E. I do not like choosing one's work; it is sure to be sent if one only waits; and one should probably choose

wrong.

S. But, at that rate, would any great works ever be done, if those who have homes are to stay at home, and those who have not, are to wait and see what homes want them for a slave? Of course, if you keep free, you will just be had for all the confinements, and all the measles and typhus fevers, now and then, perhaps, for a Christmas tree.

E. I think the first question in a case like mine is, how far you are free. And it may be a great thing to have in one family a person ready for all the nursing, without taking others from their duties. This, time will enable one to see. I have had my hands pretty full as yet, and there is plenty of bye-work of other sorts. When I am with Jane, I have a good deal of parish work, for there are many parts of the town where she does not like the girls to go; and it is a common saying with them, 'Oh, she is very bad; she is one of Aunt Eleanor's people.' Perhaps if I ever set up my staff, it will be there.

S. That would be coming round to the other sort of life.

E. Yes, as one is constantly led, without knowing it, to the very lot best suited to us, but all the while there is nothing apparent to others. Now people are sometimes tempted to take a decided step, not exactly from vanity, but the wish to strike out a new path, and hastily take the wrong one, or commit themselves to something not urgently needed, and perhaps fail, or draw back, and discourage others.

S. The question is, whether, at that rate, any great work would be undertaken.

E. I think, if you consider how people have been led to what you call great works, it has been mostly by some strong need pressing itself on them, often an individual

case opening to us a class of cases, or clergymen calling on any who can to come and help them in their overpowering work. Then how sad it would be to be tied to some hasty plan of one's own devising, and have to refuse the higher work. I mean higher, because sent, not chosen.

S. Well, I wish such may offer for you. I do not like your doing what everybody can do.

E. That is your absurdity. But do not you think some of the most valuable work going on is that of which the world knows nothing, and which requires no peculiarity of life? You must not assume that because I have not settled down to anything yet, I never shall. Please God, I shall make a home somewhere. But I want, while resting, to ascertain how far I am free. I may be liable to possible calls which I could not refuse, or I may have constant ones. It might be wrong to undertake a work that could not be left, or that depended wholly on me, and yet I might work hard when not wanted.

S. I think people overrate social duties. Many daughters and sisters might vanish for the whole day, and no one be the worse; nay, the family harmony would be improved thereby.

E. To be sure; and those are the people who can do so much, because they are so numerous. Hard work and regular work on the part of those who still live at home, might accomplish a great deal. But people have a way of doing all or nothing. If they cannot give their whole time, they will only give the odds and ends of it, or none at all.

S. Yes. I know girls who profess the greatest wish to be Sisters of Charity if they were but allowed, and yet do nothing at home. And I left off all village work in a sort of pet when Mr. Lowe came.

E. You had a good deal to do at home then.

8. Yes, perhaps that next summer it was as well to be at liberty. I should have fidgetted. Then Agnes came

out, and took visitors off my hands very much, and the Friars-bridge school turned up. Mr. Lowe trusted me by that time.

E. It was a famous opening for you, as not interfering with Mrs. Lowe, and taking up such a wild place. And how readily your father came into building the new room

S. Who would have thought it? That did show the march of opinion. Then you know he likes making plans, and using all his own materials. He is very clever about cottages, and we have got a partnership now whenever there is any cottage in hand. He makes the groundplan, and I do the elevations, and beautify a little..

E. And you do it correctly?

S. Don't I? The carpenter pays me such compliments and I assure you my suggestions are often taken about where doors and staircases should come, and I am always begging for bed-room fire-places and good windows.

E. Well, you have carried out a great deal by degrees. and your workhouse visiting and London schooling—

S. Ah, there's an end of that; but there are plenty to take it, and workhouse comes instead. And, you see, Mr. Craven is a different person to work under from Mr. Lowe, and spirits one up; and Papa has it pretty much his own way at the Board, so it is very plain sailing.

E. I cannot think how you do it all, for you seem always at hand in the morning.

S. It is afternoon's work mostly, and Friars-bridge does for a drive. Mamma likes it, and gets out to speak to the children. It is a primitive affair, quite in her way. In winter I often drive her in the morning, and in the afternoon, while I go my ways, she can have Ellen.

E. You see more of girls than I do. Does not it strike you that many undertake works of charity who are unsuited to them, light-minded people with smart dress and off-hand manners, who look on a good work as a sort of compensation to the rest of their life?

S. To be sure, very fast people; but perhaps they do it sincerely, and care for the poor all the while, only they do not fit their life to their work. I suppose in your day they simply would not have done it.

E. I doubt whether such people's work can carry much blessing with it. It is probably hurried through without much judgment. I do think that if young girls are to be allowed to go about alone in towns and villages, there ought to be a very staid and quiet demeanour to make it discreet, and a thoughtful, unworldly spirit, to make the work prosper. But it may be from having seen none but my own people lately that these things strike me."

S. I am sure you would see much to startle you if you looked closer-flirting, that one should reprove in poor girls, and great independence; for it by no means follows that the going about is allowed, or approved. They think their mothers absurdly scrupulous and timid, and go their own way.

E. And perhaps will not learn obedience till they have. been well frightened by some tramper, for there is often reason in the mother's caution. Now even our friends at E― did not seem to me very consistent-those invisible Sunday bonnets, and in the week such jaunty little hats and jackets, and the gowns all flounces.

S. It is their usual dress; and, after all, dress is something like character, it will not do to put it off for the nonce; and perhaps my thick veil in London, through which nobody knew me, was like some of my hypocrisies. E. Certainly character tells on dress. Yours is always. quiet. I do not mind your brown hat at all.

S. Really those are very good girls, honest and transparent, only uncontrolled, and in high spirits. Well, I must go and see what the world is about, and whether the poor people are come. I suppose by the time I am a spinster you will have settled what to do, and I can help you.

E. Or all will have been ordered for us quite differently from what we expect. So why forecast?

'Leave it all in His high hand,

Who doth hearts as streams command.'

A FEW JOTTINGS FROM PARISH REGISTERS. THOSE Who profess to criticise historians in these days, often tell us, that the true history of a nation does not consist in the actions of a few great men, or in the narrative of a few great events; but in the gradual uprise of customs, habits, and modes of thoughts, of which great men are but the representatives, and great events the natural consequences. We are told also that historians would do well to separate themselves from the more open paths of history, and to seek amidst the bye-paths of life, for the rise and progress of those currents of popular feeling, which, springing up often most imperceptibly, gradually swell into powerful torrents of opinion. Whether this axiom be true or not, we may, at all events, be assured, that many interesting illustrations of public feeling may be derived from a study of local traditions and local customs. The late Bishop Stanley was fully alive to this fact, and in a curious pamphlet entitled, 'Questions to the Clergy,' endeavoured to point out the vast amount of archaeological, historical, and scientific information, which might soon be obtained, if each clergyman would carefully note down and record in some public work, the information he could gather on any of these points, in connection with his own parish. Happening to mention this idea of the bishop's to some valued friends of ours in the ancient town of Coventry, one of them immediately informed us of the excellent state of the parish registers, kept in the parish church of St. Michael's in that town; telling us at the same time, that from the curious entries they contained, we might easily collect