LECTURES TO LADIES ON PRACTICAL Sl7BJECTS..
Tam book is one of the many signs of the really philanthropic spirit which is now moving society, and aiming at the benefit of mankind by raising men rather than what is called " relieving " them. Much may be attempted gropingly, much done im- perfectly, perhaps even wrongly ; but the tendency is to hu- manize manners, to bring different classes of society more closely together, and if not to furnish panaceas for widespread evils, to show what the evils are, and do something towards light- ening them. The lectures of? this volume originated in the Col- lege for Working Men, planned by the Reverend Frederick Mau- rice. When the College was started, a question was raised as to whether women should not be included, as " they were already less instructed than the males of their own class." Much was said on both sides; and the doubt was suggested, that "possibly the work- ing men might have some of those mean jealousies which are often found in what are called the better classes." The originators of the College therefore resolved to consult the men themselves.
a After our Men's College had been for some time in existence, we called the members of it together, and invited them freely to express their opinions on the subject which was occupying us. They spoke with remarkable free- dom and intelligence. We gathered a great many more hints and opinions than we had at all expected. These were very different as to many points on which we consulten them; for instance, respecting the hours which would be most convenient for women to attend classes, and respecting the propriety of their being taught together with men or separate from them. But there was entire unanimity on the main question. There was no indication what- ever of the slightest fear that females should know as much as they them- selves knew, or more than they knew. There was a manifest wish that they should have the same advantages. There was a distinct and positive call upon us not to withhold from the one what we were trying to give to the other."
When this first difficulty was removed, another came more dis- tinctly into sight. The College was not prepared to set about their task. Experience, especially the experience of Mr. Maurice in con- nexion with " the Ladies' College," seemed to say that men are well fitted to teach, but they require the assistance of ladies as 'visitors, or in some similar capacity. Mr. Maurice would have handed over the proposed College to a body of ladies altogether; but, though many were interested in the scheme, they shrank from that task and re- sponsibility. To ventilate the question, it was determined to give a series of lectures to ladies upon subjects which should bear directly. upon the main object in view—that of bringing more into union the sympathies of different classes of society, and en- abling each to learn something from the other. Unless this funda- mental object, rather than the name of college, be borne in mind, the subjects of the lectures will sometimes appear wide of the mark. But they are intended rather to help lady philanthropists in any place than to instruct them to teach in a Working Woman's College. The lectures are on -various subjects, from the broad and deep Christian views of Maurice in his opening address, " the College and the Hospital," to such more limited and businesslike or technical subjects as " Law as it affects the Poor," by Mr. Fitz- James Stephen, or " Sanitary Law," by Mr. Tom Taylor. The merits and characteristics of the lectures vary, of course, with the lecturers • but all have more or less of purpose and directness, with a strong sense of reality. The reader has no theories or fan- cies but the results of actual observation, put before him. The three lectures by Doctors Chambers, Sieveking, and Johnson, and two on District Visiting, by the iteverend Ll. Davies, and on Workhouse Visiting, by the Reverend J. S. Brewer, 4equently throw off individual portraits or pictures, that have the graphic force of professed litterateurs, with an actual verity about them which we seldom find in professional sketches. Mr. Brewer's
• Lectures to Ladies on Practical Subjects. Published by Macmillan, Cam- bridge.
