THE OTHER HALF OF THE WORLD.*

FEW books ever succeeded better in answering the purpose for which they were written than this unassuming little volume; The Other Half of Ma World. By Mrs. LA? ward Liddell, London.: Strahan and Co., Limited.

and since few books were ever written for a better and higher purpose,—that of making the moral needs of the dark half of Society known to those who could supply a large portion of them, and who, by supplying a large portion of them, would supply those still more urgent needs of which they are least conscious in their own lives,—f ow books are entitled to more praise. Mrs. Edward Liddell's sketches of the kind of people who are in need of help in the large, unlovely towns so poisoned by the gases of our great factories, that neither trees nor flowers will live where man is compelled to live, though for the most part slight, are very touching and very graphic. And yet, perhaps, the most valuable part of her work is not that which describes what "the other half of the world is," but "what we can do for it." There is some- thing sad in learning how little that is, how imperfectly it can be trusted to answer its purpose, and yet how hard it is to do, how very much arduous sacrifice it requires on the part of those who do it. Nevertheless, a more powerful appeal to the conscience of the classes who could aid and do not aid in this great work, has seldom been made than is contained in this part of Mrs. Liddell's book. It is a book to make what is called Christian Society much more than ashamed of its apathetic subscription- lists and indolent encouragement of such missionaries to the poor, the struggling, and the fallen, as those whose work is here delineated.

But we must not be supposed to describe a book of purely moral interest. The moral part of the interest is, no doubt, the deepest, and the one which stands out most distinctly through- out ; but no one with any human sympathies in him could take up the book, and think it in any way dull. Slight as it is, it is real to the last degree. Every touch in both halves of the book tells of real experience. Nothing can be more graphic, for instance, or, in one sense, more impressive, than Mrs. Liddell's description of the difficulties she had iu rousing any deeper life in girls and lads. Girls, in the immature stage, are evidently her real difficulty. She finds them less interesting, more simply inert, more foolish, and yet more in danger of deadly errors and folly, than any other class of people in the sad Black Country, whose condition she de- scribes. She finds it hard to endure their giddiness and stupidity, their want of ballast, their great levity on the edge of such great peril. And yet she sees the peril most keenly, and feels it with all her heart. But she is still more graphic,—we might say more amusing,—in her description of the heavy work it was to found a successful " Lads' Institute," or rather to gain the experience necessary for founding it, for it does not appear that a really successful Institute has come to maturity as yet :—

" With the beautiful but foolish liberality of beginners, wo refused admittance to no OLIO who paid his entrance-fee and promised to con- form to the rules. The consequence was that the bad element largely predominated, and the few good and steady lads were either silenced, or loft the Institute to seek peace and propriety elsewhere. As long as some member of the parochial staff was present, some degree of order was maintained, but if for a moment the hetero- geneous mass was left to work its own sweet will unhindered, the consequences were sad in the extreme. The room had the advantage, we have said, of being attached to a British Workman ;' but it had the disadvantage of being over a bootmaker's shop,—or rather, the poor bootmakor had the disadvantage of being under a Lads' Insti- tute.' Up the stairs now and again came the expostulating boot- maker with sorrowful tales of ruined trade, and many unheeded up- braidings. Fifty or sixty lads in a room cannot be quiet if they would : what is more, they would not be quiet if they could. And down the stairs went—must we say it P—the Committee, not in a. dignified way, retiring from the scene of useless endeavours to keep order among their own kind (for we formed a Committee of their own number), but headlong, kicked downstairs by the members. The Committee!' said a lad with a twinkle of humour, when we spoke of them as a guarantee of better order ; ' I seed some of the Committee bein' kicked downstairs !' One night, when a move to an unpopular street had reduced our numbers, but had not, I fear, improved our quality, our Institute seemed threatened with premature dissolution. It happened to be a week of mission services, and so all the people who usually acted as ' keepers' of the Lads' Institute were engaged elsewhere. In the midst of an after- meeting' we were called out of the room, and asked to come to the rescue. On the stairs of the Institute we found several lads stand- ing ; they had been locked out by the other members, who had barri- caded the door inside with tables and chairs. We knocked at the

door, and desired that it should be opened instantly. To our relief, there was an immediate scuffling about, and removing of chairs and tables, and the door opened. We stood before a somewhat amused,

but a great deal more ashamed, group of red.faoed boys. You can- not stay longer hero,' we said. ' We are sorry the Institute should end in this way, but it will not be open again until you hear further on the subject.' We then turned out the gas, and they all skulked down the stairs in silence."

