is something a little pathetic in the attempt to civilise the rough
street-boy by means of the refining influence of ferns and fossils, and
it is difficult to help feeling that Miss Carpenter rather overestimated
the value of elementary education. The poor are not to be fed upon
facts. Even Shakespeare and the Pyramids are not sufficient; nor is
there much use in giving them the results of culture, unless we also give
them those conditions under which culture can be realised. In these
cold, crowded cities of the North, the proper basis for morals, using the
word in its wide Hellenic signification, is to be found in architecture,
not in books.

Still, it would be ungenerous not to recognise that Mary Carpenter gave
to the children of the poor not merely her learning, but her love. In
early life, her biographer tells us, she had longed for the happiness of
being a wife and a mother; but later she became content that her
affection could be freely given to all who needed it, and the verse in
the prophecies, 'I have given thee children whom thou hast not borne,'
seemed to her to indicate what was to be her true mission. Indeed, she
rather inclined to Bacon's opinion, that unmarried people do the best
public work. 'It is quite striking,' she says in one of her letters, 'to
observe how much the useful power and influence of woman has developed of
late years. Unattached ladies, such as widows and unmarried women, have
quite ample work to do in the world for the good of others to absorb all
their powers. Wives and mothers have a very noble work given them by
God, and want no more.' The whole passage is extremely interesting, and
the phrase 'unattached ladies' is quite delightful, and reminds one of
Charles Lamb.

* * * * *

Ismay's Children is by the clever authoress of that wonderful little
story Flitters, Tatters, and the Counsellor, a story which delighted the
realists by its truth, fascinated Mr. Ruskin by its beauty, and remains
to the present day the most perfect picture of street-arab life in all
English prose fiction. The scene of the novel is laid in the south of
Ireland, and the plot is extremely dramatic and ingenious. Godfrey
Mauleverer, a reckless young Irishman, runs away with Ismay D'Arcy, a
pretty, penniless governess, and is privately married to her in Scotland.
Some time after the birth of her third child, Ismay died, and her
husband, who had never made his marriage public, nor taken any pains to