beauty of holiness if it is shown her greatly and plainly; that the ignorant can yet be taught if patience be given; that the careless may yet be circumspect if cared for. We persevere, conscious that failures and disappointments are inevitable when the aim is not to make a temporary improvement, but to raise the ideas and radically change the habits of a class to help whom there has hitherto been so little effort made.

But there is yet the third class of girls who have been cast by the wave of misfortune into the workhouse. These are not touched by the societies for befriending young servants, for many have never been servants, and some have started on their career before the societies were formed. Some come in because their parents break up their homes and altogether "enter the House." In such a plight was poor Martha, a sickly girl of eighteen, too crippled to be fit for manual work. Her father was dead; her mother was so drunken that the workhouse was for her the only resort, and thither she came bringing her children with her and among them the poor weak Martha. The other children were sent to the district schools, but the cripple was too old to go there. There was nothing for her but to drag on a loveless, cheerless life, and make her home in that unhomely place. She was a bright willing lassie, but her labour, such as it was, was not needed there, where she was but one of the many useless ones who help to give trouble and swell the rates. I found her deft with her fingers, and capable, if not of entirely supporting herself, still of adding wealth to the world by her work. I soon found for her a home, where they were willing to teach her straw-basket work, and on drawing the attention of the guardians to her case, they at once consented to pay for the training. We occasionally see her. She has been taught to read and write, and to make bonnets and baskets quickly and well. She is very happy, and though sighing when speaking of the workhouse, she adds in the same

breath, "the Matron was real good to me there."

Some seek the workhouse because, alone in the world, and having lost their places, they know not where else to go. Some having drifted there more than once arouse the contempt and antagonism of the officers; and these, unloving and indifferent because unloved, lose all hope and interest, and grow stubborn and hard. With these girls my plan is to become their friend, and awaken their interest in life. One girl was sent to me, not yet twenty-one, who had passed through innumerable situations, who had been for six years in and out of the House continually, and who had once been sent to prison for a breach of the necessary discipline. She was pronounced "incorrigible" by the authorities. I confess to having felt powerless to work her reformation when I saw her. Her stubborn set face, her downcast dull eyes, her stolid refusal to speak in reply to whatever I said, her apathy on all subjects, made me feel that I had not a chance of touching her. I tried all ways, but at last aroused her by asking her to do something for me. The God-born sense of helpfulness in her awoke her sleeping soul. She felt she cared for the one person in all the world whom she had ever helped, and that affection has been her "saving grace." She is now earning 127. a year, more, as she says, than she had "earned in two years afore," and her face, manners, and character are rapidly improving. She comes to me to help her to choose her new clothes, and I could not be but satisfactorily amused when the "incorrigible" pauper insisted on having a "high art" coloured dress, declaring that none of the others I suggested were "half so pretty." I could tell many such stories, many beginning brightly and ending sadly, some turning out better than their commencement would have justified us in hoping. I could tell of one poor child who, motherless, and worse than fatherless, after a short training in a Home, is now in service, and paying

towards the support of her younger sister. Of another, whose awakened conscience made her hesitate for long as to her right to be confirmed because of the sin ignorantly committed which brought her to the rates. I could tell of women, rough and untutored, who have joyfully taken the hard, selfrestraining path which leads to righteousness, and who, having once been given great ideals, receive them as new truths, and patiently (pathetically so among their rude surroundings) endeavour to live up to them.

I think, though, I have said enough to induce other ladies to adopt the work. Taking the figures of the last two years' work at one workhouse, we have seen 141 women. Of these we have sent out, to service or to work, ninety-five; and out of these only five have again returned to the workhouse. Of many we have lost sight, which is not to be wondered at when the ignorance of the women of this class is con

sidered. A letter is to them a thing to be much pondered, but rarely attempted. Some, after long silences, reappear to ask advice in some temporary difficulty, or to tell of progress made. Many remain close friends, coming to see me on every holiday, or writing long and affectionate letters. One wrote the other day thanking me for having “altered her position in the world for one of more sterling worth." Her future did look gloomy when first I became acquainted with her. She was the daughter of a sea-side lodginghouse keeper, brought up in a cheap (and nasty!) boarding-school, was sent to London, with many false ideas about work, and some true ones about wickedness, to earn her living in any "genteel" employment. Her superficial education did not help her, and she came down lower and lower, till at last, finding herself in a lodging-house of doubtful reputation, she rightly chose the workhouse in preference to remaining there. Her widowed mother, unable to keep her, and fearful that her frivolities would influence badly her younger sisters, refused to receive her home. Her fine

ladyism and ignorance of any sort of household work were an effectual barrier to her taking service, while her sorry education prevented her even trying to teach. Service seemed to be the best opening for her, and the life best calculated to keep her straight. With some difficulty I persuaded her to look at it in this light, and then induced her to enter a servants' training home. She has earned good testimonials there, and is now a happy and useful

servant.

