is complete; and we look with shame and pity on the living representation of the immortal Tittlebat Titmouse. We concur with our fair enthusiasts in thinking it full time that this odious custom should be abolished. Far more seemly would it be if, for such services, women only were engaged. They are neater, and much more obliging and unofficious than the impudent counter - skippers, who poke their faces under ladies' bonnets, with a leer of vulgar gallantry, for which the infliction of the bastinado would hardly be an adequate punishment.

Here, then, is a legitimate mine for the promoters of female occupation to work out. They cannot go wrong in that direction; and we can assure them that their efforts will secure the earnest sympathy of every member of the male sex who despises sybaritism and effeminacy. But we certainly do not wish to see women engaged in tasks for which they are obviously unfitted. There are some kinds of rural labour so sweetly Arcadian, that for the sake of poetry alone we could not tolerate the absence of women. Although the shepherdess has now become as fabulous a creature as the mermaid, we cannot do without the milkmaid, that blithe rosycheeked damsel who tends the cows and dispenses syllabubs and cream. She cannot be spared from the English landscape, else it would lose one half of its charm. Can anything be found in ancient pastorals more beautifully true to nature than that scene in the Complete Angler,' where old Isaak Walton and his pupil converse with pretty Maudlin, listen to her simple madrigals, and reward her with a share of their spoil? Nor in haymaking and harvesting can we dispense with the lasses, else rural life would be deprived of its sunshine, merriment, and solace. But

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saw you ever a field of bondagers? That is, to our thinking, a most sad and humiliating spectacle. There they are some thirty of them-women, for so their petticoats proclaim them-weeding turnips, digging potatoes, forking manure, performing all the outdoor work of a hind, under an inclement sky-till every vestige of female delicacy, comeliness, and propriety has disappeared; and the strong, frowsy, stalwart wench, made coarse by habit, retains no one attribute commendable in her sex, and has forfeited all its privileges. It is sad to think that such things should be in merry England, and, we may add, in sober Scotland also; but of their existence no man- who will take the trouble of walking three miles along a turnpike road in an agricultural district can be left in dubiety. If female philanthropy would condescend to take notice of such a crying abuse as this, and, instead of attempting to thrust a few epicene lawyers and doctors into the ranks of the already overcrowded professions, would make a serious effort to rescue so many of the humble daughters of Eve from such a state of awful degradation, Heaven would approve the attempt, and all good men would cheerfully combine to aid it. But such reforms are not to be wrought out by declamation, or visionary schemes submitted to the extremely questionable judgment of the members of the Association for the Promotion of Social Science. The true happiness and wellbeing of women is to be found in their performance of domestic duties. Whatever tends to that is wise, meritorious, and good. But to make women wholly independent, which is the real object of the recent agitation, implies an inversion of the laws of nature, which is simply impossible and absurd.

Of late years it has become possible for almost all civilised nations to see and consider their own aspect as mirrored in the curious eyes of their visitors, and to take what benefit was possible out of that strange, often distorted, sometimes true image, quaintly presented to them in its novel lights of foreign interpretation-those lights which make the commonest everyday circumstances of our life unfamiliar, odd, and strange to our puzzled vision. No country in the world has had so much of this as our own-perhaps it would be safe to say that no country has benefited as little, or shown so steady and good - humoured a determination not to benefit by the quaint profiles and amusing half-recognisable vignettes of itself which it takes pleasure in collecting-just as an occasional humorist in private life takes pleasure in accumulating a group of grim caricatures of himself perpetrated by the great sunartist who makes so many misses for every success, and who will convey to posterity so unfavourable a presentment of the present generations. In our scornful insular way," perhaps, we make too light of what other people say about us, and are too profoundly amused by their blunders, and contemptuous of their mistakes. The "leading journal" made a tolerably good hit lately at those comments of the uninstructed eye, when it compared the Frenchman's dismal account of a Sunday in London with the riotous sketch of that same Cockney festival presented by a Scotch provincial writer, whose intention it was to show his clients and countrymen the wicked gaiety and licence with which the day of rest was profaned in town. The utter ennui and disgust of Leicester Square, on one hand, and the pious horror of our outraged countrythe other, made a very