There is plenty of real life there. The Committee on its inglorious way downstairs, before the toes of the revolutionary party, must have felt that whatever might be true of full Corpora- tions, it is not true of all public bodies, that there is nothing in them which admits of being either kicked or damned. But we gave• this only to show that Mrs. Liddell, in her thoroughly spiritual and Christian book, ignores none of the genuine difficulties of organising a very rough population in a semi-barbarous condi- tion. And what we have thus illustrated applies to all the latter part of the book. We cannot imagine anything better fitted to help those who have such work as Mrs. Liddell's to do,.

or who ought to have it to do if they did their duty, than the latter part of this little volume.

The first part contains many sketches of real beauty and pathos,—of which Mrs. Liddell would improve the effect, by the way, if she did not break up her paragraphs into so many short fragments even when they are really closely connected, giving

the effect of a sort of ineffability of feeling quite out of keeping with her genuine simplicity both of object and of style.

Here is a specimen of Mrs. Liddell's sketches of the poor of the Black Country,—the story of a poor man who lost his young: wife, and of his love for her :—

" But it was not to tell Jamie's love story ourselves that we sat clown to write. It was to make Jamie tell it himself ; the heart knoweth its own bitterness—ay, and its own love too, and Jamie• painted in the picture as only he could paint it. It was but four days ago that ho laid Lizzie to rest; and on the evening of the day of her funeral we wrote down the story from memory just as it came from his lips a few hours before.. No, I think I'll just stay and keep on my own room ; there's no comfort at home' (his mother's), nothing but drinking and that. And I've tried lodgings : and I always thought my own fireside was best, where you can feel you're not in the road. We never had no words, she and I; never a word between us since we came together. Ve always went out. together : where one went, the other would go : and come in together.. We had just our four walls sometimes : and we've bad our troubles. And we were as happy as if we'd had a big throne. She was just a poor-house girl when I saw her first : and I was something the same.. She was desolate and I was desolate. And we thought we'd come together and make one home betwixt us; that's the God's truth. It seemed as if God had just sent her to me from North S—. Yes; she was ready to go. Believe me, I've seen her go down on her knees at twelve o'clock at night, at the table, and read her Bible,. She knew she wasn't to be long for this world. She used to say our love was too deep and strong to last,—too strong : one of us would have to go. She'd say, when she was lying, that I'd just got to bo- a good lad, and get ready and join her, she'd soon be in her coffin. And she'd say not to fret. " You'd not like to see me lying here suf- fering for long, Jamie." And I'd say I'd not like to see her suffer, but I'd not like to see her die. And she'd say, " You don't know what I suffer, Jamie !" They've not done fair by me, they haven't (his mother and others). She speaks kind enough, but its not there. They tntight have washed her shift for her, when they saw me do it on a Sunday night, so as she'd have it clean on Monday and folk shouldn't know. No, I'm not a bit afraid to stay in that room at

nights. I'd rather be my lone.' And he stayed his lone,' those two or three nights before Lizzie was put to rest for the last time,—alone with his dead. There lay his Lizzie, in that awful, mys- terious silence of death ; with that calm vacancy in the dear face' that death brings. 'Yee,' said he, looking at her as she lay in her coffin, a little bunch of flowers upon her breast, ' there's a groat want.' But that great watt speaks to Jamie, and such as he, of

great hope. It is not the beloved one that we lay earth to earth? The love, the life, the look, all that made them what they were, is gone. The coffin does not contain it. But the ' great want' is in the life that is left, as well as in the face that is gone. Soften it as we may, the end of Jamie's short, sweet story is pitifully sad. There is, just this of comfort in it-

' Tis better to bare loved and lost

Than never to bare loved at all'

And that better comfort which is Jamie's own, that the love is not over ; that this sorrow is not a sorrow without hope. The some God that brought him his wife from North 8— will, Jamie knows, bring her back to him one day."

And of sketches like these, some more encouraging, some much less so, but all real and living, the first part of this admirable little work is made up. As we have said, perhaps the second.

part is even more effective, though in some respects less purely literary than the first ; but both are equally essential to produce. the profound impression which this little book is calculated; to make on the reader.