The work is in itself simple, and yet has issues important not only to the individuals helped, but to the community at large, for it tends to lessen pauperism, prostitution, and infanticide. It would be well if every lady of England were to consider if she cannot take part in it. If she is not herself able to visit the workhouse, she can, perhaps, open her house and heart to one of these girls who so sadly need such protection and care. Or, if that be impossible, each might undertake to befriend one of them.

Around every workhouse, a committee of ladies might be formed. The meetings need not, perhaps, be formal nor frequent, but merely friendly gatherings to compare experience, and to discuss reports of the work done. The visiting of the workhouse is, perhaps, for reasons which will be appreciated by those who are familiar with official establishment, better left to two or three of the members, who, after seeing the girls and learning their histories, should pass one or more to each member of the committee to provide for. Every lady can be a member of such a committee. Every woman can befriend another, and perhaps may be the more moved to do so when she who needs the help is a girl no older than her own daughter in the schoolroom. There are few who cannot help the work of such committees by contributing 18. a week for the helping of one little baby. Every one can spare a little of that loving care, can give a little of that all-saving friendship which so lavishly surrounds the life of most of us.

The work, too, is one which married ladies with homes, families, and social duties, can easily take up. Women in this position are debarred from much work for the poor, because their natural and thus more sacred, duties forbid them to run risks of infection, or to take up work which would necessitate the devoting of a regular, fixed day. But from both these disadvantages the work now under consideration is quite free. In the workhouse, the visitor is safe from infection; the visits can be made at any time, for the women are always there, and there is always somebody waiting to be helped whenever one can go. It is, of course, better to fix the day if possible so that those girls who have been seen once should be able to anticipate the second visit; but this is not at all essential. Frequently the duties of a mother or mistress do not permit her to be long absent from home. This work, excepting the periodical visit to the workhouse, can be done almost entirely from the writing-table in one's own house. It necessitates a good deal of correspondence in order to insure obtaining suitable situations and respectable nurses; but it requires comparatively little absence from home, for when the girl is once placed, the friendly connection can best be established and kept up in the lady's own house. There she can receive her otherwise friendless visitor, there she can strengthen the gentle bonds already begun in the House. There she can show to the homeless one some of the possibilities of home, and by such simple natural acts sow seed which will bring forth much good and happiness.

It is entirely a homely and personal work done in the home and in the interests of the individual and of the family; one full of elements of difficulty and frequently of disappointment and failure. It requires no costly machinery wherever there is one

woman who cares for other women; wherever there is a home full of the joys of family life; wherever two or three can meet together in common work, there is all the force that is required. If in every union and all its parishes, or even in many unions and some of their parishes, those who think that the work which has been done by a few working together is a useful one, will take up their part of the burden as it lies near their door, the work may grow. If it grow naturally and by no enforced development, its results may be larger than yet can be foreseen. New thought may develop new plans, wider interest may bring wider change. Our workhouses may become the means of restoring to joy and self-respect many who now leave these walls sad and degraded. Society may be strengthened by the new link between the envied rich and the unknown pauper; a link of unassailable strength, being formed of love and service. And if none of these things come to pass, the effort must still be good which rouses into action a part of that family life which in its rest is so beautiful.

HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.

[It is gratifying to find that the excellent work described in the foregoing pages is appreciated as it deserves. The Board of Guardians of the Whitechapel Union passed the following Resolution at their meeting of December 17th, 1878 :

That the best thanks of this Board be given to Mrs. Barnett and the ladies associated with her for the invaluable service rendered to the Union and the Community in the rescue of pauper women from a life of dependence and, oftentimes, degradation, and in assisting them to regain positions of independence and respectability, as also for the excellent Report now submitted and read, and that this Board do further express to Mrs. Barnett and her co-workers their grateful appreciation of the noble work in which they are engaged. -EDITOR.]

V.-OUTER SYRACUSE,

WE have already marked the great feature in the historical topography of Syracuse, namely that the newest city has shrunk up again within the oldest boundaries. So, we have also remarked, is the case at Akragas. The modern Girgenti occupies the akropolis only, as the modern Syracuse occupies that which at Syracuse historically answers to an akropolis, the island of Ortygia. But there is a difference in feeling in the two cases, a difference which perhaps arises from the difference between an akropolis and an island. In looking up from Ortygia, we cannot so readily take in the whole of the outer Syracuse as we can take in the whole of the outer Akragas in looking down from modern Girgenti. At Girgenti we are better able to take in at a glance that the whole once really was one city, a lesson which at Syracuse we know beforehand from the map, but which it takes some time practically to grasp. The remains of Akragas too come nearer to being

scattered over the whole of the once inhabited area, and from the smaller size of that area they stand within nearer reach of one another. But at Syracuse the distant points have to be reached either by a walk passing over the hill or by a drive skirting its base, a walk or drive so long that it is easy to forget for a moment that we are crossing what once were the streets, or following what once was the wall, of a single continuous city. From the castle of Maniakês, or indeed from any point within the island, to the fort of Euryalos, is truly a journey. When we reach the goal of the journey, we feel more thoroughly in another world than we do at any point of the area of Akragas, nay even at any point within the walls

