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and imprisoned in the protected houses of shame, whose doors are, by police orders, barred upon the inmates. Mr. Wolff had just been telling me of a girl who recently flung herself from the window of one of these houses, to try to escape, and was picked up half dead; and of many more heart-rending cases of escaped girls who were hiding in holes and corners, like the fugitive slaves of the Southern States of America. When I pleaded for pity for these women, Mr. said, 'Bah! what does it matter? a few women! so very few.' At last he rose up, all his tall height, and folded his 'toga' magnificently across his chest, and said that it was after all too delicate a subject to discuss with a lady, and that he could not pretend any sympathy with me. He refused my offered hand at first, but slowly gave me the ends of his cold fingers. It was an effort to me to offer him my hand. I always feel as if I were untrue to my poor, fallen, enslaved sisters, shut up in the prison house of this system, when I give my hand to any man who delights in the system; but I try to remember that the heart may be changed, and that the man may yet repent. I was full of anger that day, and felt quite faint; but I tried hard to feel only that kind of anger expressed in the words, 'O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if thou hadst known, even in this thy day.' I thought of Geneva with its glorious traditions, of Switzerland with its noble republican principles, and its comparatively pure faith; and by the time I had to speak, sorrow was stronger than anger. The people, I could see, were moved. The light fell upon the audience, as I stood with my back to the windows, and I saw rows of old grey heads, and venerable faces; such a number of elders; and some of the elders were weeping. I asked those who believed in Christ to look at what Christ had done, in dying to redeem every woman in Geneva whom they had registered on their register of shame, outraged, degraded, and given over to

Satan. I told them what their country would come to, and that soon, if, with all the light they have, their open Bible, and their free institutions, they went on thus to crucify the Lord afresh and put Him to an open shame in the persons of His poor sinful but redeemed ones, the outcast, the weak, the young, the friendless, the orphan, the deserted wife, the needy widow; for these it is who mainly form the 'personnel,' as they dare to call it, of the prostitution of which they have made a patented industry. I said to them, 'You will go, some of you Genevese people, after having heard these words of warning, you will go, in your self-righteousness and blindness, and try to extend this hideous system to the other parts of Switzerland. Perhaps you will succeed. Well! it will be the knell which sounds the death of your liberties; by this law you will establish a systematic education of a corrupting nature: you will, by this law, say to your young men, to your own sons, "Behold, we offer you a class of women, degraded, prepared, and maintained in good health by your country, which recognises your appetite for impurity as a thing worthy to be provided for." The impure appetite, thus stimulated and encouraged, will increase, and will become, in two or three generations, a voracious and indomitable passion, and you will have at last succeeded in producing an emasculated and enfeebled race. You will destroy the family. When you have sanctionedand in a manner consecrated prostitution by your laws, do not imagine that marriage will long continue to be deemed a holy thing.'

"I long to hear of some practical results; there will be strife, I hope. They say, 'Is it peace, Jehu?' but Jehu answers, 'What have I to do with peace?' We will never give them peace while our fellow women are being driven by thousands down to hell, while over the door of every one of their abominable licensed houses is written, 'Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che

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entrate.' There is never a woman of bad character to be seen in the streets of Geneva. Never seen-how beautiful! They are carefully locked up. Nevertheless, the moral corruption of the male population is not less, but rather more than before. There may be evils even worse than our wretched London streets. No individual solicitation can possibly have so soul-corrupting an influence upon the young, as the state-offered, state-sanctioned, stateprotected solicitation of that organised and regulated vice which the State thereby assumes to be a necessity. I was touched to see Mr. Budé at the meeting, evidently suffering much, wrapped in a shawl, and leaning on a stick, his cheeks flushed and eyes half closed with fever; he is a humane man, and has pleaded against cruelty to animals. We find, as we might expect, that our friends in this cause are full of horror at the atrocities perpetrated by such men as Schiff of Florence. I was so glad to see Mr. Buscarlet; he is gone back to Lausanne, and will see if he can get a meeting there. Madame Bridel also came, and several other of your Vaudois friends. Madame Goegg brought a party of friends to the meeting; she has been very kind and helpful to me."

