auroras, or to meteoric systems in the sun's neighbourhood; whether the sun's photosphere is solid, liquid, or gaseous; whether his heat is due to meteoric down-pour, to the gradual contraction of his globe, or to chemical changes: these and a hundred other such questions may be made the subject of endless controversy, simply because the truth does not lie altogether on one side. Such controversy cannot but be useless in the present state of our knowledge. It does, indeed, occasionally happen even in dealing with solar phenomena that a decision can be pronounced decisively between contested theories, so soon as certain considerations have been fully taken into account. A noteworthy instance was afforded by the long-continued discussion whether the corona is a solar appendage: a question which really admitted of being answered definitely on the strength of a few not very recondite mathematical considerations, long before eclipse photography disposed of it. But such cases are the exception, not the rule. Now that we know how exceedingly complicated is the structure of the sun; that processes are taking place within his globe which are not merely wonderful in their extent and variety, but are probably for the most part quite unlike any that we are or can ever be familiar with; when we see how the tremendous attractive energies of the sun by which the great gaseoliquid mass which sways our system is compressed towards its centre, contends continually with mighty expulsive forces by which vast masses of matter are visibly projected from the sun, and with still mightier repulsive forces, whose action we see in the phenomena of comets; when again we consider that all the elements we know probably exist in the sun in quantities such as we can form no conception of, and in forms with which we are unfamiliar, it is mere folly to insist on adopting definite theories respecting the sun's condition. Let us remember that in all probability we see in the sun a state of things partially resembling what existed in our own earth countless ages before the changes began which our geologists find so difficult to interpret; and seeing thus that we have a state of things removed from us in this sense by a practical infinity of time, existing on a globe too remote in space to be studied by any really satisfactory methods of research, and presenting only its glowing surface for our examination; seeing also that although some of the forces at work there are nominally those whose action we are acquainted with, yet even these act on a scale which must render their operation as utterly unlike that of the same forces on earth as though they were forces of a totally different nature, while lastly we cannot doubt that forces utterly unknown to us are at work in the sun, we may well look doubtingly on the easy and simple (but contradictory) theories of the sun which are from time to time presented by students of science in this country and abroad. After many years of patient labour, we shall begin to comprehend more clearly than at present how utterly incomprehensible is the great centre of our system; for though many difficulties which now perplex us may then have been removed, each difficulty mastered will be found to have introduced others greater than itself.

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Women and Charitable Work.

POPULAR errors are hard to kill, and long after they have been left for dead they are found to be as fresh and vigorous as ever. There is a pleasant belief abroad that the world is very much wiser than it used to be in the matter of charity. Once charity was only a fine name for indiscriminate and unintelligent almsgiving; now the evil of this sort of benevolence is thoroughly understood, and kind-hearted people are everywhere working to promote the real good of their poor neighbours. It would be easier to accept this comfortable conclusion if it were not for the continual recurrence of two mistakes which seem hardly compatible with it. The first is that charity is easy work; the second is that it is a kind of work for which women have a natural aptitude, which enables them to dispense with special training. It is assumed, for example, that as soon as a young lady has left the schoolroom she is to associate herself, as a matter of course, in the various good works set on foot by the clergyman of the parish. In London perhaps she has engagements of a more serious nature which have a paramount claim on her attention, or there may be difficulties about her walking alone which check the free play of the benevolent emotions. But if she lives in the country and has time to spare, perhaps has even time on her hands, she takes to district visiting and Sunday-school teaching as naturally as to long frocks and dining late. Even if she is only in the country for part of the year, she expects to have work found for her as soon as she arrives. Indeed, she would lose the esteem of her right-minded friends if she expected anything else. It is taken for granted that she is qualified to deal with every form of distress and poverty, because she has the kind heart with which all women are credited in right of their sex. No one seems to imagine that good intentions, and that natural and amiable vanity which is pleased with the consciousness of giving pleasure, may not be a sufficient equipment for dealing with cases of individual distress, involving perhaps social problems of the utmost complexity. She can always have recourse in any difficulty to the clergyman or the clergyman's wife, and with these authorities in the background there can be no danger of any serious blunder. In London, as has been said, youth counts rather as a disqualification for charitable work; but there is a large supply of older women, married and single, from which recruits can be drawn as they are wanted. Indeed, but for district visitors and ticket distributors what would become of that mass of imposition and incapacity which forms so large an element in London poverty? If charity were suspended for a single year, there must

be a wholesale emigration from the East End. There is a curious similarity in this respect between charitable work and music. Men are not supposed to take up either unless they feel specially drawn to do so; but women play the pianoforte and visit the poor as a matter of course. So long as this is the case it is allowable to distrust the union which is alleged to have grown up between charity and common sense. The first offspring of such a marriage would be distrust of the machinery by which charity has hitherto been administered. There is simply no alternative but to do this or to distrust charity itself. Either we have been wrong in thinking it possible to do good to others, or the ways in which we have tried to do them good have been badly chosen. As to the failure of the effort, from one cause or another, there can be no question.

