have gone better than you expected. To be sure, that crotchety old farmer gave you no end of trouble, those people are so ignorant! and the second-rate attorney whom he insists on employing was uncommonly pugnacious, but then you knew you had right on your side, and so had no hesitation in 'giving him a piece of your mind,' which, we all know, is rather an exhilarating process! Then the agent you went specially to see was 'quite a gentleman,' and you had an hour to spare after your business with him was ended, during which he took you into the old-fashioned garden at the back of his house, and you had a cup of afternoon tea (a thing you would despise at home!) with his wife and daughters on the lawn; and they gave you some flowers, a nice countrified nosegay of tulips, jonquils, polyanthus, wall-flowers, and a few early roses, which will delight the young ones at home.

And so you get into the train, and rush back between the quiet farms, where the day's work is done, and the lads are swinging idly on the gates or gossiping with the milk-maid at the dairy window, and the farmer has laid down his pipe in the porch and is giving a rosy grandchild a ride round the paddock on one of the cart-horses, which have just been turned out for the night. Then you pass a pretty villa, whose smooth lawn was empty in the morning, but is now covered with a merry band of croquetplayers in the various picturesque postures which that pleasant game induces. They will not be able to see much longer, for the sun is down already, though the western sky is still all ablaze with crimson light, gradually softening and fading through all the exquisite gradations of colour of which an evening sky is capable, to the darkening blue of midheaven, in which the stars are faintly beginning to appear. Here are some flat meadows with a stream running through them, which you did not notice in the morning, but now there is a spirited game of cricket going on in one of them, and you start up in excitement as a long sweeping stroke from one of the bats sends the ball flying across the field with two fielders after it!

That will be a three!' you exclaim; 'oh! what folly to try a four!'

For zeal getting the better of discretion at the wickets, the ball is thrown in, and the long-armed batter ousted; and you sink back in your corner quite disappointed, for you have been a keen cricketer in your day, and still like to see good play.

You laugh to yourself over some awakened recollections of school-days, and presently you find yourself passing the churchyard which attracted your notice in the morning; there are lights in the church now, and groups of country people winding up the narrow path to the open door, and even above the noise of the train, you catch the peal of the clearvoiced bells, and know there must be evening service about to begin. It is but a glimpse; but the peaceful impression of that quiet village nestling beside its church, its inhabitants responding to the call of that church to offer up within its walls their praise for the day's blessings, abides with

you, as you rush past the common, over which, in spite of the growing twilight, the gorse still sheds a golden glow, and the geese are moving in a long white line towards the village.

From this glowing breadth of horizon you suddenly enter the deep shadow of the fir plantation, which seems like a cold hand laid heavily

upon you.

Here are the meadows that were so bright with sunshine this morning; the shadows are lying long and dark upon them now, and the sheep are glimmering somewhat weirdly under the horse-chestnut, whose white blossoms stand out here and there in the faint light.

Soon you are nearing London, and there is little more to be seen on earth but houses, (and presently hovels,) becoming more and more crowded; but the heavens are fair with growing moonlight and brightening stars, yet unobscured by the fogs of the great city.

There is nothing very pleasant in your journey from the station on the top of an omnibus, but your home looks all the brighter when you reach it; and as your wife meets you with a sympathetic face and inquiry as to whether you are 'quite knocked up,' the chances are you answer cheerfully Well, I've had rather a nice day of it on the whole, the country is looking so lovely! I really think, my dear, we must manage to give the children a treat while the fine weather lasts, and let them have a day in the green fields; it would do them all the good in the world-and us too, I believe!'

Now, surely, this business journey into the country has turned out to be very far from the unmitigated bore you anticipated!

Has it not rather been very full of beauty and pleasantness to you, refreshing your mind and body with the loveliness of the present and the pure remembrances of the past?

And if you say to me: "This may be all very well in spring or summer, but suppose it was a winter day instead?' I answer, that if you look for it, you may find almost, if not quite, as much pleasantness at one season as at another.

I had occasion to go into Surrey late in last November, and I assure you I have seldom had a pleasanter journey than on that short winter afternoon; when the sun had gone down behind the deep blue line of the low Surrey hills, which stood out against a flaming background of orange sky gradually fading into primrose colour, and then deepening again into blue towards the zenith, in which the evening planet hung quivering with silver light; when the golden hue of the fading oak trees contrasted brightly with the dark tracery of more leafless boughs; when every ploughed field gleamed with a thousand tiny rivulets in its thousand furrows, from the late rains; and every pool set in the midst of its fresh green meadow flashed back the rich hues of the many-tinted sky from its liquid prism, and reflected the wildly graceful branches of willow or bramble that hung around it. Is there no beauty in all this? Is there nothing to soften and elevate one's heart, and, calling one for a moment

out of the toil and soil of work-a-day life into the great peace-world of Nature, to lead one's heart up to Him Who 'giveth us richly all things to enjoy ?'

And yet they are but very common things that have come under our notice things that many of us would pass without a glance; common trees, common fields, common sky. (if one can ever call the sky common!) But we have sought the kernel of beauty and love that lies folded in every leaf; and this, as greater things, "They that seek shall find!'

SUSIE.