To Mr. Butler.

"Neuchâtel, Feb. 5th. "I am safely here, in a most lovely room, high up, overlooking the lake. I feel, at times, very lonely. But the few last days have been busy and anxious, and it is good to have a time of quiet and solitude. I shall rest and hold communion with you. The view before me is strangely beautiful. There is the expanse of pale blue lake, with the line of snow-covered hills on the farther shore. The winter evening sunshine on the distant snow brings out all sorts of pale opalesque colours, which one does not see in summer. There are numberless fleets of snow-white gulls floating on the blue waters. At this

moment the sun is setting, tinging with gold the mists floating over the lake and reflected in the waters. An hour ago there was a heavy fall of snow; large soft feathery flakes filling the air. The flocks of gulls sat. motionless on the water while it lasted; the soft snow gathered in a little mound on the back of each, till they looked like perfectly round balls of floating snow with a beak and bright eyes. When the sky cleared they all rose, apparently at a given signal, and wheeled round and round in the air with joyous cries, shaking the masses of snow from their wings and making a second little snow-storm. I think they have a sense of humour and fun about it. I had hard work in Geneva. James Stuart worked very hard there for the cause; he addressed two hundred invitations to the meeting, and wrote and copied many letters in French. The same forms of appeal, or invitation, served for many people. I trust he will not suffer on the journey home, and will reach Cambridge safely. The time spent in Rome with you appears to have been a great refreshment to him. To-morrow there are two meetings here; Sunday I rest; on Monday I have to go up the Jura to Chaux-deFonds."

"Neuchâtel, "Sunday, Feb. 7th.

"We had two excellent meetings yesterday. First, one for ladies, which was largely attended; and in the evening, one for men. I feel quite at home among these Swiss ladies. They remind me strongly of our Scotch or Northumberland women,-honest, hospitable, warmhearted, sober-minded and practical. I soon found, too, that they have a sense of humour, which is a great help in one's intercourse with people, even when it is a grave and sorrowful subject which brings us together. I went to the little "Eglise Libre" this morning, where the singing (in parts, and without any organ) took my soul

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The words of one of

right away, up above the snow. the hymns were composed by Corneille, the French tragedian, shortly before his death; the music suited the words, which were penitential. After the service, M. Humbert took me to the cemetery on the hill side, overlooking the town and lake. One part of it, to which he conducted me in silence, resembled a little battlefield; a complete forest of little dark wooden crosses. It was the burying place of the French soldiers who died in such numbers at Neuchâtel during the Franco-German war, when the churches, schools, and even private houses of the Neuchâtelois were converted into barracks and hospitals for the sick and dying and scattered army of Bourbaki, and when the people of Neuchâtel vied with each other in heroic devotion to these victims. It makes one weep to hear the countless stories of humble, unrecorded griefs and woes among the direct and indirect sufferers from the war. They told me many in the hotel, where the large salle-à-manger had been used also as an hospital. M. Humbert stopped at the head of this battlefield of little crosses, and allowed me to recognise, without a word from him, a humble obelisk of white stone, on which was cut the name 'Aimé Humbert.' It was the grave of his eldest, I think his only, son, who fell a victim to his devotion in nursing the soldiers who had small-pox. Madame Humbert is, by natural character and by the grace of God, exactly fitted to be a fellowworker with her husband in our crusade, to which they seem about to devote themselves. I must tell you that when she first felt that this question was approaching their home, she was troubled in spirit. She felt, 'We have fought many battles, I and my husband; we have had our day of toil in some good works and reforms; we are getting on in years. May we not now rest a little? Must we at this advanced period of our lives go forth again to engage in a conflict more serious and