fortunes appear to have been wholly wrecked.

Miss Sieveking tells us that she could not look back on the days of her childhood as on those of a vanished golden time.

"Nobody called her dear Milly ;" and there rises before us, in the sad motherless home, the image of a fretful, nervous, suffer- ing, bashful, but withal strong-willed child. The care, however, of the good cousin who superintended the household after Madame Sieveking's death, and the companionship of her three brothers, served to develop more genial qualities. And, indeed, we believe, like the light imprisoned in the coal measures, there is stored up in the hearts of most children a kindly supply of sunshine from the heaven that lies about us in our infancy. No doubt the young Amelia was unconsciously yearning for the love which she yet could scarcely be said ever to have known, and very dismal to the little scholar must have been the skele- tons of history and theology presented to her by her rationalistic tutor, whom she "chose by lot;" but she and her brothers had their fairy stories, little dramas, and precocious discussions on Homer, and even a "literary academy," for which each member of the household had regularly to contribute an essay. Con- sidering Miss Sieveking's practical indifference to externals all through her later life, it is not very surprising to find that the favourite hero of the little maid was Diogenes.

But notwithstanding her juvenile literary tastes, and although she was surrounded from her childhood by the influences of the most advanced and aggressive culture and thought which even free Harnburgh fostered, it was not as a writer or thinker, but mainly as a doer, that Miss Sieveking was to achieve name and fame.

Some time after the death of her father Miss Sieveking found a permanent home with a cousin of her mother, Madame Briinnemann, and became the adopted daughter of this lady.

Previously she resided with the sister-in-law of Klopstock, and as illustrating the oblivion into which the criticism of the " Wolfenbiittel Fragments" school had thrown the Bible, it was from this "pious but not well-educated person" that Miss Sieveking gained her first real acquaintance with the his- torical materials of the Old and New Testament! We suspect that even Dr. Colenso would be shocked if the daughter of one of his metaphysical Zulus should in her fifteenth year be unable to answer correctly a simple question on the Pentateuch. It is further

very curious and characteristic of the destructive influence of the criticism of a former age, as contrasted with the believing scepti-

cism of the present day, to meet with a young lady on the eve of her confirmation whose creed seems to contain nothing which can be put into words beyond a vague conviction of the

immortality of the soul. However, the rationalistic period of Miss Sieveking's history passed away with her youth, and, at least on the subject of the inspiration of the Bible, we do not think that even the Record itself could question her orthodoxy in after years.

Miss Sieveking's dreary experience under her Dryasdust "Dominie" was turned to good account. She could not, of course, educate all the children of her own station in life, just as, at a later time, she was not Quixotic enough to dream that she could, whatever help she might derive from willing auxiliaries, super- intend all the poor families inHamburgh. But from her eighteenth year she consecrated her best energies to the tuition of a given number of little people belonging to her own social rank. In her sixtieth year Miss Sieveking undertook her sixth course of children's classes, and if, as is lamented, but few of the pupils fulfilled all her expectations, the fault certainly was not in the teacher. Her labours were, indeed, labours of love ; nothing could be more living and genial than her mode of instruction and her method of discipline.

Miss Sieveking told her pupils one day that if she were going to write her own life, she would call the book " Memoirs of a Happy Old Maid." The title would have been strictly an ac- curate one. Miss Sieveking was happy in the deeper sense of the phrase. But.over aud over she frankly admits that

she would very thankfully have accepted another kind of happiness bad it come in her way ; and, notwithstanding her self-reliance, her independence, her fine organizing talent, and her extraordinary power in eliciting from others, especially women, a loyal submission to her authority, she did not try to conceal from herself, or from those whom she honoured with her confidence, the feeling that that form of self-sacrifice which all true marriage involves would have been far from unwelcome to

her. At the same time, as has been already implied, her life was not elected under the disappointment of other hopes. As a wife or mother, while admitting the primary claims of home, she would none the less have endeavoured to be a benefactress to society ; while it was as early as her eighteenth year that the question of woman's duties and responsibilities took tenacious hold of her heart and thoughts, and that she contemplated founding a Protestant sisterhood of mercy. The desirableness of such an institution was never questioned by Miss Sieveking ; but we do not regret that, instead of establishing a Pro- testant nunnery, she became the foundress of a society for visiting the sick and poor, the conditions of which at once provided opportunities of orderly work for ladies whose time u as but partially engrossed by household duties, or whose lives were being dreamed or squandered away, and left the existing domestics relations, as well as the future prospects of the visitors, intact. Before initiating her "society," Miss Sieveking bravely volun- teered her services in the Cholera Hospital, when the mysterious plague from the East broke out in Hamburgh in 1831. For eight weeks she toiled day and night among the suffering, and during that period she allowed herself no other nourishment than "bread and coffee." She gave up butter, as that was a luxury withheld from the humbler class of nurses. Entering the hospital amid suspicions and prejudices, she quitted it amid universal admiration and gratitude. Her decision, her wisdom, her endless usefulness, her self-denial, and her love, vanquished all obstacles and won all hearts.