Ever since the monasteries were dissolved the English gentry have been more or less looking after the poor, and it would be hard to say in what the poor have been the better for it. On the contrary, in proportion as they have been out of the range of charitable attention they have risen above the need of it. Nowhere has English benevolence had so free a course as in the agricultural villages, and nowhere has it been so little glorified. Nowhere has English benevolence been so completely distanced as in the manufacturing towns, and yet, with all their drawbacks, it is the manufacturing towns that suggest whatever hope there is for the future of the working classes. When a wealthy and educated class interests itself in the well-being of a poor ignorant class, three results may be expected to follow. In the first place there ought to be a visible improvement in the material condition of the poor. In the next place they ought to be better taught. In the third place they ought to be more kindly disposed towards the class which has stood their friend. Are these consequences to be seen in those agricultural villages in which more than in any other parts of the country there has been systematic supervision of the poor by the rich? The controversies growing out of the conflict between farmers and labourers have furnished an answer to this question. The condition of the peasantry has been closely observed. We know the sort of houses in which they live. We know what kind of provision they have made for old age. We know how long their children attend school, and what are the causes which keep them away from school. We know what amount of gratitude they feel to the squire and the squire's family. The agricultural labourer is worse lodged and worse fed than the cattle he tends. He has not so much education as a well-trained animal. His idea of a provision for the future is summed up in the belief that the parish will see that he does not starve. And if his sense of obligation to the classes above him is not very keen, it can hardly be denied that it is strictly commensurate with the services rendered. Let us suppose that the existence of such a class as the English labourer has just been made known to us for the first time, and that we have been asked to point out how his condition may be bettered through the agency of kind-hearted

neighbours. The first thing that suggests itself is, that he should be enabled to earn more money, and as a necessary condition of this that he should be encouraged to move to other districts where wages are higher, or-this applies especially to the younger men and to newly married couples-to new countries in which he may in the end come to be an owner as well as a tiller of the soil. Yet until Mr. Girdlestone set the example, there was no attempt made to promote either migration or emigration. Year after year benevolent ladies saw, and pitied, and tried to relieve the distress around them without so much as asking themselves whether the cause of it was not the disproportion between the work and the workers. Year after year they married off their favourite maids to promising young labourers without enquiring whether the customary process of degradation was inevitable as well as customary. Instead of advising the girl to devote her savings, and to urge her lover to devote his, to making a start in Canada or the United States, they assumed that they were to go on living where they had lived all their lives. The next evil to be attacked is the bad housing of the labourers, and here perhaps it may be said that charity is powerless. To rebuild a village is beyond the scope of a lady's purse, and probably beyond the scope of her husband's or father's purse either. But time and trouble might have effected something even without the direct application of money. If benevolent persons had but recognised that bad lodging is one of the main obstacles to the labourer's improvement, it is inconceivable that so little should have been done to remove it. There would have been no need for newspaper correspondents or blue books to reveal the magnitude of the evil. Voluntary charity would have done the work of a Royal Commission, and have filled the newspapers with reports of what was to be seen in nearly every village.

It will be said, perhaps, that as regards education charity has not been behindhand. It has helped to cover England with schools, and, long before the State recognised that it had any duties in the matter, the children of the labourers were largely taught by private subscription. As regards the provision of schools this is true, but it is not true as regards the attendance of the children. It is only now that we are beginning to learn that the agricultural labourers might as well have gone without education altogether as have had the apology for education which is all that has fallen to their share. If benevolent persons have been really busy all this time in getting children to school, how is it that their failure has been so complete? Have they used their influence with parents to induce them to keep their children at school instead of sending them into the fields the moment that they could earn a penny or two by scaring birds? Have they tried to persuade the farmers not to employ children at an age when they ought to be in school? Two answers may be imagined to these questions, but neither of them really meets the case. It may be said that the needs of the poor are so great that those who live among them feel that it is better for a child to contribute in however

small a degree to the family income than to be at school; instead, therefore, of trying to persuade the farmer not to tempt children into the fields, charity has rather busied itself in finding work for them at the earliest possible moment. Or it may be said that the desire of the parents to supplement their scanty wages by their children's, and of the farmers to get cheap labour, is so keen that neither argument nor persuasion has been of the least avail. On the first hypothesis charity stands condemned of ignorance as to what really promotes the well-being of the poor; on the second it stands condemned of tamely acquiescing in what it knows to be mischievous. Those who believe that it is better for children to earn a few pence weekly this year at the cost of incapacitating themselves from ever earning more than a few shillings weekly in years to come must be wholly wanting in that power of forecast which is indispensable to true kindness. Those who see the error of this view, and see also their own inability to cope with it, ought to have asked help from stronger hands. How is it that there has not long ago come from the wives and daughters of the country gentry a cry for compulsory education? If their zeal for the poor had been a zeal according to knowledge, they must have seen the need of education. If they had tried to bring parents or employers to see it likewise, they must long ago have recognised the impossibility of obtaining it without the aid of Parliament. What is charity worth when it leaves the labourers as ignorant as it found them? Another point in which the condition of the labourer urgently needs. improvement is his habit of trusting to the rates for support in every emergency. There are few commonplaces more generally accepted in theory than the importance of training children in habits of self-help; but in the country self-help is usually treated as identical with help from the parish. Of course so ingrained a tendency is not to be rooted out in a moment; but have charitable persons even tried to root it out? Have they set themselves to discourage the poor in whom they are interested from applying to the guardians? Have they urged any guardians over whom they have influence to be chary in giving out-door relief? Here and there of course there may be instances of persons acting in this way, but as a rule unwillingness to apply for out-door relief is looked on as folly, and unwillingness to grant it is looked on as cruelty. Happily the poor, especially poor women, have occasionally a vein of independence which makes them reject the notion of applying for parish pay, but where such cases exist it will generally be found that they have had to stand out against the repeated advice of those who ought to know better not to be too proud to do as others do. And whenever a reforming spirit comes over a board of guardians, and the lists of persons in receipt of out-door relief are gone over strictly, there is sure to be a chorus of complaints from all the district visitors that this or that widow has been mulcted of the halfcrown which she has come to regard as her right.

The failure of charitable action has been most conspicuous in the country, because in the country circumstances have been peculiarly favour