" Workhouse Visiting " is an interesting social analysis. Save in ex- ceptional oases—accident, age, or utter infirmity—the inhabitants of workhouses are a class by themselves, forming the lowest strata of society, rarely mingling with any other, and never seeing the respectable classes except officially at a distance. Over these the workhouse chaplain has no sympathizing influence, and with them can establish no relations. He is looked upon as an officer of the house who has a good deal in his power, and whom therefore it is desirable to conciliate by an appearance of respectful gravity. " And this brings me to another consideration of the subject, upon which I am most anxious to insist„—that is, the indirect influences which the mere presence and appearance of ladies in a workhouse, and known to come upon a mission of kindness, would be sure to produce. The workhouse poor do sometimes see the more respectable portion of the male sex ; the house is periodically visited by the vestry ; the rector occasionally goes round; there are boards and board meetings, and before these the inmates are allowed to prefer their complaints. But the best of the female sex they never see ; they do not know what ladies are, except as they are spoken of as the mistresses of a house or as the employers of servants; for the London workhouse poor —I speak, of course, within the limits of what I know—belong mainly to a class which has never come in contact with the upper classes of society. They have not been domestic servants; they have been utterly removed in their sympathies, their training, their enjoyments, and their sorrows—in their whole lives. in short—from the upper ranks of society. They are chiefly drawn from the floating and working street poor of London, swelled by the country labourer who has made his way to town, or by the Irish trampers who have left Ireland and been domiciled in the metropolis, hodinnen and their wives, basket-women, jobbing smiths, gliders, or cabmen men and women who, from want of better education, or from some physical defect, pick up a precarious livelihood, and at the first brush of illness, or misfor- tune, or domestic suffering, or glut of labour, are cast into the workhouse, as their temporary refuge or their final home.
" Upon them the more fortunate classes have no hold, and exert over them no influence. Both are entire strangers to the others ; the dislocation be- tween them is complete. If you do not know what they do, neither do they know what you do."
Here is a picture of another and a somewhat higher class of the poor, from Dr. Johnson's experience derived from hospital and dispensary practice.
" I am convinced, by long and careful observation, that the mental an- guish of many of these poor men and women is out of all proportion greater and more intolerable than any physical sufferings they may have to endure. True it is, that their bodies are often worn down by hard labour, poisoned by impure air, and exhausted by want of proper food ; but worse than all this is the black despair which settles upon them when they find themselves beneath a thick aloud of sorrow, or surrounded by a hopeless entanglement of debt and difficulties, from which they see no way of escape, with, perhaps, no one to lend them a helping hand, or to speak a word of encouragement or sympathy. What wonder is it that in circumstances so cheerless and so desperate, men, and, alas! women too—many of whom have grown up in utter ignorance of the very rudiments of Christianity—should fly to the gin. shop to escape from their wretched homes, to drown in the oblivion of drunkenness the cares and troubles which daily become more intolerable, or to seek temporary relief from the physical exhaustion occasioned by exces- sive labour in the impure and overheated atmosphere of their workshops. " It appears to me, that in this state of things we have a sufficient ex- planation of the necessity for a continual increase of prisons and lunatic say- lums,—institutions which it would be well that we should all learn to look upon as monuments of neglected duty."
The opening (not the introductory) lecture of Maurice is one of great depth and power; looking, as is the author's wont, upon the good rather than the evil around him, penetrating through the worn-out forms of medieval institutions to their living spirit, using his early experience as Chaplain at Guy's to warn clergymen and "respectable" philanthropists against his own mistakes, and pier- cing below the coarse or rough externals of hospital patients or medical students to the good at bottom. Kingsley's " Country Parish" is a discourse upon the feeling and proper frame of mind which should animate ladies in their attempts to improve the con- dition of the poor by visiting, and the more formal means which experience has planned. The lecture has the author's earnestness and animation, with great plainness and force. It is a practical sermon abounding in striking pictures. This is one. " I must begin by telling you frankly, 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 any one cannot rule her own household, she cannot rule the church of Clod. If any one cannot sympathize with the servants with whom she is in contact all day long, she will not really sympathize 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 their own ladies'-maids, and house-maids, and cooks. And why ? Because they can treat the poor as things, but they must treat their servants as person a.i A lady can go nto a poor cottage, lay down the law to the inhabitants, re- prove them for sins to which she 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 medi- cine ; 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 charac- ters; and, what is more, they know here ; 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, per- functory, 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, un- less 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 tempt- ed, when she wishes to do good, to fall back on the poor people in the cot-
tages 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."
The idea of the Female College is as yet but imperfectly shaped, and its realization may be difficult, perhaps at present impracti- cable. In the halide of the men who originated the scheme, the mere moving of the subject will not be altogether barren of results.
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