essential duties of wives and mothers. Two of the number are, however, unsuited for active household work, one in consequence of lameness, which will not prevent her from being a milliner or dressmaker by and bye, and in the meantime, she is monitor of the sewing class; the other has only the use of one hand, but her education has been conducted with a view to her becoming a schoolmistress.

Not only are the hands of these girls educated to all" common things," and their heads taught to help the hands with their powers of thought and intelligence, but hearts and souls are being trained in the way that they should go. Religion is not kept for Sundays or for Fast-days; it is not exhibited to them as a thing of gloom and tediousness; on the contrary, to "think" of God's love and God's precepts in daily life, and to "thank" God for his daily blessings, are inculcated both by example and precept, and forms, indeed, the ruling principle of the whole establishment. And though none

but One can change hearts, yet, when faith is not dead, but living,-working by love, and constraining the Lord's workers to care, like Him, both for souls and bodies, there is every reason to expect the salvation of souls, -the crown of all labour which is to abide the test of fire.1

It is now time to explain to my readers the exact nature of the institution above described, as it was explained to Leslie by Mrs. Howard, and I must first mention what it is not. It is not a refuge for the fallen. It is not a penitentiary for the criminal. It is not a show place, where those who have committed foul and infectious crimes, are gazed at with sympathy and admiration, as "interesting" penitents, till the real nature of their offences seems to be well-nigh forgotten. It is not a reformatory where cases of successful reform are few and far between -the love, knowledge, and practice of evil presenting almost insuperable barriers. Not one word would I say to discourage those

1 1 Cor. iii. 13.

who devote themselves to the rescue of the wretched-to the lifting up of the sorely degraded. No let them go on their painful and self-denying path with all patience and hopefulness, their Master's example full before them, and the blessing of those who were lost and are found upon their heads. But I do say, that in these days of universal sympathy for the fallen, there is not sufficient help and attention given to those who have yet to fall. The blessing of those who were ready to perish, but are saved from perishing, will not be less sweet and precious, than that which comes from the rescue of those already gone down into the miry pit. Each open sinner is a Upas-tree of evil to hundreds, nay, thousands, alive on the earth, or yet to be born, whom we cannot reach to save, even if, by God's blessing, we save the one. Each one that we keep from sinning spreads blessings of respectability, comfort, and morality to hundreds, nay, thousands, alive on the earth, or yet to be born into it, whom we cannot otherwise reach to benefit. The

comparative easiness of the task is also to be taken into consideration. While one is like the cleansing of the Augean stable, the other is like the planting of a garden-success, indeed, dependent on dews, and sunshine, and sweet seasons from Heaven, but holding out the happiest prospects of a full return of fruits and flowers from the seeds sown in a well-laboured soil. Those who have watched the faces lurid with evil, and blasted with misery, which are found so plentifully in institutions for the fallen; those who know something of the irritable tempers, craving for excitement, and habits of drinking, common amongst even the youngest of these unhappy beings, will at once acknowledge the awful difficulties, and while they continue their own appointed work, will be the first to pray and to hope, that others may be raised up to guard the avenues to the gates of hell-to draw the moths from the fatal candle-to pluck away brands before they have been cast into the raging furnace.

This, then, is the object of the little insti

tution at Brockham-PREVENTION and not RESCUE. Those seventeen girls are, or rather were, workhouse orphans. It is not generally known that the prisons and the reformatories of England are largely supplied from this very class, and the causes are easily to be traced. Mrs. Howard had taken Leslie through every part of a neighbouring "Union;" it was an excellent specimen of the better regulated ones, much interest being taken in it by neighbouring county gentlemen. With all this, as Leslie wrote to Aunt Hester, it was impossible not to feel, when half-an-hour later, she went through the celebrated reformatory of R—, with its beautiful architecture, its well laid out gardens and farm, its stirring military drill, its decorated chapel and organ, its band of music, its spirited education for future life and action, that it was a better, pleasanter, and cheerier thing to be a young thief than the orphan of an honest working

man.

The enormous power vested in one man, an official, who, with a few honourable ex