on the habit of repairing to a savings' bank, as well as on the habit of attendance on schools or churches

-and we are sure with a tenfold greater result than before, so as to make it nearly universal within his own portion of the territory.

13. But let us now resume the consideration of that in which after all the great power of our philanthropist lies. There is immense material benefit rendered to the people by the various services which we have now specified; but these he could not have done without their own co-operation, and this it had been impossible to carry without a certain mastery over their affections. He had no authority to force, save that moral authority, which has gained for itself a willing obedience, at once spontaneous and sure. It is his good will which has earned for him their good will. His attentions, the time and trouble which he takes, are the simple expedients, by which he gets his ascendancy over them. They indicate his kind feeling toward themselves and their families; and herein lies the great secret of his power. It may be difficult to explain, but easy to perceive, how this power should become tenfold more effective, by the concentration of these various good offices on the contiguous households of one and the same locality. There is in it somewhat like the strength of an epidemic influence, which spreads by infection, and more amalgamates the people both with him and with each other.* We wonder

*

* On the effect of this influence see the "Christian and Economic Polity of a Nation," in Vol. I., p. 76, being Vol. XIV. of the series; and in my volume on Church Extension, p. 56, being Vol. XVII. of the series.

not that Lord Melbourne in one of his speeches should have expressed such jealousy of these household visitations-for though he misconceived the object of them, as if it had been to poison the inmates with a feeling of hostility to government, he did not in the least overrate their power-the power not by which a demagogue, whose element is agitation, inflames the passions of a restless and excited multitude whom he has lured from their occupations and their homes, but the power of Christian charity over human hearts; and which if once made to pervade, by the assumption of district after district, the great bulk and body of a population, would, in the privacies of domestic life, lay a deep foundation of peace and righteousness, not to be unsettled by those fiery spirits who now live by the impostures which they practise on a deluded and misled because a neglected commonalty-who are an easy prey to the bad, only because the good have not yet found their way to them. And it is incalculable by how little a sacrifice each may acquire for himself a lordship for good, and the best of all, because over the hearts of his own little community. I will not tell him beforehand, but leave him to the surprise of his own experience, when he finds by how few hours in the week, or such odd half hours of the time as he may have at his own disposal, he may obtain that mastery, which will open a way for him to the fulfilment of all his wishes. The passing run even of a few minutes among the households is not without its efficacy. Let him ever and anon be making presentation of himself to the same eyes; and he will be the talk

of people on the same stair-the object of a common reference and recognition among the inmates of his own locality. And a common object does beget a common sympathy. It is thus that the same numerical amount of attentions and good offices done to fifty families far apart from each other does not tell with half the influence they have, when discharged upon them in a state of juxtaposition concentrated, as it were, within the limits of one and the same territory. It is marvellous how soon at this rate he might become the familiar of all, and even the friend, the intimate and confidential friend of a few, and these the best. among the families of this little neighbourhood; and so it is that all the bland and beneficent influences of a village economy can be most easily set up in the moral wilderness of a city, in the very heart and deepest interior of a crowded metropolis.

14. What we most desiderate in an agent of charity, is to have one with the taste and the inclinations of a thorough localist-one who rejoices in a home-walk, and would like better that it should be pervaded thoroughly, than that he should scatter his regards among the thousand objects of a wide and distant philanthropy. I would rather that he restrained his ambition for what is great, so as that he might give himself wholly to the little which he can fully overtake. Better do one thing completely and well, than a hundred things partially and superficially. It is not to the magnificent survey of him, whose eyes like those of Solomon's fool are on all the ends of the earth, that I would look for any solid contribution to the

amelioration of our species; but to the humble pains-taking of many single labourers, each giving himself duteously and devotedly to his own manageable sphere, and satisfied that he has not lived in vain, if he have raised the tone of character, or added to the comfort by rectifying and improving the habits of fifty families. The result universal is made up of many items, and can only be arrived at by a summation of particulars. For the book of philanthropy, like that of philosophy, is a book of many pages; and it is not to universalists that we look for the completion of either, but to the manifold assiduities of those, who, whether by patient study on the one field or persevering action on the other, each fill up a single leaf or a single line of them. It is not by one great simultaneous effort, that even a single city is to be overtaken; but by the piece-meal and successive efforts of men engaged in the humbler but more practicable task of making out one district after another, and one parish after another-each labouring unseen by the general eye on his own little domain; but where the want of eclat and magnitude is amply repaired by the nearer approach which can be made to the objects of our benevolence, and so the more intense because the less divided affectionlike that which plays in secret within the bosom of families and homes. We read in the New Testament parables, that each possessor of so many talents who turned them to full account was re warded by the charge of as many cities. Certain it is, as we have already said, that there is a delight, one of the best and purest we can enjoy, in

the prosperous management of human nature; and it looks as if this, one of the pleasures of the good here, were followed up by a larger enjoyment of the same in the realms of light and blessedness hereafter. We know that there will be service there.* And if they who turn others into righteousness shall shine as the stars in the firmament, we may guess from this their sightlier elevation, that there will be superintendence there-as if the little that was well done on earth were to be followed up by larger powers and opportunities of well-doing in that region on high where charity never faileth.t

SECTION II. On the Difficulties and Duties of him who undertakes the office of Almoner to a given Population.

1. HITHERTO, and in our description of the good offices which might be rendered to a people, when we introduced the element of money, it was not of money given to, but received from themselves— either as contributors for their own behoof to a savings' bank, or as the helpers in small and frequent offerings of a charitable scheme. But the philanthropist when he becomes an almoner, reverses this process. He gives, instead of takes; and one should like to know the duties, and as well

* Rev. xxii. 3.

+ We have spoken at greater length on the general and magnificent result being only to be obtained by the accumulation of littles in our Christian and Economic Polity of a Nation, Vol. I., or Vol. XIV. of the series, p. 102-104.