they bring back to "the family" their slothful selfindulgence, garnished with the graceful amenities of life "in the bush." What are we to do with them? It would be absurd to think of educating them for a learned profession, and many of them are above a trade. You pester your friends in power to get them something. You peril your soul's safety in all the lies you tell of them-of their rectitude and good conduct and suchlike. You apologise for their educational deficiencies on pleas of bad health or accident, and profess a heartfelt belief in their capacity to be policemen, tidewaiters, viceconsuls, or taxgatherers. You know in your heart what a mine you are charging, but you meanly hope that you may not be there on the day of the explosion. But I will not go on. I need not dwell on what is in the experience of almost every one. These creatures belong to our age just as much as the cholera. All times have probably had them in one form or other, but we see them as a class, and we recognise them by traits as marked as any that stamp a career in life. What will you do with them? I ask. Are you content to see them settled on the country as a sort of human national debt, and to call on others to support the charge? or do you desire to regard them as something eminently conservative some remnant of ancestral

wisdom that it would be an act of desecration

to destroy?

Certainly such are not my sentiments. If there be nothing for which these people are fitted, I say then, let them do something for which they are not fitted. The spectacle of idle incapacity is as offensive to an active and industrious nation as the public exposure of any hideous disease.

Now it is not always easy to hit upon a remunerative career which shall neither require education nor abilities, neither skill, capacity, nor even industry; and such is our present desideratum. We want an employment suitable for a gentleman-all these creatures I speak of are so-called gentlemen— which shall not demand anything above the first rudiments of knowledge; which shall neither exact early rising nor late retiring; which can be fulfilled in any easy morning hour, or, if left undone, will entail no evil results; and above all, which shall be well paid. I ask proudly, is it not a triumph to our age that such a career exists, and that hundreds, I might say thousands, are now deriving from it means of ease and enjoyment, who, but for it, would have been in hopeless indigence and want?

In this age, too, of pestilent examination and inquiry, in which the humblest occupation must be approached through a fellowship course, what a

blessing to think there is a career that asks no test for which there is neither fitness nor unfitness, and whose followers stand on an equality that even angels might envy !

You are impatient to know what I allude to, and I will not torture your eagerness. If, then, there be of your family one too ignorant for a profession, too indolent for commerce, too old for the army or navy, hopelessly incapable of every effort for himself, and drearily disposed to lie down on others, with a vague idea that he has a vested right to smoke, lie a-bed, wear lackered boots, and have his hair dressed daily by a barber-if, I say, it be your privilege to include a creature of this order in the family censusreturn, make him a Director. Director of what? you ask. Director of a company-a joint-stock company with a capital of two millions sterling, paid up— whatever you like. It shall be Zinc, Slates, Sardinian cotton bonds, a Discount bank at Timbuctoo, or Refrigerators for Lancaster Sound. It shall have its offices in Cannon Street, and a great City capitalist its banker. Two guineas a-day-five when the Board meets-cab-hire, luncheon, the morning papers, a roaring fire, and a rather jocular style of conversation over the shareholders and their aspirations, are the rewards of office. Can you picture to your mind an easier existence than this? Time was that every

indolent man wished to be a bishop; but a bishop is not what he used to be. A bishop is now badgered and baited by all around him. His dean inclines to painted glass, and the archdeacon would shy a stone at it; and there is a thin-faced vicar who writes weekly for advice and guidance, and has grave doubts about the interpretation of a passage in Joshua. I tell you the bishop has other trials as well as Mrs Proudy. But the Director-the Director before whom the green door with the oval pane sways noiselessly, while the gorgeous porter, whose very gold lace hints a dividend, bows obsequiously as he throws wide another portal-is indeed a great

man.

To stand back to the fire, and talk thousands and tens of thousands; to glance over the balancesheet, and sign your name after six or seven figures in a row, as though your autograph had some virtue in it; to listen to that slang of the share markets that has a clink of money in its jingle, and hear of gigantic "Operations" with overwhelming profits; and then to sit down to your basin of turtle and fried fin, with a pint of madeira, are not mere material enjoyments, but soar to the height of noble emotions, in which the individual feels himself an honour to humanity and a benefactor to his species.

To employ the simple language of a report now

before me, I would say

66

the institution now sup

ports above eight thousand persons, who, but for its timely succour, would be not only in a state of utter pauperism and destitution, but from their previous habits and well-known tendencies positively perilous to peaceful citizens. Besides those permanently on the books of the society are a large number who have received occasional aid, and who may be said to have been rescued by the institution from the paths of vice and debasement."

To this touching appeal, which I have copied almost literally from the advertisement of another Magdalen, I will not add one word; but I fervently hope we shall hear no more of Destitution, now that we have got Direction.