harems which are closed to the missionary, and in one of these found the nursing of the little Prince Camil Bey, nephew of the Viceroy, entrusted to their charge.

We must not omit to mention here the Deaconess School at Bucharest. It was undertaken by the Kaiserswerth Sisters in 1857, and labours chiefly among the German Protestants of that strange capital, where refinement and barbarism are so closely intermingled.

In the summer of 1860, the Maronites, the Christian inhabitants of the Lebanon, were overwhelmed by a bloody persecution. Thousands were massacred by their hereditary enemies the Druses, who were secretly incited or favoured by the Turks; while nearly forty thousand fugitives, mostly women and children, sought refuge on the Syrian coasts. The indescribable misery to which disease and want of food and shelter gave rise, awakened the sympathy of all Christendom. Among the first to render personal assistance were the Deaconesses sent out by Fliedner, who was himself kept at home by severe illness. He exerted himself, however, unceasingly to obtain pecuniary assistance, and directed the operations of the Sisters in Syria. Hospitals were opened in Sidon and Beyrout, and an asylum was provided for destitute widows, while in large eating houses, which were provided by other Societies, the Sisters daily distributed food to many hundreds of starving creatures. That some perma

nent good might be left by all this misery, Fliedner founded at this time the Orphanage of Zoar, in Beyrout. Gifts for this object flowed into Kaiserswerth from all parts of Europe, and, under the wise superintendence of the Consul, M. Weber, a house for a hundred and fifty children was speedily erected and speedily filled, notwithstanding the many attacks of the French Jesuits. Now even daughters of the Druses and the wild Bedouins of the Desert may be found there, acquiring a culture at once Christian and European. In the school connected with Zoar, the Sisters instruct seventy girls belonging to the higher classes, many of whom are confided entirely to their

care.

The whole burden of anxiety and labour which these various institutions brought on Fliedner, can be rightly estimated only by those who saw him with his failing health, almost fainting beneath its weight; but God alone can tell what blessing he was, and yet will be, the means of bringing to thousands in those distant and oppressed lands, and especially to the younger generation, at once so sadly neglected and yet so capable of education.

CHAPTER XIII.

FLIEDNER'S LABOURS AT HOME UNTIL HIS SECOND

JOURNEY TO THE EAST. 1852-1856.

WHILE new and extensive fields of work were thus opened to Fliedner at a distance, his activity at home was keeping pace with his labours abroad. Only the chief points can here be briefly indicated.

His literary work was constantly extending, the yearly Reports of all the various spheres of the Diaconate, the periodical called 'The Friend of the Sick and Poor,' new editions of the writings that had previously appeared, the almanack which found yearly a larger number of readers, all took up a large portion of his time. Since 1850, moreover, he with several coadjutors had been engaged upon the publication of his largest work. In the Book of Martyrs and other Confessors of the Evangelical Church,' he sought to hold up a mirror to his own people, where they might see in the lives and labours of eminent Christian men and women, of all ages and nations, what the true Christian life is; and at the same time to open to them that source of comfort and strength, whence he

himself had often drawn refreshment. For as in youth his favourite reading was the biographies of great men, so in mature age his delight was in the lives of the heroes of the Faith; but it must be owned that it was with difficulty he now ever found a spare hour for reading, and never but at night or in the diligence or railway carriage. At a later period he published an abridged edition of the Book of Martyrs and Confessors,' in which for every day in the year is given a short history of some eminent Christian, whose name is also inserted in the amended Evangelical Calendar.'

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These continuous labours in his study would have engrossed the whole powers of many a man, with Fliedner they were only a part of his bye-work the training, appointment, and superintendence of the Deaconesses was his grand object in life; new situations in institutions or parishes were constantly undertaken, or old ones received an accession of strength; in the year 1856, of the two hundred and fifty Deaconesses and probationers belonging to the Kaiserswerth 'Mother House,' one hundred and seventy-seven were already at work at fifty-nine stations; even to the great seats of Romanism in the western provinces of Prussia, Cologne, Münster, and Aix-la-Chapelle, and afterwards to Trèves and Paderborn, Fliedner sent his Deaconesses as soldiers of the Protestant Church,

His journeyings still continued in their old fashion; everywhere the sisters needed his encouragement, from all sides the friends of the poor and sick sought his counsel; while the constant need of money obliged him, from time to time, to travel for the purpose of collecting contributions.

In the year 1853, he once more visited England, where a fresh interest in Kaiserswerth had been kindled by Miss Nightingale, celebrated for her admirable achievements in the hospitals during the Crimean war, who had pointed to this Institution as the school where she had trained herself for her work, and to one of Fliedner's early Reports, which fell into her hands in her childhood, as the means which had first made her vocation in life clear to herself.

On his return Fliedner visited the Deaconess Institution in Paris, the next oldest 'Mother House' to Kaiserswerth. Here he found an asylum which offered a refuge to respectable maid-servants when out of place, where they were sheltered from the dangers of ordinary inns and lodging-houses. At Strasburg he had previously seen a school connected with the Deaconess House for training young girls to be good domestic servants. In Germany, as in France, complaints of the want of good servants were rife, but nothing was done as yet by Christian charity to form good servants; for fallen women many efforts were made, but no one thought of trying to keep those