instances for less, or they are given gratuitously. Now, as we have reduced all the various modes of relieving the poor into two,-relief by money and relief by time; the proper objects of such relief are evidently those who, though industrious, cannot gain sufficient to support and clothe their children properly, or, gaining money sufficient, are not able, from the number and helplessness of their children, from their own feeble health, or from other causes equally strong, of making the clothes necessary for their children. Inquiry therefore should first be made, whether the mothers proposed to be relieved are proper objects of either kind of relief; and then, which kind of relief they require. Those who are disposed and able to relieve the poor have a right, and it is their un doubted duty, to ask explicitly the amount of the earnings of the father of the family, and of the mother, and any of the children, if they earn any thing: having learnt this (and by comparing the accounts given them by the father or mother themselves, with the usual wages given to persons who are engaged in similar work, they may come very near the truth), they then are in a capacity to determine whether such a family deserves, or requires, pecuniary relief. If they are satisfied that they do require it, but that the mother, with her daughters who are of an age equal to assist her, has, or ought to have, sufficient time to make the necessary clothes, the relief ought to be afforded in the free gift of the materials proper for clothing, or in the sale of them at a low price, according to circumstances, and not in the gift or sale of the clothes ready made. Thus the relief will be of that nature which is absolutely required, and the granting of which, therefore, cannot be injurious, but in every point of view must prove a real blessing.

Where relief in time, that is, clothes ready made, is requested, or is proposed to be given, inquiries and investigations should previously be made with equal care and strictness. It is not difficult for ladies, from their own experience and observation, to determine how much a mother of a family, in the line of life to which they mean to give relief, is able to do in making and mending her children's clothes, after she has attended to her husband's meals and clothes, to the neatness, order, and cleanliness of her house, and to other necessary occupations. If it is ascertained that the mother ought to have sufficient leisure, no relief in time ought to be granted; and we believe that the family must be very numerous, and most of them young and helpless, for whom a mother, who is industrious and methodical, may not find time to make and mend all the necessary and fit clothing. Relief of the description we are now considering, is too often given to mothers, who, by means of it, are enabled to spend a great part of the day in idle gossip, and, what is worse, who suffer their daughters, though of an age when

they

they ought to be able to assist them in making and mending, to run about exposed to every kind of temptation. Wherever, therefore, it was found that the labour of the mother, or of the mother and her grown-up daughter or daughters, would, if properly exerted, be sufficient to make and mend the clothes of the family, no relief in clothing ought to be given; and it ought to be immediately withdrawn from all mothers who were known to spend their own time in idleness, or to permit their daughters, even when very young and capable of any work, to be idle.

It is scarcely necessary to point out the mischief which arises from an idle, gossiping mother of a poor family, even where the benevolence and labour of others may keep her children clothed, who otherwise would be in rags. If she is inattentive to her children, she cannot be anxious about her husband's comfort and convenience: her house cannot exhibit that neatness, cleanliness, and order, the absence of which too frequently drives the husband from his own fire-side to the public house. This is one evil, and the fruitful source of many others: but the mischievous consequences to the children from an idle mother are still more dreadful. It is in vain that they are sent to a good school by the benevolence of the ladies, if the ladies by their injudicious charity encourage the idleness of the mothers, and, while they encourage it, prevent them, by the assistance they afford them, from feeling the bad effects of idleness. The children are taught, at school, that they ought to be industrious, and sacredly careful of their time; and that want and misery are the necessary and unavoidable conse quences of idleness. They return home from school, and they see a practical refutation of the doctrines they have been taught; their mothers spend the greater part of the day in idle gossip; at first they very naturally expect to see the punishment follow, which they have been told is attached to idleness, in the want of sufficient food or clothing. How then must they be surprised, how completely must their moral opinions be destroyed, when they perceive that their mothers, though idle, so far from suffering for their idleness, are enabled, by the benevolence and industry of others, to keep their families as well clothed as those mothers who are most frugal and industrious, and probably better! What is this but telling them, in the most plain and forcible manner, that is, by what they see, that though, in the school, their books and mistress may teach that idleness leads to want and misery; yet in real life, in the life they are destined to lead, they may be idle, and neither be in want nor misery. Unless, therefore, the Ladies' Benevolent Societies are very select and judicious in the choice of those they relieve, either by money or time, they may be assured that they are counteracting, by their misplaced and undeserved

charity,

charity to the mother, all the benefits which education can bestow on the children.

When it has been urged that relief ought not to be granted to idle mothers, the usual reply is, " If we do not clothe their children, they will go in rags." This might be a valid defence of relief to such mothers, if there were none other to relieve; but surely the funds of benevolent societies are not so ample, but they might be exhausted if confined solely to the relief of those mothers who, after all their industry, cannot keep their children properly clothed. We do not contend that no relief should be given, but that it ought to be confined to those who deserve it, and not, from the want of due inquiry and discrimination, thrown away on those who do not deserve or require it: if it is thus thrown away, it must be to the exclusion of some who are proper objects, and it must encourage idleness, as well as counteract all the good effects of education.