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effective contrast for the rapid brush of the journalist. Both pictures were sadly absurd - both (must one say it?) a little true. Sunday, with its closed shops, its closed houses, its family retirement and seclusion, must be dreary enough to the stranger who has no home to retire to, and knows not how to compensate himself for the lack of all his accustomed amusements; and Sunday, with its vulgar traffic, its weary labourers sullenly ministering to the general leisure, its miserable little markets in the back streets, its tedious pleasurings, no doubt presented many unlovely aspects to the Scotch spectator, of whose beloved Sabbath at home better pens than his have condescended to make sketches quite as false and shortsighted. It might be beneath the dignity of the present writer, as well as of the journalist, to draw a little moral from both to suggest an occasional opening of the sacred Sunday doors to the stranger within our gates," or to hint that the back streets might learn, like their betters, to dispense with Sunday marketings-we content ourselves, like the good-tempered superior beings we are, by simply knocking the two blunderers' heads together, and leaving the one to confute the other. They are both outsiders-they see only with their physical eyes the mere palpable thing they chance at the moment to be looking at, and neither perceive nor consider its relations to the life around it. They say only what is true, or something like the truth, but it becomes false unconsciously, as they say it, from the sheer ignorance and misunderstanding of the speaker. Such, save when an eye gifted to see, chances by good fortune to penetrate the open secret, is the usual stranger's look upon the unfamiliar life of a new region. We laugh and do not recognise our

selves when we look through his queer foreign spectacles. His strictures do us no benefit, because he does not know what he is talking of; and if he makes a chance hit upon a sore point, the natural wince is hidden under the laughter with which we receive his quaint representation and inconceivable travestie of ourselves.

Matters are different when the criticism we have to deal with arises out of the very bosom of the society whose ways or codes or customs are specially denounced. No more favourite pursuit has existed of late days than the hunting of public nuisances, public grievances, matters which affront or offend the general conscience. Among these there has lately arisen a clamour against sermons, never sufficiently important to come to anything, yet betraying a popular sentiment not unworthy of recognition. The pulpit is not a safe object of attack; it has unbounded opportunity of reprisals, and a perpetually recurring chance of seizing the general ear, and forestalling its accusers. Calm assailants in black and white, even when they come backed by all the forces of the Times,' have no chance against the personal defence which a thousand living voices can every week lift up against them, not to speak of the crushing a priori argument with which their mild reproofs can be set aside. "When

I took you to hear Dr -, and asked how you liked the sermon," said one friend to another, "I found out that you were devoid of all religious feeling; for you answered me, that really you had not been able to listen to the sermon." This charitable and broad conclusion is at once easy and general. When your friend is not edified, it is because he or she is destitute of religious feeling. When a bold critic now and then complains, it is because he is a godless and profane person. It is not the sermon that is in fault, but the hearer. Such is the natural first suggestion of a large proportion both of preachers and listeners.

The religious world at large comprehends very well, and is not unsympathetic of your case if you object to the utterances of an individual. The world which is not specially religious, but appreciates the respectability and occasional comfort of church-going, has also much sympathy with your personal criticisms in this kind, and makes them in its own person in the broadest way by thronging special churches and leaving others empty; but to object to sermons in general is, with the greater part of the English public, very little different from assailing Christianity. It requires no small boldness to dare all the offensive and defensive weapons with which this great institution is provided. It has almost all the virtuous prejudices of English society, a great proportion of the good and some of the evil sentiments of human nature, arrayed in its defence. Very much more than half of our countrymen consider the hearing of a sermon as a religious act and meritorious duty-and but a small proportion of those who neglect this weekly observance are good for much. Notwithstanding all this, ominous grumbles begin to breathe across the surface of society. A few people venture so far as to write letters to the papers explaining their endless dissatisfaction and discontent-hosts more who do not write to papers display all the symptoms of uneasiness and fatigue whenever the subject is mentioned. Except in the case of some lucky people in some favoured localities, most men tacitly or otherwise admit to themselves, that an hour or half an hour's tedious listening is the necessary penalty which they must pay for the privilege of worshipping God with their fellows, and remaining devout members of their motherchurch. There are who bear the yoke with patience and a blessed faculty of self-abstraction; there are who accept it meekly and swallow the unpalatable morsel as a duty; there are who chafe and worry and afflict themselves to no purpose. What

ever one does, here remains unchangeable the Sunday necessity. If you would worship you must also be content to be taught; and that without any consideration whether the appointed teacher has anything to tell worth your hearing, or whether your mind is in a condition to be instructed. If you will not run that doubtful chance, and consent to be preached to, then you must not worship. This dilemma is forced upon us every Sunday. We have no mind to "forsake the assembling of ourselves together;" to lose the public worship of our Maker and Saviour, the thankful commemoration of the holy Resurrection, would be to take away much of the comfort, and a great portion of the beauty of life. Protestantism and Reformation and English use and wont, hardened down upon us by a few centuries, have, however, saddled this privilege with its burden. Sermon-hearing is the dark duty which hovers by the side of the celestial right. We must pay this toll to the church for the privilege of worship, just as one must pay taxes in this favoured island as a needful balance to the privileges of liberty. Without the one the other seems impracticable and beyond our reach.

