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signs of our perverted civilisation. Inevitably, these woman will press into the ranks of existing occupations, as far as they can, and by degrees, they will find quite new spheres of industry. That women should have more fields of industry thrown open to them, is an idea as old as good Dr. Watts, who, in his "Tractate on Education," puts down, in the plainest words, an opinion which has even now to defend itself as if it were a new thing. There is, in truth, no lack of authorities. My readers are, I hope, no strangers to the noble, earnest, yet temperate discussion on "The Sin of Great Cities," (a name for which, I believe, we are indebted to this author,) in which is set the sweet story of Gretchen, in the " Companions of my Solitude," of Mr. Arthur Helps, published in 1851. From that discussion I take the liberty of extracting a few passages :

I spoke, for instance, of the cause that poverty was of this sin. Now, women do not equally partake with men in the general poverty of a land, but they have to endure an undue proportion of it, by reason of many employments being closed to them, so that the sex, which is least able and least

fitted to seek for employment by going from home, finds the means of employment at home most circumscribed.

I cannot but think that this is a mismanagement which has proceeded, like many others, from a wrong appreciation of women's powers. If they were told that they could do many more things than they do, they would do them. As at present educated, they are, for the most part, thoroughly deficient in method. But this surely might be remedied by training. If we consider the nature of the intellect of women, we really can see no reason for the restrictions laid upon them in the choice of employments. They possess talents of all kinds. Government, to be sure, is a thing not fit for them, their fond prejudices coming often in the way of justice. Direction, also, they would want, not baving the same power, I think, of imagination that men have, nor the same method, as I observed before. B how well women might work under direction. In how many ways, where tact and order alone are required, they might be employed; and also, in how many higher ways where talent is required. There is always such a belief in what is mechanical, that men of ordinary minds cannot assure themselves that anything is done, unless something palpable is before them, unless they can refer to a legislative act, or unless there is a building, an institution, A NEWSPAPER, or some visible thing which illustrates the principle.

"

What has set me upon this track of observation is a circumstance which confers upon the topic of Industrial Culture for Women the interest of practicalness and tangibility. It has, I find, its newspaper" in London! From the "office," in "Princes Street, Cavendish Square" (-Cavendish Square, near which "Ann and her mother were walking one day," in "Original Poems for Infant Minds"-), I have had sent to me "The Waverley Journal," conducted by women; which, I find, is in hands at once graceful and energetic. There seems to be nothing blatant or explosive about it. I notice among the contributors' names Anna Mary Howitt and Theodosia Trollope; and, among the articles without name, I unhesitatingly trace one to the pen of our greatest female social critic. "The Moral of the Story,"-a deduction from the Glasgow "tragedy," could only have been written

by the authoress of "Deerbrook," the lady to whom we are indebted for some of the noblest articles in the Daily News.

I presume, now the question of new occupations for women has its fortnightly "organ," ,"* it will commence a policy more or less aggressive. The subject is one which might excuse almost any amount of aggression, for it is not one of woman's rights, but of woman's needs. Flinching, as all men do, from the idea of women working for subsistence, we have shut our eyes to the stern facts of the case as they grew, and at this moment there is not a population in the world where so many women are, proportionally, unsexed by toil to which they are driven because no better was provided, or handed over to the streets to perish, as in that of England.

Willing to press into the service of the cause of fit employment for unmarried women any respectable testimony, I will quote a pregnant paragraph from Mr. De Quincey (Autobiographic Sketches, Vol. II.). Mr. De Quincey refers only to literature, but in the passages italicised, the bearing is wide enough to reach any kind of occupation suited to the hand and brains of ladies :

To me, it appears that it would have been better far had Miss Wordsworth condescended a little to the ordinary mode of pursuing literature; better for her own happiness if she had been a blue-stocking; or, at least, if she had been, in good earnest, a writer for the press, with the pleasant cares and solicitudes of one who has some little ventures, as it were, on that vast ocean.

We all know with how womanly and serene a temper literature has been pursued by Joanna Baillie, by Miss Mitford, and other women of admirable genius with how absolutely no sacrifice or loss of feminine dignity, they have cultivated the profession of authorship; and, if we could hear their report, I have no doubt that the little cares of correcting proofs, and the forward looking solicitudes connected with the mere business arrangements of new publications would be numbered amongst the minor pleasures of life.

