noble cause must be some noble personality-some one human being who has conceived and carried into execution some one idea, and on whose peculiar character the success of the whole undertaking mainly depends.

Therefore, without trenching on the sacred privacy which ought above all to be observed towards women, I may just say that it was impossible to look on this little gentle-spoken, quiet woman, who, out of her own darkened life, had originated such a light to the blind, without a feeling of great reverence and great humility. We, who can drink in form and colour at every pore of our being, to whom each sunset is a daily feast, each new landscape a new delight, who in pictures, statues, and living faces beloved have continual sources of ever-renewed enjoyment-God help us, how unthankful, how unworthy we are!

Miss Gilbert and myself arranged that I should visit her institution, in order to say anything that occurred to me to say about it in print. "For," added she, "we want to be better known, because we want help. Without more customers to our shop we must lessen the work we give out, and refuse entirely the one hundred and fifty applicants who are eagerly waiting for more, and meantime living as they best can, in workhouses or by street begging. And winter is coming on, you know.".

Winter to these poor-not necessarily belonging to the hardened pauper class, in many cases neither unrefined nor uneducated, since of the thirty thousand blind in the United Kingdom nine-tenths are ascertained to have become so after the age of twenty-one. It was a sad thought-these one hundred and fifty poor souls waiting for work-not for wealth, or hope, or amusement, simply for work something to fill up a few hours of their long day in the dark, something to put food into their mouths of their own earning, and save them from eating the bitter duty-bread of friends, or the charity-bread of strangers. I arranged to meet Miss Gilbert the next day, at 127, Euston Road.

from the other houses in this neighbourhood, except that outside its shop-door there hung a picture not badly painted, representing a room occupied by busy blind work-people. The shop itself was entirely filled with baskets, mats, brushes, &c. And there one of the only four persons in the establishment who is not blind, was engaged in serving a few-far too few customers.

No "sighted"--to use the touching word which they seemed to have coined, these fellow-sufferers, in speaking of us, as if the light of the eyes were a great, peculiar gift-no "sighted" person can enter this house of busy darkness without a strange, awed feeling. To be in a place where everybody is blind! a blind housemaid to sweep and clean-and very well it is done too: a blind porter to carry messages: a blind attendant to show you through dim passages, where you meet other blind people quietly feeling their way, intent on their various avocations, and taking no heed of you. It is like being brought into a new kind of existence, in the which at first you doubt if you are not an unwarrantable intruder. You feel shy and strange. The common phrases, "Yes, I see," or, "It looks so and so," make you start after uttering them, as if you had said something unnatural and unkind. Only at first. Soon you are taught to recognise that undoubted fact, recorded by both sufferers and observers, that of all God's afflicted ones there are none whom His mercy has made so cheerful, so keenly and easily susceptible of happiness, as the blind.

We went to the little parlour, furnished, like the rest of the house, with the utmost simplicity-no money wasted, as charities often do waste it, in useless elegancies, or in handsomely-paid officials. The only official here is Mr. Levy, the director, to whose intelligence and ingenuity the working of the whole scheme —which, indeed, he mainly plannedis safely consigned. Under his guidance -the blind instructing the seeing-we examined various inventions, some of

in writing, reading, and geography, both to those born blind and to those who have since become so. He likewise showed us a system of musical notation, by means of which the blind can learn the science as well as the practice of this their great solace and delight. Simple as these contrivances were, they would be difficult to explain within the limits of this paper; besides, persons interested therein can easily find out all for themselves by application at 127, Euston Road, London: where, also, any collector of objects of science, fossils, minerals, stuffed animals, and the like not subject to injury from handling may give entertainment and information to many an intelligent mind, to whom otherwise the wonderful works of God in nature must for ever remain unknown. The delight his little museum affords is, Mr. Levy told us, something quite incredible.