It is, however, when one looks at it, sufficiently strange that this should be so. A Christian man must worship, or he cannot continue a Christian; and the Church must worship in communion, or it is no longer a Church, and forfeits its claim to be called the household of faith, which is one of its dearest titles; but the institution of teaching is entirely distinct from this primitive necessity of a godly life. The faculty of instructing their fellow-creatures is given to comparatively few men of any place or class. To expect from some thousand men of all classes and descriptions that they shall each emerge from the work-day week on every Sunday morning with something worthy of being presented, by way of spiritual nutriment, to the many

thousands who must listen to them, is an utterly inhuman and inconceivable fallacy. Nor is the hearer the only victim. Every class of the community gives up a portion of its sons to be trained to this hard life, over which the shadow of the weekly sermon hangs like a feverish cloud. The young clergyman, if he bears a conscience, is dominated by its perpetual presence. He too might have it in his heart to worship with warm devotion, to minister with earnest zeal, to lead his people into that communion with God which is the highest exercise of religion; but one thing, first of all, he must do, whether he will, whether he can or not-he must preach. He has a little learning, a knowledge of improved interpretations and disputed passages, a certain acquaintance (perhaps) with heresies current and exploded; but he has no experience; he knows life itself as yet only by hearsay, like others of his years, and has all its problems to stumble through at first hand for himself, and not for another. No matter. As sure as Sunday dawns, the unfortunate young soul must get into that dreaded pulpit, and instruct his little world. What can he teach them? If you were but to leave him alone in his white robes to read with simplicity and modesty to them and himself the words of the great Teacher-to lead their prayers, breaking forth with them into the frequent Kyrie Eleison of all Christian worship-to bless them with the benediction of the Master

to let them go, perhaps, with ponderings in their hearts; at least, in honesty, with no false semblance of instruction thrust between them and God,-what a wonderful deliverance would you accomplish for many a groaning priest, for many a weary hearer! But that is not our way. Thrust the victim back into his academical gown, harness him with what particoloured emblems of his literate condition he may have won, and set him up there to teach us, albeit we are very

sceptical about his powers, and indeed do not much intend to be taught, but only to hear what he has to say for himself. This is what we do week after week, thinking it all very good and pious. Our hearts have swelled while we have addressed our Lord in the sublime adjurations of the litany; but they must not be permitted to return into the sunshine with that thrill of devotion still expanding their depths. After we have enjoyed the privilege, which is our Christian birthright, of worshipping our God, here comes the duty which counterbalances that right, lest it should carry us too near Him. We must go through that farce of teaching and being taught, to our mutual pain, fatigue, and dissatisfaction. Such is the established order of things. To do otherwise would be a kind of tacit heresy.

There is, perhaps, scarcely a church-goer of any class in the kingdom who could not give instances of this hard grievance. We ourselves remember to have heard a hapless curate who had read in the day's gospel that lofty exposi tion of the Divine purpose which describes how "God so loved the world that He gave His own Son," get up in the pulpit thereafter and announce that it was impossible to say what the Atonement was for, or what was chiefly intended by it. He did not know; but for all that, custom decreed that he should preach, and preach he did, with such results as aay be supposed. The case is the same everywhere. Perhaps in his heart he did after all know what the Atonement meant, this luckless lad who had, however, no public instruction to convey on the subject; but can anybody doubt that all the purposes of religion would have been better served had the congregation been permitted to depart that day with only God's own exposition of His own mysteries to throw light upon their prayers? Perhaps this example is extreme; but it is perfectly

evident that among so large a class of men as the clergymen of this empire, not all, nor nearly all, can be natural teachers, born to the task of instructing their brethren. Is it inevitable then that we must insist upon having instruction after we have ascertained it to be unprocurable? that we must force a man to speak whom we have proved to have nothing to say that after that is over in which we can honestly and truly engage together, he and we should mutually bind ourselves to a piece of nauseous and unprofitable taskwork, hard for him who becomes in spite of himself a kind of authorised charlatan, hard for us who are forced into imposture and a solemn make-believe of attention? When the minister enters the pulpit and gives forth his text, how many of us await with agreeable expectation or interest of any kind the discourse that is to follow? It has to be got through, that is certain; with patience or impatience as the case may be, with secret yawns or visible fidgets we must compose our faces, banish, if possible, all meaning from them, and present to the world an aspect of attention. If our minds are lively enough for opposition, some little relief is afforded afterwards by the savage delights of criticism. When we are clear of the church we make an onslaught upon the preacher. What inconsequence in his reasoning-what temerity in his statements! What folly for such a man to be in such a profession! But the man is not to blame; very probably he has made no mistake, but is a virtuous and worthy priest, honest in his vocation and doing true service; only neither nature nor Providence intended that he should preach. Here he stands, helpless, paralysed perhaps by the dead incubus of that weekly sermon which he has to deliver whether he will or not; and here are we, equally helpless and enthralled, bound to listen to him, unable to deliver ourselves, compelled for the sake of the public worship of God to go through this