Mrs. Johnstone, of Edinburgh, has pursued

the profession of literature-the noblest of professions, and the only one open to both sexes alike-with even more assi duity, and as a DAILY occupation; and, I have every reason to believe, with as much benefit to her own happiness as to the instruction and amusement of her readers; for the petty cares of authorship are agreeable, and its serious cares are enuobling. More especially useful is such an occupation to a woman without children, and without prospective resources; resources in objects that involve hopes growing and unfulfi ́led. It is too much to expect of any woman or man either) that her mind should support itself in a pleasurable activity under the drooping energies of life by resting on the past or on the from day to day must be called in, to reinforce the animal present;-some interest in reversion, some subject of hope fountains of good spirits.

I quote this, not to recommend literature as a profession to women, for as many (men and women, too,) as are fit for it, already find their

It has also its own proper literature. Chapman and Hall have just issued an octavo volume, "The Industrial and Social Position of Women in the Middle and Lower Ranks," which, published anonymously, is a fine specimen of those labours of love and conscience in which our literature

increasingly abounds.

way to magazines and publisher's counters; but, I for its application to the moral importance of employment which involves hopes and fears and little labours to women without "incumbrance."

THE ACCREDITED INCREDIBLE.

In the course of a week's reading, and going about, one is sure to have his moral generalisations startled from their propriety by things which, as the Creed says, are most certainly to be believed," and which yet seem so outrageons as to defy all human capacity of belief. Nothing is better accredited than the incredible in moral history. This has struck me with renewed force lately apropos of the troubles in India. From private letters, I have gathered details of cruelty to women, at the hearing of which strong men turn pale. I have seen a muscular fellow, six feet high, listen to them, and watched the muscles of his cheek fall like those of one wearied by long night watching. As for me, I am neither muscular nor six feet high, but I was accosted by a friend the other day with the exclamation that there seemed " nothing left" of mewhen all that had been deducted from my ordinary mick had been deducted solely by an anecdote of the Indian rebellion. It was an incident of cruelty to a woman which has not found its way into the newspapers. I am skilful, I believe, in saying exceptional things, but by no periphrasis whatever, by no touch of art, could I tell this story. The puzzle of this and similar cases is that you cannot dismiss them by saying, in the commonplace of the vocabulary of horrors,- -a fiend must have done it! Because it is obvious that a man must have planned it.

A "fiend" sustains no relation towards a woman which would make it possible for such ideas to enter his head. He lacks the first essential for inventing the horror.

That men may be unkind to women is a fact which we may take note of every day of our lives. There is wife-beating, there is desertion, there is ill temper. We are all angry with our idols sometimes; but in men of common mould the reaction is almost instantaneous, and the fiercest fires of wrath are soon drowned in floods of tenderness. Still, the natural instinct of sexual kindness may be in abeyance in the best of us. That we can understand. But what we cannot understand, and God forbid that ever we should, is the inverted action of the instinct in alliance with cruelty. Yet, it is well accredited in its effects, constituting, as they do, some of the most dreadful passages in the records of the attested impossible.

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had sunk down, she would have been instantly torn in pieces; even the appearance of faltering would have proved fatal. Uncertain whether to advance or recede, she hesitated a moment, and the people were just springing forward to seize her,' when an unknown woman in the crowd secretly pressed her hand, and, taking the child which she carried in her arms from her breast, gave it to her with the words, Return it at the bottom of the stair.' She did so, and, protected by the infant citizen, escaped unhurt; and gave back the child, but she never saw her deliverer more." This we all sympathise with. The privilege of helplessness and innocence protecting a woman who carries a baby is quite a matter of course. But I now quote this little story of normal human nature to place it in opposition to another story, also from the Reign of Terror, which belongs to the Accredited Incredible. I read, over and over again, distrusting my eyes, that under Carrier, at Nantes,-"Five hundred children of both sexes, the elder of whom was not fourteen years old, were, on one occasion, led out to the same spot to be shot. Repeated fusillades cut them down. Never was so deplorable a spectacle witnessed, the littleness of their stature caused most of the bullets, at the first discharge, to fly over their heads; they broke their bonds, rushed into the ranks of the executioners, clung round their knees, and, with supplicating hands and agonised looks, sought for mercy. Nothing could soften these assassins; they put them to death even when lying at their feet." Here again, we are turned adrift into the wild waters of the inconceivably horrible. Just now, we had a mad crowd respecting the presence of a child in a woman's arm; now we have assassins shooting down five hundred children at once,—and yet not at once, for it must have been after several fusillades, amidst shrieks, and contortions, and blood. Here and there it would happen that the same child would have to be shot at twice or thrice; a little thing with a broken arm would come shrieking to a soldier's foot; a girl, unhurt by the first discharge, would turn screaming to her brother drowned in blood; some would faint and be killed while insensible; and-men did all this. Unquestionable men. Two legs; two arms; two eyes; heart, brain, and all the rest, and many of them fathers. No doubt, too, they ate their next meal in due course, as usual. O, how we should welcome the investigator who falsified facts like these!

A touch of the ludicrous sometimes mingles. though not to lessen it, with the horror and shame of the Accredited Incredible. I can only quote from memory the well-known anecdote concerning the Queen of Spain's legs. Her Majesty of Spain was once may be still, for what I know-presumed to have no visible legs. To see them was death without benefit of clergy. It fell upon a day that the queen, riding out, got the invisible member on one side-left or right I wot notentangled in the stirrup, and fell. Dragged along

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by the horse, her death seemed certain. A cavalier present, knowing the law on the Royal Leg Ques. tion, but forgetting it or defying it in the interest of common humanity, sprang forward, and saved the life of a woman, and that woman his Queen. If my recollection is accurate, this gentleman was executed for his courage. To have not only seen the Queen's leg, but to have touched it, was death, and no intercession of hers could save him. That is my recollection, but I have a faint doubt whether the poor fellow may not have had his

punishment commuted into banishment, imprisonment, or some other tender mercy. I have however, a strong belief that the tale is well attested. If it should be otherwise, why, so much the better for the facts. If it really is true, it is one of the most revolting instances of that Accredited Incredible which turns up in History and Biography so often as to make us ready to exclaim, when some question is to be settled by an appeal to "human nature," "Yes, it is all very well to appeal-but what is human nature ?"

CHAPTER XVIII.

MASSULIPATAM.

THREE nights and two days of unspeakable misery; on the evening of the third the Isadora came to an anchor, and the captain, pointing to a long narrow range of what looked like bushes in the distance, informed us that that was Massulipatam. He might as well have called it Hong Kong or Greenland, or anything else, for all that we could see that bore the slightest semblance to land, much less to a large and populous town; and a good three hours' row, in an open boat, was a treat in perspective to one of the ladies who landed here; the other two were to proceed with the vessel to Vezogapatam. The captain landed us in his own boat, and though the Lascars pulled manfully and well, they were thoroughly exhausted before the boat moored alongside a very ricketty old pier, close beneath the fort gates; and by the time we planted foot upon terra firma, night had set in, and the whole was enveloped in darkness. The fort gates were shut, but by walking round under the ramparts, we were told that we might reach the town, some three miles distant inland, over a perfect ocean of loose hot sand. The captain remained, and slept in his boat, taking charge of our luggage till the morning. As for poor Mrs. G. and myself, we had no alternative but to walk with the very faint prospect before us, at such a late hour, of meeting with any kind of conveyance. Even a donkey would have proved a windfall. With stout hearts, however, we set forth upon our weary pilgrimage, and we had barely rounded the fort walls, and entered upon a vast tract of sand, when, by good fortune, we encountered Mrs. G.'s husband, on horseback, followed by an empty palanquin, into which Mrs. G., nothing loath, stepped, and the happy couple proceeded homewards at a rapid pace, leaving the

poor pilgrim to trudge it out as best he might in weary solitude. In after years of travel, I have often encountered hardships which were barely sufferable, but the sufferings of this night would not admit of the slightest comparison.

Fancy yourself more than ankle deep in par boiled gravelly sand, with nothing better than a pair of thin pumps and light socks to protect your feet; imagine, that at every dozen steps you came unexpectedly on some brambles, or worse still, a pitfall dug out by hungry jackalls, the night pitch dark, and no decided pathway to indicate whether you were pursuing the right road, or walking back again, or performing an indefinite number of circles on a horrible desolation, where the stillness of death reigned around, only interrupted by the melancholy howl of troops of ravenous jackalls, or the equally dismal screech of the hoot owl: give yourself two hours of this kind of work, even though it be only in imagination, and then, perchance, you may form the ghost of a conception of the reality of my sufferings, both bodily and mental, on that hideous occasion.

As a natural result, I very soon irrecoverably lost both shoes and stockings; as an equally natural sequel, my feet were lacerated and blistered, to say nothing to some half-score thorns which had penetra ed from a vile prickly pear leaf, that I had inadvertently trod upon. Is addition to all this, I was parched with thirst, and hungry, and faint. To sit down and give in the battle, was only to accept of a fearful alternative, for so sure as I fell asleep, so surely would I have been devoured by the jackalls that kept prowling about me. So I shouted and sang manfully, and putting every nerve to the test, waded on through that sea of desolation and sand, till at last, thank heavens, a something dark on the horizon indicated my approach to vegetation of some descrip tion. The first living soul I encountered was a

sepoy of the 47th regiment, who was so much astonished at this sudden encounter, that it required time and explanation before I could glean any information as to my whereabouts. Once in possession of the facts, however, this Samaritan (unlike his Bengalese brethren of the present day) at once conducted me to my friends' house, where I arrived, footsore and weary, soon after midnight.