Beside it, and more valuable still, is the circulating library of embossed books, for the use of the blind; among these is an American edition of Milton. How the grand old man would have rejoiced could he have foretold the day when, without interpreters, the blind would be taught to behold all that he beheld when, although

"So thick a drop serene had quenched those orbs,"

he was able, perhaps all the more through that visual darkness, to see clear into the very heaven of heavens. And when, to show us how fast the blind could read by touch only, Mr. Levy opened at random a Testament, and read as quickly as any ordinary reader some verses-they happened to be in Revelations-one felt how great was the blessing by which this (to us) blank white page was made to convey to the solitary blind man or woman images such as that of the City "which had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine on it, for the glory of GoD did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.”

Passing from this little sanctum, the centre of so much thought and ingenuity,

and women employed in the house from nine to six daily. In the latter were about a dozen women busy over brushmaking, bead-work and leather-work. The brush-making was the most suc cessful, since in all ornamental work the blind cannot hope to compete with those to whom the glory of colour and the harmonies of form have been familiar unrecognised blessings all their lives. But it was a treat to see those poor women, some old, some young, all so busy and so interested in their work; and to know that but for this Association they would be begging in the streets, or sitting in helpless, hopeless, miserable idleness-the lowest condition, short of actual vice, to which any human being can fall.

More strongly still one felt this among the men in some of whom it was easy to read the history of the intelligent, industrious respectable artizan, from whom sudden loss of sight took away his only means of subsistence, dooming him for the rest of his days to dependence on his friends, or on the honest man's last horror, the workhouse. One guessed how eagerly he would come to such an establishment as this in Euston Road, which, offering to teach him a blind man's trade, and to supply him with work after he had learnt it, gave him a little hope to begin the world again. The skill attainable by clever fingers unguided by eyes is wonderful enough: but then the learning of a new trade in the dark requires of course double patience and double time. Nay, at best, a man who has to feel for everything cannot expect to get through the same amount of work in the same number of hours as the man who sees everythinghis tools, his materials, and the result of his labour. The blind must always work at a disadvantage, but it is a great thing to enable them to work at all. No one could look round on these men, most of them middle-aged, and several, we heard, fathers of families, without feeling what a blessing indescribable is even the small amount of weekly work and weekly wage with which they are here supplied,

whose lives is essentially work: who in that darkness which has overtaken them at noon-day, have none of those elegant resources for passing time away, which solace the wealthy blind: to whom there is no pleasure in idleness-or, bitterer still, to whom enforced idleness is simply another word for starvation.

And here, to make clear the working of this part of the Association, let me copy a few lines from notes that were furnished to me by its foundress :

"Those workmen who know a trade are employed at their homes, and "receive the selling price for their work, "buying their materials of the Associa"tion. No extra charge is made to the "public upon their work. . . . Those who

are learning trades at Euston Road re"ceive a portion of their earnings for "themselves: the rest pays for materials "and goes as profit to the Institution. "The teaching of trades is a costly part "of the work. Many of the learners "cannot be supported by their friends, "and are therefore boarded in houses "connected with the Association-the "money being provided by those inter"ested in the individual, or by his "parish, or in both these ways.

The

"weekly terms are 9s. for each man, "and 78. 6d. for each woman-at which "rate the managers and matrons of each "house undertake to make it pay. They "have no salary. In proportion as the "pupil's earnings increase, the sum con"tributed for his board diminishes. In 66 some instances the Association bears "the chief cost. When he has learnt "his trade, the Association may or may "not employ him, or he is at liberty to "start on his own account: but practi

cally he is sure to ask for employment.

"The great object is to enable the "blind, as a class, to earn their own livelihood, and to elevate their condi"tion generally. If the sighted would "help the blind by acting to them the "part of levers, to raise them out of "their present state, rather than of props "to support them in it-the blind would "most thankfully recognise that aid "which they cannot well dispense with,

"accepting it, they reduce their honest "independence in the least possible "degree."

This principle of the cultivation of independence, is the greatest and best feature of the Association. Charity is a blessed thing, when all other modes of assistance fail: but till then, it should never be offered to any human being; for it will assuredly deteriorate, enervate, and ultimately degrade him. Let him, to the last effort of which he is capable, work for himself, trust to himself, educate and elevate himself. Show him how to do this-help him to help himself, and you will every day make of him a higher and happier being.

So thought I, while watching a lad of only twenty-one, who three years before had lost first sight and then hearing. Totally deaf and blind, his only communication with the outer world is by the sense of touch. Yet it was such a bright face-such a noble head and brow -you saw at once what a clever man he would have made. And there was such a refinement about him, down to his very hands, so delicately shaped, so quick, flexible, and dexterous in their motions -the sort of hands that almost invariably make music, paint pictures, write poems. Nothing of that sort, alas! would ever come out of the silent darkness in which for the remainder of his days lay buried this poor lad's soul. Yet when Mr. Levy, taking his hand, began to talk to him on it-the only way by which the blind can communicate with the deafblind-he turned round the most affectionate delighted face, and caught the sentence at once.

"P-1-a plane. Lady wanting to see me plane? I'll get the board in a minute."

The voice was somewhat unnatural, and the words slowly put together, as if speech, which he could still use, but never hear, were gradually becoming a difficulty to him. But he set to his carpentering with the most vivid delight; and having planed and sawed for our benefit, again lent himself to Mr. Levy's conversation.

"Lady wishes to see my toys? I'll

as if he had eyes, the lad mounted to a high shelf, where were ranged, orderly in a row, a number of children's toys, manufactured in a rough but solid style of cabinet-making-the last made, which he brought down and exhibited with great pride, being a tiny table with a movable top and "turned" feet- a table that would be the envy of some ambitious young carpenter of seven years old, and the pride and glory of his sister's dolls' tea-party; as it may be yet-to bairns I know. How its maker's face kindled at the touch of the silver coin, and the shake of the hand, which was the only way in which our bargain could be transacted.

"She's bought my table. Lady's bought my table." And then, with a sudden fit of conscientiousness, Who shall I give the money to ?" evidently thinking it ought to be counted among his week's wages, paid by the Association.

I inquired how much he earned.

"Seventeen shillings a week, and could earn much more if we only had it to give him. But even that makes a great difference. When he came, he was so moping and down-hearted, chiefly, he said, because it grieved him to be dependent on his two sisters. Now he is all right, and the merriest fellow possible. I asked him the other day if he were happy. 'Happy!' he said, 'to be sure I am. What have I to make me otherwise? It would be a great shame if I were anything but happy.'"

Poor soul-poor simple, blessed soul ! the greatest man on earth might be less enviable than this lad, totally deaf and blind.

I have thus given a plain account of what I saw and heard that day. Any one with more time, more money, and more practical wisdom to spare, could hardly expend them better than in becoming "eyes to the blind" by a few visits to 127, Euston Road.

And sometimes, when that shroud uplifts, The far green fields show strange and fair;

Mute waterfalls in silver rifts
Sparkle adown the hill-side bare.

But ah! mists gather, more and more; And though the blue sky has no tears,

And the sea laughs with light all o'er,The lovely Island disappears.

O vanished Island of the blest !
O dream of all things pure and high!
Hid in deep seas, as faithful breast

Hides loves that have but seemed to

Whether on seas dividing toss'd,

Or led through fertile lands the while, Better lose all things than have lost The memory of the morning Isle ! For lo when gloaming shadows glide, And all is calm in earth and air, Above the heaving of the tide

The lonely Island rises fair;

Its purple peaks shine, outlined grand
And clear, as noble lives nigh done;
While stretches bright from land to land
The broad sea-pathway to the sun.
He wraps it in his glory's blaze,
He stoops to kiss its forehead cold;
And, all transfigured by his rays,

It gleams-an Isle of molten gold. The sun may set, the shades descend, Earth sleep-and yet while sleeping smile;

But it will live unto life's end