several months. The best result of this visit, and of one subsequent, after her own mental growth and spiritual rejuvena tion, was her "Italics;" a most delightful and instructive book, which has never been republished in America, and is but little known here, except by her best friends. The time for its republication is now past; for it was largely occasioned by the events current at the time when it was written. Much that was then prophetic is now sober fact. Venice has already freed herself from the iron clutch of her oppressor, and the days of the Pope's temporal jurisdiction are much fewer and feebler than they were then; but the book is still worth perusing, if any one can get it in its handsome English dress. The last chapters, especially, are a better revelation of Miss Cobbe, upon her social side, than can be elsewhere found in any of her books. Here, too, we find a fondness for statistics, that reminds one of the passion Parker had in the same line. The practical turn of mind, which, in the life she had been living, had been able to assert itself only in very limited ways, such as housekeeping and visits to the poor and sick, now found an ample field in an attempt to estimate the various forces that were so thoroughly at work in the regeneration of Italy. We took great pleasure in the book; and regret sincerely that it is not now at hand, that we might indicate more carefully the scope and style of its contents.

Returning from Italy, Miss Cobbe became a fellow-laborer with Mary Carpenter, in her self-sacrificing efforts to save the characters of young outcast girls, in the Red-House-Lodge Reformatory, and remained there a year. An accident, resulting in a serious and painful lameness, terminated this connection. But, even without this decided hint, it is more than probable that she would not have remained there very long. For, with all honor to her earnestness and devotion, it can scarcely be denied, that, for once, she was upon a false scent, -that she was working in a direction parallel to her genius, not in the very line of it. Non omnia possumus omnes, the Latin poet says; and it is no discredit to us, if we can do one thing well, that we cannot do another. Who thinks any less of Hazlitt because he could not paint, seeing that he could write

so gracefully; or of Goethe, because, with all his trying, he could do nothing creditable in plastic art? But as neither Hazlitt's effort nor Goethe's was by any means wasted, but furthered their self-knowledge and their growth, so with Miss Cobbe's attempt at practical philanthropy. It was not much of a success. Though not without executive ability, she had not exactly the right sort to fit her for the work which came so natural to Mary Carpenter. The spirit was willing, but the nerves were rather weak. We do not regret it. There is enough for her to do, without trying doubtful ventures. But the pain which those poor girls occasioned her, by their coarse and brutal ways, turned into inspiration when she took her pen and tried to rouse her fellow-countrymen to a sense of their most pressing duty to the poor and lost. Had she remained in the school at Bristol a dozen years, she would have accomplished less than she has since achieved through her various writings on subjects growing out of her experience while there. The most influential of these writings. was her pamphlet on "Friendless Girls," on the spur of which several new missions were established. But the leading idea of this pamphlet is credited by Miss Cobbe to a Miss Stephens. Her article on "The Philosophy of the Poor Laws," published in "Fraser," September, 1864, and now in the volume of collected articles entitled "Studies, Ethical and Social," is a fearful commentary on the workhouse system, as it exists in England at the present time, the jumbling together of men and women, young and old, crazy and sane, sick and well, deaf, dumb, and blind, pure and debauched. For all these terrible mistakes, that convert what should be nurseries of health and comfort into dens of misery and sin, her quick eye sees the remedy, and her voice is eloquent to plead for the destruction of the long abuse. Her other papers of like import are "The Sick in Workhouses," "The Workhouse as a Hospital," two papers that record the results of her own observations, — and a paper on "The Indigent Classes," which the reader will find in her last volume of collected articles, entitled "Hours of Work and Play." The limitation of this article is, that it is too patronizing in its tone, speaking too

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much of how we shall work for the indigent, and not enough of how we may work with them. Better than to spend all our time in finding out how poverty and its attendant evils can be cured, is it to spend a part of it in asking what will prevent these curses and these crimes. Five minutes spent in hacking at the root of a great evil avails more than sixty spent in tearing off its branches and its poisoned fruits. Let us first see to it, that the laboring man has a fair chance, and incidentally we shall nip in the bud a thousand of the evils that attend him. Not patronage, but justice, is the word which shall exorcise from the weary soul of labor the many devils that possess it. But, until justice is attained, honor, thrice honor, to those who do their best to cure the evils that ought never to exist!

During the spring of 1860, Miss Cobbe was again in Italy, and arrived at Florence just in time to see Theodore Parker slipping his earthly moorings, and launching out into that deep which had for him no fears. It must have been a real pleasure to the dying man to meet thus, even at the parting of the ways, the woman who had watched his star in the East so long, and now had come to worship him. Very faithfully had it pointed to the Christ-child in her heart; and, since it lost itself in heaven, very faithfully has she kept the altar of his memory aflame. Her edition of his works is much better than any published in America, to the shame of somebody be it said; and doubtless it would have been still better, had she received all the help that she had a right to expect from those best able to assist her. Since Parker's death, no one has done more to perpetuate his influence and increase his fame.

