may equal, and whom, I hope and believe, many girls excel."

I asked Mrs. Stanley's permission to attend the young ladies in one of their benevolent rounds. "When I have leisure to be of the party," replied she, smiling, "you shall accompany us. I am afraid to trust your warm feelings. Your good nature would perhaps lead you to commend as a merit, what in fact deserves no praise at all, the duty being so obvious, and so indispensable. I have often heard it regretted that ladies have no stated employment, no profession. It is a mistake. Charity is the calling of a lady; the care of the poor is her profession. Men have little time or taste for details. Women of fortune have abundant leisure, which can in no way be so properly or so pleasantly filled up, as in making themselves intimately acquainted with the worth, and the wants of all within their reach. With their wants, because it is their bounden duty to administer to them; with their worth, because without

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without this knowledge they cannot administer prudently and appropriately."

I expressed to Mrs. Stanley the delight with which I had heard of the admirable regulations of her family, in the manage ment of the poor, and how much their power of doing good was said to be enlarged by the judgment and discrimination with which it was done.

"We are far from thinking," replied she, "that our charity should be limit-. ed to our own immediate neighbourhood. We are of opinion, that it should not be left undone any where, but that there it should be done indispensably.. We consider our own parish as our more appropriate field of action, where providence, by fixing the bounds of our habi-. tation,' seems to have made us peculiarly responsible for the comfort of those whom he has doubtless placed around us for that purpose. It is thus that the Almighty vindicates his justice, or rather calls on us to vindicate it. It is thus he explains why

he

he admits natural evil into the world, by making the wants of one part of the community an exercise for the compassion of the other.

Surely," added Mrs. Stanley," the reason is particularly obvious, why the bounty of the affluent ought to be most liberally, though not exclusively, extended to the spot whence they derive their revenues. There seems indeed to be a double motive for it. The same act involves a duty both to God and to man. The largest bounty to the necessitous on our estates, is rather justice than charity. 'Tis but a kind of pepper-corn acknowledgment to the great Lord and proprietor of all, from whom we hold them. And to assist their own labouring poor is a kind of natural debt, which persons who possess great landed property owe to those from the sweat of whose 'brow they derive their comforts, and even their riches. 'Tis a commutation, in which, as the advantage is greatly on

our

our side, so is our duty to diminish the difference, of paramount obligation."

I then repeated my request, that I might be allowed to take a practical lesson in the next periodical visit to the cottagers.

Mrs. Stanley replied, "As to my girls, the elder ones, I trust, are such veterans in their trade, that your approbation can do them no harm, nor do they stand in need of it as an incentive. But should the little ones find that their charity procures them praise, they might perhaps be charitable for the sake of praise, their benevolence might be set at work by their vanity, and they might be led to do that from the love of applause, which can only please God, when the principle is pure. The iniquity of our holy things, my good friend, requires much Christian vigilance. Next to not giving at all, the greatest fault is to give from ostentation. contest is only between two sins. The motive robs the act of the very name of virtue, while the good work that is paid

The

in praise, is stripped of the hope of higher retribution."

On my assuring Mrs. Stanley, that I thought such an introduction to their systematic schemes of charity might inform my own mind and improve my habits, she consented, and I have since been a frequent witness of their admirable method; and have been studying plans, which involve the good both of body and soul. Oh! if I am ever blest with a coadjutress, a directress let me rather say, formed under such auspices, with what delight shall I transplant the principles and practices of Stanley Grove to the Priory! Nor indeed would I ever marry but with the animating hope that not only myself, but all around me, would be the better and the happier for the presiding genius I shall place three.

Sir John Belfiek had joined us while we were on this topic. I had observed sometimes that though he was earnest on the general principle of benevolence,

VOL. II.

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which