Keep up the fire, And leave the generous flames to shape themselves."

The most successful, however, of all the attacks of our witty contemporaries on the Social Science Association, are those which refer to the very considerable part taken therein by ladies; and to this, therefore, we shall devote the residue of our space.

There is a whole mine of jokes to be found at all times by the destitute in the subject of woman. Readers may remain in unmoved gravity while men, however absurd and ridiculous, are the subjects of sarcasm; but women I-" Law, master," as Diggory says, "you must not tell the story of the grouse in the gun-room, for, if you do, I must laugh.' A silly old woman in a mob cap, or a silly young one in a crinoline, a Belgravian mother, or a "pretty horsebreaker," women who know Greek, and women who cannot spell English, ladies who do nothing but crochet, and ladies who write two hundred letters a day for Borrioboola Gha-it is pretty much the same; who can resist the fun of the thing, even if it be repeated rather frequently? Frankly we confess, for our own parts, that, while reason tells us the joke is rather superannuated, habit still induces us to enjoy it as ever fresh and new.

sometimes unexpected lines in which the action of the Association goes forward. Let us take one illustration more, and then leave the subject. At the congress of 1858, Mr. C. Melly read a paper, describing the fountains which he had erected in Liverpool, with the happiest effect in lessening the prevailing drunkenness. The Council allowed a separate edition of the tract, with the print of the fountain as a model, to be published; and it was extensively distributed during the congress. "The

"effect has been to spread the establish"ment of fountains over the whole

country; and it is certain that the "benefit thus derived has been owing "to the services of the Association." (Lord Brougham's Address, 1859.)

Our next step ought naturally to be, after specifying the merits of the Social Science Association, to add some statement of the objections, real or fictitious, urged against it. This is, however, we avow, a most alarming task. There is a sort of generalization about these objections which renders it by no means easy to express them in words. First, there is the name itself. One most able journal actually asserted that there was not, and could not be, such a thing as Social Science at all; thereby reducing the Association very much to the character of schemers in the South Sea Bubble! Far larger is that portion of the public who recalcitrate at once at the thing and the name, for the simple reason that both are new. 66 Sociology" is the sort of thing the Sorbonne would have condemned as "mal-sonnant et sentant d'hérésie." It conveys nearly the same unpleasant feelings to the mind as those direful compounds, "Neology," "Anthropomorphism," "Subjectivity," and the like. And then, has it not something to do with that horrid French system-what is it called?"Socialism?" He who thinks such ideas as these can have no real influence, knows very little of the power of folly in the world.

A much more serious objection is that to which we have already partly referred-namely, the enormous magnitude

irregular action of the forces. We ad mit that immense difficulties must, doubtless, lie a-head in the way of the Secretary and Council to organize and select the papers and speeches as year after year they multiply, so as to prevent the time of the meetings being wasted by indifferent contributions, while securing all those worthy of attention. As the heap of quartz grows larger it will be more and more difficult to extract all the gold. However, the world has little right to question the further wisdom of guidance hitherto so successful; and, perhaps, the utmost sagacity which can be shown in the case will be to follow Mrs. Browning's advice to the poet

The most successful, however, of all the attacks of our witty contemporaries on the Social Science Association, are those which refer to the very considerable part taken therein by ladies; and to this, therefore, we shall devote the residue of our space.

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There is a whole mine of jokes to be found at all times by the destitute in the subject of woman. Readers may remain in unmoved gravity while men, however absurd and ridiculous, are the subjects of sarcasm; but women !—" Law, master," as Diggory says, "you must not tell the story of the grouse in the gun-room, for, if you do, I must laugh." A silly old woman in a mob cap, or a silly young one in a crinoline, a Belgravian mother, or a "pretty horsebreaker," women who know Greek, and women who cannot spell English, ladies who do nothing but crochet, and ladies who write two hundred letters a day for Borrioboola Gha-it is pretty much the same; who can resist the fun of the thing, even if it be repeated rather frequently? Frankly we confess, for our own parts, that, while reason tells us the joke is rather superannuated, habit still induces us to enjoy it as ever fresh and new.

ourselves the employer (we cannot say originator) of such a jest as a person not naturally of a lively disposition, but rather as one whom the requirements of a despotic editor compel sometimes to become jovial-one who has a "concern" to be diverting; who is witty, not so much by Nature as by Grace. We hear him crying in his extreme distress, "What shall I do to be funny? Who will show me any joke? Date obolum Belisario !" At last a blessed thought occurs to him, "We will stand on the old paths and see which were the ancient jests." And there, of course, in the first page of the first book he opens, from Aristophanes to Joe Miller, he finds a jibe at women. "Eureka!" exclaims the fortunate man; "why, of course, the women!

That is always sure to succeed with the galleries." With a skip and a bound, and a sommersault, amazing to beholders, the solemn critic comes out a first-rate clown. "All right!" "Here we are!" "At them again!"

