be remembered that there is about friendship this peculiarity, and even superiority, as distinguished from all other ties whatsoever, it is contracted voluntarily, and by free selection; whereas, in ties of blood and relationship, a man has no choice, and people often drop into marriage through the force of circumstances, or are in a manner driven to out of self-defence, or self-interest, or worried into by urgent entreaty on the part of those who would be much better employed in minding their own affairs. However odious a habit of perpetual carping and criticising unquestionably is, there must still, even in the best assimilated attachments, arise discussions and differences, for where there is no freedom there will be stagnation, and the essence of life is movement. Faults may and will be committed on both sides, and pleading remonstrance, argument, and admonition may be found expedient, and even refreshing, bearing always in mind that he who wants to bend the iron must do it while it is hot, and that he who wishes to handle and use it must wait till it is cool.

'Admonish a friend,' says the son of Sirach, 'it may be he hath not done it, and if he have done it, that he do it no more. Admonish a friend, it may be that he hath not said it, and if he have, that he speak it not again.' But admonishing is not upbraiding; for that cuffing in misfortune, which the Hindoos call monkey sympathy, and of which Bildad the Shuhite affords the best example known, is, and ought to be, a legitimate cause for resentment. But it occasionally happens that the friend has not only done or said the thing imputed to him, but means to do it again, and in such a case the admonition often brings about an exhibition of that restiveness which is sometimes the prelude, and sometimes the signal, of a final rupture.

Miss Muloch has remarked that female friendship is equally strong and enduring as that of men, but that, these relations once interrupted, or dissolved, women are unable to resist the opportunity of publishing to the world those defects and infirmities in their former friends with which intimate confidence has made them acquainted. It is probable that some cases of the kind may have come under Miss Muloch's immediate observation, while her opportunities for lamenting over the weakness of men have been less frequent, and perhaps comparatively limited in kind; but we fear that what is more than probable if affirmed of any particular woman, is no less than true when affirmed of men in general. I do not know man,' says Le Maistre, but I know men, and they are horribly wicked.' 'You seldom need wait for the written life of a man to hear about his weaknesses, or what are supposed to be such,

such, if you know his intimate friends, or meet him in company with them,' is the conclusion of the author of Friends in Council.'

Incendere quod adoraveram-' Is it for dis I painted you in stripes, and stuck a feather in your tail?' demanded the angry negro before he finally devoted his disobedient fetish to the flames. All history teems with such sentences as these: 'From having been his warmest friend he became his bitterest. foe.' ( After their quarrel these two men, formerly so. attached, became distinguished for their mutual and impla cable enmity.' So true it is that the delirium of the convert is duly equalled by the vindictive animosity of a former idolater. As civil war is more cruel than any ordinary war, so are the feuds of parted friends more unappeasable than any other kind of feud. There is about these the sense of keen, personal animus not only felt but displayed. The unrestrained confidence of close attachment has made each combatant well aware of the weak points, and with a cruel instinct guides his sword to the tender or unprotected place. In this there is unquestionably a certain ungenerosity almost amounting to treachery; and, if it were fairly set forth to the contending parties, few but the very base would willingly act in this fashion; but the temptation is great, and yielded to almost unconsciously; indeed, only very lofty natures are capable of ruling their thoughts, and shaping their words and deeds wholly uninfluenced by previous knowledge and wounded affections.

Sometimes the rupture is unequal, and the friendship fails on one side only, and no amount of heart-yearning, no earnest endeavour, no pleading as tender and importunate as woman's prayer, can draw together the silver cords so loosened, or warm that death into life. Then comes the doubt, not of loving, but of being loved, when it is felt that anxiety and selfdenial are so carelessly regarded, the loving sacrifice so little considered, tenderness so negligently handled, patience so hardly strained, mortifications so needlessly inflicted; and thus it comes to pass that the heart is consumed on the altar without even so much ceremony as the saying of a mass over the offering. Sometimes, indeed, we have seen these victims persist in repenting and reproaching themselves, though for no transgression, in the futile hope of wringing an avowal of regret, a demand for pardon, nay, even the shadow of an entreaty for forgiveness. Bootless effort! O hook so vainly baited! And then the bitter memory of that unavailing concession of right to wrong is stored up to shrivel the fading flower of affection, and the fire of it passes over the dim red

embers

embers of expiring friendship, causing them to assume the pallor of ashes. Gone! irrevocably gone! A divorce is pronounced as final as ever was decreed by man—an interdict as heavy and potent as ever was uttered by Pontiff. Then bury your dead, and make no moan for him. A friendship resuscitated after this is about as likely to live as a galvanised

corpse.