It was during her first absence from England, that Miss Cobbe's travels were extended to the East, enabling her to write one of the most charming books of travel that it has ever been our lot to read. We refer to her "Cities of the Past." These cities of the past are Baalbec, Cairo, Rome, Jericho, Athens, and Jerusalem. It seems to us that these chapters contain a more complete report of Miss Cobbe's whole nature, body and soul, than any single book that she

has written, or than all the rest of them together. Not but that certain phases of that nature are elsewhere more fully revealed; as, for example, the most striking phase of all, which her "Intuitive Morals" and "Religious Duty" represent. But that profound ethical element, the primitive granite of her nature, is everywhere cropping out through the deposits with which wit and fancy and imagination have for the moment sought to cover this original base. Everywhere she finds glorious confirmations of the faith that is in her. The ruins of Baalbec and the pyramids of Egypt are voiceful with that psalm of life which her own heart is singing to her, day and night; even the waters of the Dead Sea murmur it to her soul. This is the confirmation that her sturdy naturalism found in Alexandria:

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"A little out of the modern city, under the hill on which stands Diocletian's column (miscalled of Pompey), there was disinterred, just before my arrival, a very interesting relic, an early Christian church, hewn in the tufa-like substance of the hill, and closed up, no doubt, for sixteen or eighteen centuries. The frescoes were quite vivid when I saw them. No doubt could exist that they belonged to a very early date; for, though rude enough, there was no trace of the Byzantine poverty of style, but, on the contrary, precisely the broad, bold outlines of the frescoes from Herculaneum and Pompeii I had just seen in the Museo Borbonico. One of these was especially interesting. It was a full-length, life-size picture of Christ, so different from our received ideas of his appearance, that I should not have guessed it was meant for him, save for the word Christos,' in Greek, written over the head. It represented a powerful, dark man, with masses of black hair, cut short over his ears. The attitude was dignified and commanding, without that peculiar tenderness and sadness usually expressed by the droop of the head, so singularly antedated by the great bronze bust of Plato found in Herculaneum. It is idle to make or mar theories, from a single instance of very uncertain date; yet it does appear to me, that this fresco deserves to be taken per contra the very interesting researches lately published in the Art-Union Journal.' A very ancient church has certainly here commemorated an idea wholly opposed to our later one. And, at a period which cannot be much earlier, we find that the modern conception of Christ's head was then attributed (almost without a variation) to the great philosopher of the Academy!"— Cities of the Past, p. 39.

But, though Miss Cobbe is pledged, by the title of her book, to tell us something of the cities of the past, she does not mope among their ruins all the time; her transitions to the cities of the present are made easily and rapidly enough. The monuments of ancient art and civilization interest her far less than the men and women of to-day. Everywhere it is humanity that interests her; and not merely humanity in the abstract, but its living impersonations. Would that we had many more such travellers! Then, if we knew a little less about palaces and cathedrals, we should know a great deal more about the men who live in their shadows, and whose lives are the main thing to be considered. What national differences lurk beneath this story of her fellow-travellers, among whom were several nuns!

"Two of them, who were French ladies, held animated arguments with the third, a little, warm-hearted German fraulein, who had another set of legends of her own, and would sometimes venture to dispute the accuracy of theirs; as, for instance, that no one, except Christ, was ever exactly six feet high! One day, one of the French nuns very solemnly told me, that, if anybody rose at sunrise on Trinity Sunday, he would see 'toutes les trois personnes de la Sainte Trinité.' 'Of course, madame, you have done so yourself?' I observed. Pas précisement, madame, madame would observe how early the sun rose at that season. But it was true, parfaitement vrai? The little German seemed in profound thought for a time, and then said, with the conscious audacity of a Strauss, 'Je ne le crois pas."

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The chapter about Rome is deeply interesting, and wonderfully significant in its bearing on the present attitude of the Roman people in their relations with the priests. It is a forcible comparison between the Carnival as it was, only a few years ago, and the dreary, soulless farce into which it has now degenerated. For a few hundreds in the Corso, where the Carnival was once so glorious, there were twenty thousand in the Forum, summoned there, in defiance of the Papal Government, by the National Committee of Rome, who closed their proclamation to the people with the words, "Viva the Pontiff, not the King! Viva Vittorio Emanuele, King of Italy!" And here is the summing-up of the whole matter: