worker, though she be only employed in assisting in housekeeping and at the family work-table, just as fairly and as completely as if she walked to a solicitor's office for an eight hours' daily task of copying briefs and making out bills of costs.

64

"They work in spirit who for service wait."

Frederick Robertson glowingly expatiates on the glory of womanhood, as surely one which, if woman rightly comprehended her place on earth, might enable her to accept its apparent humiliation unrepiningly; the glory, as he defines it, of unsensualizing coarse and common things, sensual things, the objects of mere sense, meat and drink and household cares, elevating them by the spirit in which she ministers them, into something transfigured and sublime. "The humblest mother of a poor family, who is cumbered with much serving, or watching over a hospitality which she is too poor to delegate to others, or toiling for love's sake in household work, needs no emancipation in God's sight. It is the prerogative and the glory of her womanhood to consecrate the meanest things by a ministry which is not for self." What hundreds and thousands of female invalids have felt, and almost in the same words said, with Lucy Aikin, when enfeebled with age and other ailments, "The thought which sits heavy on my mind is that of my own inutility. Alas! what important end of existence do I fulfil ? To whom is it of any real consequence whether or not I continue to fill a place in the world? I hope that involuntary uselessness will not be imputed, and that we may say, 'They also serve who only stand and wait.'" A fellow-worker of the same sex, but made of sterner stuff, in the dedication of a book written in illness, tells her friend, "You know, as well as I, how withering would be the sense of our own nothingness, if we tried to take comfort from our own dignity and usefulness.” And she goes on to say how ridiculous, if it were not shocking, would be any complacency on the ground of having followed the instincts of her nature to work, while work was possible,— the issues of such divinely appointed instrumentality being wholly brought out and directed by Him who framed and actuated her. To apply the words of Aurora Leigh:

"Though we fail indeed,—

You, I, a score of such weak-workers,-He
If He cannot work by us,

Fails never.
He will work over us. Does He want a man,
Much less a woman, think you? Every time
The star winks there, so many souls are born,
Who all shall work too. Let our own be calm:

We should be ashamed to sit beneath those stars,
Impatient that we're nothing."

So Mrs. Browning. And pitched in the self-same key is this stanza of her husband's :

"All service ranks the same with God:

If now, as formerly He trod

Paradise, His presence fills

Our earth, each only as God wills

Can work-God's puppets, best and worst,

Are we ; there is no last nor first."

Wordsworth is eloquently suggestive in those prefatory lines of his, which weave a moral and infer a solace, from the fact, that the stars pre-eminent in magnitude, and they that from the zenith dart their beams, are yet of no diviner origin, no purer essence, than the one he watched from Rydal Mount, burning like an untended watch-fire on the ridge of some dark hill-top; or than those which seem

"Humbly to hang, like twinkling winter lamps,
Among the branches of the leafless trees;
All are the undying offspring of one Sire.
Then, to the measure of the light vouchsafed,
Shine, poet, in thy place, and be content."

If we weave a yard of tape in all humility, says Emerson, and as well as we can, long hereafter we shall see that it was "no cotton tape at all, but some galaxy which we braided, and that the threads were Time and Nature." Without number, as Archdeacon Hare puts it, are the sutlers and pioneers, the engineers and artisans, who attend the march of intellect; many of them busied in building and fitting up and painting and emblazoning the chariot; others in lessening the friction of the wheels; while others move forward in detachments, and level the way

it is to pass over, and cut down the obstacles which would
impede its progress. And these too, he proceeds to say, "have
their reward. If so be they labour diligently in their calling,
not only will they enjoy that calm contentment which diligence
in the lowliest task never fails to win ; not only will the sweat
of their brows be sweet, and the sweetener of the rest that
follows; but, when the victory is at last achieved, they come
in for a share of the glory; even as the meanest soldier who
fought at Marathon or at Leipsic became a sharer in the glory
of those saving days." Remember, with Owen Meredith,-
"Remember, every man God made

Is different has some deed to do,
Some work to work. Be undismay'd
Though thine be humble: do it too.