But

of Rome. Many points within the walls of Rome are desolate enough, and are thoroughly cut off from the inhabited parts of the city. But there is the presence of the existing walls to bind them all together. At no point within the circuit of Aurelian do we ever forget that we are in Rome. it is something like a trial of faith to believe that Euryalos ever was part of the Syracusan city. It might, it strikes us at the first distant glance, have been an outpost of the Syracusan territory; it is surely too far off to have ever become part of the defences of the city itself. And this fancy may perhaps be strengthened by the impression which is for ever made on our minds by that particular piece of Syracusan history with which most of us are most familiar. The Syracuse which was besieged by Nikias was in an intermediate stage between the Syracuse of Archias and the Syracuse of the second Hierôn. The Euryalos of that day was no part of the immediate defences of the city, but a detached fort, answering, it would seem-I speak under correction from military experts-to the forts which crown the more distant heights above Verona and Ragusa. Again, there is a very distinct division between two parts of outer Syracuse, which two parts stand in two very different relations to the inner Syracuse. The chief remains of the outer city are clustered together at no great distance from one another, at no great distance from the inner city itself. The chief objects to which the traveller is carried the theatre, the amphitheatre, the altar of Hierôn, the socalled ear of Dionysios, the quarries, the catacombs-all group more or less together, and we do not feel that they are wholly foreign to Ortygia. It is

not till we reach the lonely fort far away that we fully feel ourselves in another region. Then it does need an effort to bring to our minds the truth that we are still in Syracuse; and in making that effort, we fully take in what the greatness of Syracuse really

was.

The oldest part of the outer cityfor a long while distinctively the outer city is the high ground known as Achradina, immediately__ overlooking the sea on two sides. It turns the corner by the headland which, in a corrupted shape, still keeps the name of the Panagia, a remembrance of the days when Syracuse had become Christian without ceasing to be Greek. This, the first Syracuse beyond the island, seems to have been originally a wholly distinct town, with its own fortifications, which did not even touch those of Ortygia. The point in dispute is whether this state of things lasted down to the Athenian siege, and whether it was the needs of warfare at that moment of danger which first caused the whole or part of the lower ground between the island and the hill to be taken within the defences of the city. That Achradina should have its own defences was not wonderful. It was in some sort the akropolis: physically at all events it was such; it may even have in some sort played the part of an akropolis during the days of the commonwealth.

It was

Dionysios who made Ortygia the special stronghold of despotism. It is certainly unusual for a city to enlarge itself on ground not wholly contiguous, with an undefended space left between the two parts. Such an arrangement would suggest, what otherwise there is no hint of, that Ortygia and Achradina were distinct settlements fused into one city and girded by common defences, like the hills of Rome. In such a case the fact that one of the chief parts of the city, that which was most thickly filled with public buildings, arose on the ground between the height and the island, would be exactly analogous to the Roman forum.

But

there is nothing to make us think that Achradina ever was a settlement distinct from Syracuse, or that it was anything but an enlargement of the ancient island city. And it must be rembered that, as long as the island was an island, before it was artificially joined to the mainland, the conditions were not exactly the same as those of a city extending itself over an adjoining hill or plain. Where water had to be crossed, no point was absolutely contiguous, and the new settlement might be made at any point that was thought good. Still it is hard to believe that the ground between Achradina and Ortygia remained altogether unwalled till the coming of the Athenian fleet. Uninhabited it could not have remained; it must in any case have been a populous suburb. From the days of the great siege at least, it became, together with the part of the hill immediately above it

under the name of Neapolis, Newtown-an essential part of the city. The name suggests some thoughts. We think of other cities, where the newer settlement alone remains, and where the elder has ceased to be a dwellingplace of man. It is so in a crowd of cities, among which we may fairly count Athens and Rome. The Akropolis and the Palatine are museums of antiquity, not habitations of men. Corinth has come down from her height, and has now wandered altogether away to the shore. Modern Corfu stands on another peninsula from ancient Korkyra, as distinct as New Salisbury in the plain from Old Salisbury on the hill. But at Syracuse we may rather think of another Neapolis, one with which Syracuse and all Sicily have sometimes had more to do than they have wished, that Campanian Neapolis on the shore which supplanted the elder Parthenopê on the height. There the new city rose to greatness, while the elder city -the Palaipolis-vanished out of sight and out of mind, perhaps to come again into being in our own time as a scattered suburb of the new. Naples,