and drunkenness, misery
and recklessness."

"And, therefore," replies the shade, ere he disappears, "of discontent
and revolution; followed by a tyranny endured, as in Rome and many
another place, by men once free; because tyranny will at least do for
them what they are too lazy, and cowardly, and greedy to do for
themselves. Farewell, and prosper; as you seem likely to prosper, on the
whole. But if you wish me to consider you a civilised nation: let me
hear that you have brought a great river from the depths of the earth, be
they a thousand fathoms deep, or from your nearest mountains, be they
five hundred miles away; and have washed out London's dirt--and your own
shame. Till then, abstain from judging too harshly a Constantine, or
even a Caracalla; for they, whatever were their sins, built baths, and
kept their people clean. But do your gymnasia--your schools and
universities, teach your youth nought about all this?"

THRIFT. A LECTURE DELIVERED AT WINCHESTER, MARCH 17, 1869.

Ladies,--I have chosen for the title of this lecture a practical and
prosaic word, because I intend the lecture itself to be as practical and
prosaic as I can make it, without becoming altogether dull.

The question of the better or worse education of women is one far too
important for vague sentiment, wild aspirations, or Utopian dreams.

It is a practical question, on which depends not merely money or comfort,
but too often health and life, as the consequences of a good education,
or disease and death--I know too well of what I speak--as the
consequences of a bad one.

I beg you, therefore, to put out of your minds at the outset any fancy
that I wish for a social revolution in the position of women; or that I
wish to see them educated by exactly the same methods, and in exactly the
same subjects, as men. British lads, on an average, are far too
ill-taught still, in spite of all recent improvements, for me to wish
that British girls should be taught in the same way.

Moreover, whatever defects there may have been--and defects there must be
in all things human--in the past education of British women, it has been
most certainly a splendid moral success. It has made, by the grace of
God, British women the best wives, mothers, daughters, aunts, sisters,
that the world, as far as I can discover, has yet seen.

Let those who will sneer at the women of England. We who have to do the
work and to fight the battle of life know th