An elder teacher would qualify the Remember by a Do not forget, that "it matters infinitely less what we do than what we are." If we cannot pursue a trade or a science—says a memorable voice from a sick-room,—if we cannot keep house, or help the state, or write books, or earn our own bread or that of others, we can do the work to which all this is only subsidiary; "we can cherish a sweet and holy temper; we can vindicate the supremacy of mind over body; we can, in defiance of our liabilities, minister pleasure and hope to the gayest who come prepared to receive pain from the spectacle of our pain; we can, here as well as in heaven's courts hereafter, reveal the angel growing into its immortal aspect, which is the highest achievement we could propose to ourselves, or that grace from above could propose to us, if we had a free choice of all possible conditions of human life."

To all those possible conditions, so manifold in their potentialities, the doctrine applies. The membership is a constant quantity. Nil me officit unquam, says Horace, Ditior hic, aut est quia doctior; est locus uni Cuique suus. And we have Shakspeare's word for it, that nought so vile upon the earth doth live, but to the earth some special good doth give; and though he is speaking of stones and the like, are there not sermons in stones, as well as good in everything?

Holy George Herbert shall furnish us with a versicle to the purpose. As ever, he is looking upwards when he says,

"Indeed the world's Thy book

Where all things have their leaf assign'd:

Yet a meek look

Hath interlined.

Thy board is full, yet humble guests

Find nests."

But more pertinent, and less quaintly obscure, is that stanza from another little lyric of his, in which the Country Parson exalts the exalting power of a simple trust in God and devotion to His service:

"A servant with this clause

Makes drudgery divine :

Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine."

THE WRATH-DISPELLING POWER OF A SOFT

WHIL

ANSWER.

PROVERBS XV. I.

HILE it is the effect, if not the
grievous words to stir up anger,

end and aim, of

a soft answer turn

eth away wrath." Though "the wrath of a king is as messengers of death, a wise man will pacify it." "By long forbearing is a prince persuaded, and a soft tongue breaketh the bone."

When the men of Ephraim, enraged at Gideon's failing to invoke their aid when he went to fight with the Midianites, chided with him sharply, his soft answer was of instant avail to turn away their wrath. What had he done now in comparison of them? the champion deferentially exclaimed; and what was he able to do in comparison of them? Was not the mere gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the entire vintage of Abi-ezer? "Then their anger was abated toward him, when he had said that." What threatened to be a very

bone of contention, well, so soft a tongue as that of Jerubbaal, who is Gideon, breaketh the bone.

Discussing Lord Aberdeen's settlement of the vexed question of the right of search, in 1843, the historian of Europe observes that never was there a truer maxim than that it requires the consent of two persons to make a quarrel; a soft word, a seasonable explanation, often turns aside wrath, and sometimes prevents the most serious wars that threaten to devastate the world. Æsop Smith says he never knew a downright quarrel yet, where two people were not in the wrong; "drop your battledore, and the shuttlecock will fall. A soft answer turneth away wrath.' No doubt it does, in nine cases out of ten," -but not quite always, this authority affirms; there being some unreasonable quarrellers, who will batter the peacemaker when he drops his battledore. But as a rule, and on the authority of an older and still more widely recognised maker of proverbs, the mere fact of yielding pacifieth great offences.

The historian of the conquest of Peru tells us how Gasca was assailed by reproaches and invectives which, however, had no power to disturb his equanimity; he patiently listened, and replied to all in the mild tone of expostulation best calculated to turn away wrath. "By this victory over himself," says Garcilasso, "he acquired more real glory, than by all his victories over his foes." As Spenser has it,-

"Words well-disposed

Have secret power t' appease inflamèd rage."

Sir Matthew Hale's celebrated letter of advice includes this counsel,-if a person be passionate, and give you ill language, rather to pity him than be moved to anger. We shall find, the pious judge asserts, that silence, or very gentle words, are the most exquisite revenge for reproaches; they will either cure the distemper in the angry man, and make him sorry for his passion, or they will be a severe reproof and punishment to him. "But at any rate," adds Sir Matthew, "they will preserve your innocence, give you the deserved reputation of wisdom and moderation, and keep up the serenity and composure