It is a salutary and benevolent provision of nature, that what is wrong should be productive of what is hurtful or painful, and that the wrong should thus cure itself; and all plans for relieving and assisting the poor are founded on a weak basis, and must fail to accomplish their object, which endeavour to counteract this provision of nature, by averting the evil of wrong conduct, and giving it the consequences and rewards of that conduct which is good. It is true that, by clothing the children of idle mothers, the former are rendered more comfortable than they otherwise would be, and so far are benefited; but it is equally true, though not equally obvious, that this benefit is infinitely outweighed by the encouragement which is thus given to idleness, and by the example and temptation to be idle, which is given to the children, not merely by their mothers, but also by those ladies who assist them. The question is, Whether, in an enlarged and really benevolent point of view, it would not be much better to leave the children of such mothers in rags, and thus to witness and feel the bad effects of idleness, than to clothe them and thus teach them that they may be idle and not suffer for it? When to this view of the question it is added, that really deserving objects are numerous, and must suffer where the undeserving are relieved, and they are passed over; and that even if they and the undeserving are equally relieved, the former are thus exposed to the temptation of questioning the real virtue and merit of their industry; surely the Ladies' Benevolent Societies must deem it their indispensable duty to be very circumspect and judicious in the selection of the objects of their relief, that thus what they do to the mothers of the poor may co-operate with, and not counteract, what they do for the children in their education.

VOL. II. NO. IV.

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ART. XX.-The Greeks and Sir W. Gell's Tour.

HERE is a spell in the name of Greece, the fascinations of which are scarcely resistible. Her eventful story winds. through our youthful associations, and keeps a firm hold upon our maturer affections. She exhibits to our recollections the swelling glories of liberty and eloquence, with the consummations of poetry and sculpture; and to our fond imaginations a climate of balmy airs and eternal springs; scenes of Arcadian hills and Tempè vales, and forms and features of enchanting and incomparable beauty. Her mythologies are consecrated for ever; her graver philosophies still unsuperseded; her history unsurpassed in interest, and her language unsurpassable in expression and refinement. Her claims upon our veneration seem inexhaustible. So long as that land of glory is peopled, and that language of elegance and ease and perfection traceable; we shall instinctively extend our feelings of admiration along the line of succession, and deem the qualities which gave them birth, inseparable from the soil. If sad and sober experience prove these qualities to be no longer in active operation, they must still exist potentially; they are dormant only; they wait only for excitements to reproduce the same marvellous effects. These are, too surely, but the dreams and reveries of confiding fancy. Without questioning the powerful influence of physical qualities, we may safely place it in a very subordinate rank to that of moral causes; and these have undergone a woeful change. The Greeks have paced through the, perhaps, inevitable circle of nations-independence, prosperity, profligacy, and subjugation. They have sunk beneath the weight of oppression to the lowest depths of scorn and contempt; but are now, in all appearance, upon the eve of retracing, with new splendour, that fated and inexplicable circle. In the mysterious course of events, they have recovered some portion of their elasticity. The incumbent pressure is shaken off, and their energies break again into action. The green waters of sloth still mantle their oppressors, while the agitated waves of Greece are resuming their flow.

As the successors, if not the descendants, of an illustrious race, as the anticipated revivers of a cherished celebrity, the Greeks have engaged, in this country, the warm sympathy of the lovers of literature and cultivated taste; of these, many have stept forth with pure and honourable feelings to advocate their cause; and have vigorously, though we presume not wisely, sounded the trumpet of war, and summoned their countrymen to arms, on grounds which, if not unintelligible to the mass of the nation, are at least little calculated to ensure the concurrence of the men of business and precedent who

who rule it. To them the project seems all vision and rapturean idle speculation, engendered by the study of books and an igno-, rance of life.

But there is another class of persons, whom we would, if the phrase could be inoffensively uttered, term zealots for liberty, who take up the cause of Greece. These, with less concern for the past, but more knowledge of the present, and more familiar with the principles which govern the minds and measures of public men, are not a whit more prudent or practical than their learned and monastic coadjutors, whilst their motives may be thought less unquestionable, and less unmixed with baser matter. Intemperate and precipitate, there is among them a restless impatience to frame and fashion the whole world according to their one ideal pattern, without regard to the eternal distinctions of habit, country, and climate-an eagerness to communicate their speculations and impose their universal projects, without considering sufficiently whether the nations they desire to bless and benefit, are either capable or susceptible of embracing their favours.

With both these classes, however, we have no inconsiderable sympathy. With them, we cannot but regard with interest a contest, where the oppressor and oppressed are engaged in decisive conflict. There have already occurred dreadful scenes of exasperations and retaliations. Begun in usurpation and invasion, the power of the Turks has been exercised with a fierce and cruel fanaticism; there may have been repeated provocations, but they must allow themselves to have been the first assailants. Resistance is natural; and violence is apt to burn the more fiercely, the longer its explosion has been repressed. The recollections, too, of ancient independence of former glory-could not be wholly smothered. The Greeks may confound and perplex their classic and brilliant story, but, amid all their blunders, the solid and ennobling facts remain indisputable; and even if in their imaginations those facts be exaggerated, the stimulus is still but the more exciting. It is idle to say, the present race are no descendants of the heroes of her purer ages. We know nothing of the fact; the probability is strong, that there are numerous living descendants; but, at all events, they are the inheritors of the soil and scene; and on these, the inspiring associations are indelibly impressed. It would be difficult not to identify. Their pedigree is indeed no longer traceable; but few, in our own country, are able to pursue their origin clearly to the Normans, still fewer to the Saxons, and none to the Britons; and yet who can doubt that there exist many so descended? We as much consider ourselves their posterity, as if we possessed a series of registrations to attest the parentage: we have not so much to

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