On the last Sunday Miss Sieveking spent in the Cholera Hos- pital she drew up her first set of rules for the future association for the care of' the sick and poor, and in a marvellously brief space the association, under its president's ardent but judicious direction, became a recognized and prosperous institution. Miss Sieveking was a philanthropist whom even Thomas Carlyle must commend. She did not busy herself with the "scoundrel popu- lations," so emphatically characterized in the "Latter-Day Pamphlets ;" but limited her benefactions to those who, in the tempestuous phraseology of the "Model Prisons," had not yet "joined the Devil's Regiment of the Line." And unmistakeably, amongst the honest, struggling poor, her labours were largely rewarded.

In the characteristic reports which were annually published by Miss Sieveking during the twenty-six years of her presidency, very touching references are made to households saved from sinking down into hopeless pauperism through the timely inter- vention of the society. And, 4 priori, one would anticipate most satisfactory results from consideration, first, of the laborious and scrupulous inquiries which always were instituted before relief was administered, no family ever being taken under the society's care without the recommendation of the medical man, whom we should call "the parish doctor ; "—and, secondly, of the principle on which, as a rule, assistance was granted. Omitting cases of incurable illness, the recipients of the society's bounty were those only who were williug to have employment provided for them. If a man would not work neither should he eat. But even if Miss Sieveking had met only or mainly with ingrati- tude or imposture, her strong faith would not have faltered. She had learned to make largest allowance for all ; and she was inspired in all her generous undertakings by the grand hope that, ultimately, no toil of hers in the cause of humanity would prove fruitless. She believed that God loved the world, that all men were His children, and that His discipline would never cease until the entire race should form "one glorious temple, without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing."

The society, which at first consisted of but 12 persons, at length numbered 85 members, while the families under their care increased from 84 to 256. Then, in 1840, arose the Amalien- stift, a house containing dwellings for nine poor families and a small hospital for children. Additional accommodation was afterwards provided for 48 families, who each paid a moderate rent, and the children's hospital was also considerably enlarged. And what of the little scholars and the adopted mother the while ? Miss Sieveking shall tell us in her own words :—" At seven in the morning I walked with a great basket of books to the city (more than an hour's walk) and paid visits to the poor ; then I had school for three hours. Besides this, on

every alternate Tuesday, I collected my former scholars, and at half-past six I had always to be back at Othmarschen. Four days in the week I generally went without any warm food. One of the children used to fetch me a pennyworth of butter-milk, which I took with a piece of bread . . . . Meantime, my mother, who had, indeed, many other companions, had become totally

blind. She liked to hear reading, and I often read aloud to her in the evening, from six or half-past six till eleven. I never read SD much in my life as at that time" (p. 301). Besedes all these demands upon her time, Miss Sieveking made leisure for social intercourse, and if in society she occasionally ap- peared a little one-sided or impatient of contradiction, yet, in the main, she was cheerful, cordial, and sympathizing, " with a ready sense of wit and humour, and inclined at any time for a merry laugh."

Far beyond Hamburgh spread the influence of her good-doing. In Deninark and other countries her example became an inspiration, and societies arose like that she had founded in her native city. About the year 1856 Miss Sieveking's health began to fail, but still she toiled on, with only occasional interruptions, for three years. At last, after one month of suffering, during which she was waited on with all loving ministry by friends and pupils, she died on the 1st April, 1859.

We have only spoken of the volume edited by Miss Wink- worth, who has done her work ably and gracefully. The other volume, though good in itself, seems to us rather superfluous ; and the substance of it might easily have either been embodied in the formal biography, or been put in an appendix. Certainly, two lives of the same person, published simultaneously by the same firm, is rather a serious tax upon reviewers and readers in general, in this day of copious book-making.

We cannot but believe that the story of Miss Sieveking's philan- thropic endeavours will be an impulse and guide to many among ourselves. Her remorseless fasts and vigils are indeed to be regretted, and we should have liked a little less self-conscious- ness, a little less of that Quakerism which would wait for a sensuous experience termed "a call," and is not quite satisfied with the simple perception of duty ; but she has shown us, to use her own noble words, that the only "real life for man is working under the inspiration of love."