Of course it is a double piece of good fortune when (as on the occasion of the holding of the late congress in Dublin) Penseroso in Search of a Joke lights upon it in Ireland. One might almost indeed suspect that his necessities had driven him in that particular quarter, as Shakspeare says, "to taste the subtleties of the Isle!" The very dullest of Englishmen can always find a laugh for stories of Irish beggars, Irish bulls, and Irish cars. Possibly it may chance to be because he is dull that the quickness and brightness of the Irish mind strikes him as so amazing. He feels much like one of the hard-fisted habitués of an alehouse gazing at the rapid fingering of the fiddler. "Do look at un's hands how fast they go! Could'ee do the likes of that, man? Haw, haw, haw!" No other nation that we know of considers it so strange to be able to answer a simple question with vivacity, and to elaborate a joke in less than half an hour. But to return to the women. A peculiar merit of the Protean joke against them is that it accommodates

action which they may adopt. And, as in our day women are continually adopting new lines of action, the supply for the jest market seems really inexhaustible.

We would not on any account be discourteous to the sex; but yet we cannot help sometimes comparing them in our minds to a large flock of sheep, round which some little worrying terriers, with ears erect and outstretched tails, are barking and jumping, and (occasionally) biting in a wholly facetious manner. The foolish sheep run hither and thither; but, whichever way they go, the terriers hunt them out of that corner immediately. Now they rush into this thicket-now down into that ditch -now out again into the open field. Here are two sheep running away on one side, there is another going off in the opposite direction. "Bow, wow, wow!" cry the little dogs. "Bow, wow, wow! Don't go here-don't go there-don't separate yourselves-don't run together. Bow, wow, wow, wow!" At last the idiotic sheep (any one of whom might have knocked over the little terrier quite easily if it only had the pluck) go rushing, like the demoniacal swine, down into the very worst hole they can possibly find; and then the little dogs give a solemn growl, and drop their tails, and return home in great moral indignation.

We were for ever hearing of women's proper work being this, that, or the other. But, whatever they actually undertake, it is always clear that that is not the "mission" in question; they must run off and try some other corner directly. In the days of our grandmothers it was the frivolity of the Delias and Narcissas which was the theme of satire

"A youth of frolics, an old age of cards," was the head and front of their offending. It was a subject of scorn, that "most women have no character at all,” and that, while

"Men, some to business, some to pleasure take, Yet every woman is at heart a rake."

sheep rushed in an opposite direction. Women would be frivolous no more. They became "Blues !"-and the barking went on worse than ever! It was thought the wittiest thing in the world. for Byron to sneer at his noble wife (who has so lately closed her life of honour, silent to the last regarding all his offences!) because she was

"A learned lady, famed

For every branch of every science known, In every Christian language ever named, With virtues equalled by her wit alone." Efforts were made at the time to give young ladies, generally, an education which should transcend the wretched curriculum of the then fashionable schools-"French, the guitar, and Poonah "painting," with "history, geography, "and the use of the globes," thrown into the bargain as unimportant items. Then it was the acquirement of knowledge which was not "woman's mission," and which would infallibly distract her from it. It was supposed that "a "mother's solicitude for her children "depended on her ignorance of Greek "and mathematics; and that she would "be likely to desert an infant for a "quadratic equation." Those phrases which Sydney Smith called the "delight of Noodledom" were in continual circulation. "The true theatre for a 66 woman is the sick chamber." "The

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only thing a woman need know is how "to take care of children; that is what "she was made for, and there is no use

attempting to overstep the intentions "of nature.'

But of late a most singular transition has taken place. The sheep are running, it would seem, precisely where the terriers were driving them. The care of the sick and of children occupies the minds and lives of great numbers of women who have few or no domestic duties. Let us see how they are treated by the little dogs. Alas! we fear that we catch the sound of the bark again. "Ladies must not meddle with this school. "Ladies must not interfere with that hos"pital. Ladies ought not to give evidence "before committees of Parliament. La

"Ladies ought not to make a stir about "the grievances they discover. Ladies ought not to write papers about paupers, "and women's employment, and children's "education. And oh! above all earthly things, ladies ought not to read such papers, even if they write them. Bow, wow, wow, wow!" They must (we are driven to conclude) nurse the sick without going into hospitals, and look after children without meddling in schools, and see evils but never publish them, and write (if they must write) papers about babies and girls, and then get some man to read the same (of course losing the entire pith and point thereof) while they sit by, dumb and "diffident,' rejoicing in the possession of tongues and voices which, of course, it cannot have been "the intention of nature should ever be heard appealing in their feminine softness for pity and help for the ignorant and the suffering.

Now, we confess, in all seriousness, to be rather tired of this kind of thing. It seems to us that the world does grievously need the aid of one-half the human race to mitigate the evils which oppress it; and if, in their early and feeble endeavours to fulfil their share of the work, women should make endless blunders, the error in our eyes is a venial one, compared to the inactivity and uselessness in which (in Protestant countries) so many of them habitually vegetate. Let us not be mistaken. The private and home duties of such women as have them are, beyond all doubt, their first concern, and one which, when fully met, must often engross all their time and energies. But it is an absurdity, peculiar to the treatment of women, to go on assuming that all of them have home duties, and tacitly treating those who have none as if they were wrongly placed on God's earth, and had nothing whatever to do in it. There must needs be a purpose for the lives of single women in the social order of Providence-a definite share in the general system which they are intended to carry on. The Church of Rome found out this truth long ago. The Catholic