A hopeless estrangement, arising from a collision on first principles, sometimes divides very true and loyal friends. Some momentous question is at issue, or a crisis occurs in which it is necessary to act as well as think, and the effect of this is to bring to light a radical difference of opinion respecting the way certain things are to be regarded or dealt with. One man will cling to faith, the other will hold to reason; one will dream of loyalty to a dynasty, the other of patriotism to his country; one will uphold the cause of order, the other has espoused the cause of liberty. A grave cause of difference is not unfrequently the devotion of the one to some particular doctrine, which the other is unable even to discuss with equanimity; or, again, the exhibition of great severity or great indulgence towards particular sins or sinners. Reasons of this kind have separated, and will separate, many noble hearts. The division is complete and lasting-the healing not in their lifetime. Yet the actual existence and presence of personal esteem and attachment is still felt, though not seen; as it has wrought, it still does work. In proportion to the freedom with which it sprang up is its hardness in dying out. It lives even in shadow and sorrow after the wrench of separation, when meeting more in this life, and hope of it, except as enrolled in opposing armies, and marching under different banners, is over for evermore.

We will conclude with a passage ad rem from the writings of one who has in his time suffered perhaps more severely from such causes than it has fallen to the lot of any living man to do:

'It was a weary time, that long suspense when with aching hearts we stood on the brink of a change; and it was like death to witness and to undergo when first one and then the other disappeared from the eyes of their fellow; and then friends stood on different sides of a gulf, and for years knew nothing of each other or their welfare; and then they fancied of each other the thing that was not, and there were misunderstandings and jealousies, and each saw each other as his ghost only in imagination and in memory; and all was suspense and anxiety, and hope delayed, and ill-requited care. But now it is all over, the morning is come, the separate shall

unite. I see them as if in sight of me. Look at me, my brethren, from our glorious land; look on us radiant with the light cast on us as by the saints and angels who stand over us; gaze on us as you approach, and kindle as you gaze. We died-you thought us dead; we live-we cannot return to you; you must come to us, and you are coming. Do not your hearts beat as you approach us? Do you not long for the hour that makes us one? * * * Is it possible that there is a resurrection even on this earth? O! wonderful grace; that there should be a joyful meeting after parting before we get to heaven.'

There is about these words a subtle tenderness, and a passionate beseeching, and beneath all there runs a steady undercurrent of secret triumph-triumph in the profound conviction of the power of the Infinite and the Unseen to prevail over the Finite and Seen, and of spiritual affinities to dissolve and vanquish even here and upon this earth all merely human antagonism and restlessness.

ART. IV.-EMPLOYMENTS FOR EDUCATED WOMEN.

UR age, it is often said, is an age of questions. So, no

doubt, had we means of full information on the matter, has every other age, more or less, been. For it is impossible to conceive any social condition which has not its evils, inconveniences, and difficulties, or any community of civilised men who would not have to exercise their understandings and prove their philanthropy in devising and carrying out means for the bettering or beautifying of their existence in some or other particulars. A due consideration of this obvious fact will save us from falling into the foolish habit of fancying the former times better on the whole than these; and, by preventing a querulous, unjust way of regarding our own time, will tend to fit us for a cheerful, patient grappling with the perplexities which may beset our path, and so lead us towards a satisfactory solution of them.

Still, there is no doubt, this age is, to a degree beyond most that have preceded it, impelled to busy itself with questions.' The very term threatens to become technical by frequent usage, in defiance of protest and ridicule on the part of purists. It would not be difficult, were this the occasion, to point out the cause or causes of this fact. Turn to what quarter of the world we may, glance at whatever pro

vince of our own national life we will, questions meet us everywhere, in immense variety, and of all degrees of importance, ranging from those touching the most momentous truths of religion, and the vastest international interests in peace and war, down to that notable Tanz-Frage (dance question) which, as we learnt from a writer in the Saturday Review, was recently discussed and settled in the venerable Republic of Uri.

Among the questions more particularly forcing themselves on our attention of late years in England is this relating to employments for educated women, on which we purpose to speak briefly, not only with a view to foster and extend an intelligent interest in it, but also in the hope that we shall be able to offer one or two suggestions of a practical nature which may be of service to some who need them.

It is necessary, at the outset, to remind our readers that we do not intend, on this occasion, to enter upon the general subject of the employments of women; but we select as our theme only one special branch of it, involving considerations of singular delicacy and difficulty-employments for educated women. It is obvious that while the pressing wants of a large class in society have necessitated the enlargement of the sphere of female labour, and given origin to several excellent and useful schemes for the profitable occupation of women and girls, so that large numbers of them, who might otherwise have been still languishing in enforced idleness, are now diligently at work and earning a decent livelihood, the case of educated women is not yet provided for. We are sure that those energetic and devoted ladies, whose names are now well known to the world in connection with the schemes we refer to, will not suspect that it is from any defect of sympathy with their aims, or of appreciation of their labours, that we say we have still to inquire how to meet the peculiar want of educated women. It is too obvious to need particular proof that they derive no benefit from the emigration scheme, that they cannot do the drudgery of law-copying, nor take their place in a railway office to work the telegraph, nor stand for ten or twelve hours a day at the compositor's case in the printing office. These are tasks within the capacity of those who have not had the opportunity of more than the most elementary instruction.

Moreover, while these schemes have been devised for the benefit of such as have a livelihood entirely to seek, it is our present desire to throw out hints which may be serviceable to such as are not wholly without means of living, but would gladly increase them if only they could discover how to do so,

and