The family had long since retired to rest; not so, however, the faithful old butler, who had long and anxiously been expecting my arrival; for it had been known that the vessel was in the offing. A bottle of well iced Hodgson's ale, a capital cold supper, a foot bath, and a night cap of undeniable punch, soon set matters to rights, and I snored peacefully beneath linen sheets long before the hour hand pointed to 2 a.m.

It was late next morning before I woke to a consciousness of my whereabouts; my friends, acquainted with my over-night's disasters, had refrained from disturbing my slumbers, and meanwhile all my traps had been fetched up from the sea side, and were ranged in apple-pie order in the room allotted for my accommodation.

Pleasant and airy was the house occupied by my guardian, surrounded by a vast compound, impregnably hedged in with the prickly pear; it boasted of many stately trees, principally tamarinds, and it gave fair promise of many a day's pleasant sport, as flocks of wild ducks resorted during the monsoon to a large tank at the further extremity of the compound, and partridges, quails, and wild pigeons were abundant at all seasons of

the year.

But to counterbalance all this, the heat was so fearfully intense for nine months in the year, that none but a lunatic would have ventured out in it for the sake of sport. An hour or two after day break, and the same in the evening, was all the opportunity afforded for sport; revertheless, in this brief space, we sometimes contrived to bag a floriken, one of the finest and most sensible birds a sportsman could wish to bag-fine as regards flavour, sensible as regards size; but they were terribly shy, and difficult to get at. Many a weary mile have I crawled along the sand, and after all, perhaps, lost the chance of getting within shot range.

But to return to the climate. Sierra Leone, I should imagine, can be the only rival to Massulipatam. Guarded as our house was from heat by all the contrivances that civilisation had introduced into India, such as lofty rooms, cool chunam or lime, cuscuss blinds to doors and rooms-still would the hot wind penetrate like the blast from a furnace, till you felt yourself shrivel up like a herring under the process of being smoke dried. So long as the cuscuss tallies were kept well saturated with water, the atmosphere indoors was delightful. Seated in luxurious Indian undress (which with us consisted of shirt, drawers, and nothing else), newspaper in hand, or else some

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absorbing work of travels, with both feet resting comfortably upon the soft cushion of another chair, the punkali at work over head, the pleasant sound of water trickling over the tallies, the delicious odour of the cuscuss, and the delightful freshness of the air, that changed its nature, as it were, in penetrating through the damp grass-these were unspeakable luxuries during the prevalence of the fearfully hot and unhealthy land winds. Moreover, additional zest was derivable from the small table standing by one's elbow, whereon were ranged glasses and decanters, well cooled in saltpetre, covered over with damp cloths; sundry plates of fruit and spice nuts, a box of mild Manillas, and a few books and papers ranged conveniently, so that no bodily exertion was requisite to reach anything required. This was all very fine and comfortable for the indolent (and this latter class included almost all the military and the ladies), but the poor civilians had hot work of it. Compelled as they were to attend courts and cutcherries, crowded to excess by native officials and prisoners -to say nothing of the exposure en route to and from these offices, to the fiery blasts of this Indian khamseen; and despite all the precautions of tallies, blinds, punkahıs, etc., they were literally nearly stewed alive, and returned homeward of an evening completely worn out, and fagged by the day's work.

Then there came the evening ride or drive, and twice a-week the bands of the two native infantry regiments (the 29th and 47th) played, pro bono publico, on the parade ground. Thither languid and sickly looking ladies and children resorted, although the glare and heat of the day still continued intense, and the refraction from the hot saud almost insufferable; notwithstanding these drawbacks, all the European community managed to assemble here, saving only such unfortunates as chanced to be on the sick list. As darkness set in, heavy dews commenced falling, and the hot wind subsided for awhile. Sometimes a faint sea breeze favoured us with its welcome and refreshing breath; but oftener there was a perfect void of all air, and then the unlucky Massulipatamites might safely reckon upon a sleepless night, a tossing, suffocating, flea-bitten, mosquito-mad-driven night, with the blood at fever heat, and eyeballs fiery, and starting out of our aching heads.

Seven, p.m., was the usual dinner hour, and previous to dinner being served, the family and assembled guests usually sat out in the front verandah, which was entirely in the dark; this precaution was indispensable, especially in the months of September and October, when the influx of insects, whose size, classification, and numbers were veritably legion, was equivalent almost to all the plagues of Egypt. No sooner was dinner aunounced, and candles placed on the table, than the snowy white table-cloth was literally darkened by swarms of invaders. With all despatch and every precaution, rarely was soup discussed without a green bug or two flying into savoury soup plate,