My dear Sir,

CORRESPONDENCE.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE MONTHLY PACKET.

Durham, June 16, 1868.

Can you find room for a few words about Shoreditch, and the Sisters of the Poor, whose work has so much interested your readers? I should like to tell you a great deal about last winter: the depths of misery brought to view in that season of scant work, high prices, and extreme poverty; the self-devotion and burning charity which sprang forward to cope with them, and the rich reward received; the harvest of souls won back to their Lord by means of deeds of mercy shown to perishing bodies. I would gladly tell you too of the clergy-house, now nearly finished, the sight of which gladdened my eyes when I arrived at Shoreditch this Whitsuntide; and of the schools, not yet begun, nor, alas! likely to be just yet. For, though offerings are made for them from time to time—though choristers and elder scholars are indefatigable with their collecting cards, though many poor people in the district lay by their pence from week to week, and some kind friends at a distance do the same, with a prayer for a blessing on the work-still the estimated cost of the building is £2200, and the amount already received only about £300.*

Yet the need is very great. The Sisters are threatened with the immediate loss of their temporary school-room. Indeed, it was to have been pulled down some weeks ago; and, to judge by appearances, its owners may be saved that trouble by its coming down of itself any day.

When the Sisters are turned out of this loft, they will have no place whatever in which to carry on their school, except their own little house, where they will be sadly crippled for room. Indeed, that house is far too small for what is now carried on within its walls; and I do not see how half the girls I have seen in the temporary school-room can be crowded into it.

But what I really want most to speak of, is the day I spent at H——, a village in Sussex, where, about eight weeks ago, the Sisters opened a little house of charity, half infirmary, half convalescent home, for the women and children of St. Michael's district. The cottage has been lent them for a year by one of their associates, with liberty to rent it afterwards. It is a very suitable building, and will contain eight patients, and two Sisters in charge of them. When I arrived at Shoreditch, I found that Sister M- — was visiting this new work, and she soon sent for me to see herself and it. Accordingly, Sister A— and I got up early the next morning; and soon after five o'clock, she placed me in charge of a chorister, to be convoyed to the

* I have since heard the good news that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have given £500 to the schools.

London Bridge Station. My young guide, a bright intelligent lad, piloted me very cleverly, and took great care of me; but he shook his head most resolutely when I wanted to put some pence in his hand by way of payment for his trouble. Happily, however, I had discovered that listening to fairy tales was his greatest pleasure in life; and certainly we crowded as many as we could into the walk. There was something new and odd in telling stories to a choir boy during a walk through the city at that hour.

It was new, too, to find oneself at London Bridge so early; and it made one remember that Wordsworth had been there yet earlier. The effect struck me as much like that which he has described so well. If the houses did not seem absolutely asleep, they were by no means wide awake; and the mighty heart of England throbbed but faintly and fitfully.

A whirl of an hour and a half through the hay-fields and meadows of Surrey and Sussex, brought me to the H- station; and after a walk of somewhat more than a mile, I reached the pretty cottage which had passed so happily into the Sisters' hands. At first, I believe, the possession somewhat embarrassed them, though they perceived at once how useful it might be made to their sick and convalescent poor. But with their scanty means they did not see how they were to furnish it, and meet all the subsequent expenses it would entail. However, they contrived to get together what was really essential in the way of furniture, and to take in three women and two children, all urgently needing change and country air. One of the women, a sufferer from a painful and incurable disease, was unable to leave her bed; but on my arrival, I found all the rest gathering round the breakfast-table, with two Sisters pouring out the tea and cutting bread and butter; and I was kindly pressed to join them. The remembrance of that breakfast is very pleasant. It was a lovely morning, and I was quite cheered by seeing those pale Londoners breathing the delicious Sussex air, and enjoying country milk and bread and butter. One of them told me afterwards that she had been brought up in a Dorsetshire village, but had lived in London for thirty long years, during which time she had not once seen a green field. Poor thing! she plainly did not know how to enjoy country sights and sounds enough, or to breathe enough pure air. It was making a strong woman of her, she said, as no doctor's stuff could have done. Her companion was a Londoner born and bred, as ignorant of the country, it seemed, as the old woman at Whitechapel, who had never been out of the city, and who, when shown during her last illness a bough with ripe apples upon it, admired the new sight very much, and thought it must be the most beautiful thing in the world, except one, and that would be a carrot tree!

After breakfast, the Sisters took me over the house, and let me pay a visit to the invalid, and brighten up her room with some coloured prints, which had been given me by a kind friend for the walls of the cottage.

In the afternoon, they took me and the two children, who were growing quite strong and stout, into the neighbouring forest of St. Leonard. While finding our way through its winding paths, I first heard the local legend of the Saint whose name it bears, Leonard, the deacon hermit, once a courtier of the Frank King Clovis, afterwards the disciple of St. Remigius. Formerly, he was much beloved in England; and the one hundred and fifty churches dedicated in his name, testify to the honour in which he was held. And rightly, for his life was one of eminent holiness and of charity, displayed especially towards prisoners and captives. It seems that St. Leonard used once to dwell in this forest, as at a later period of his life he inhabited a wood near Limoges in France. But the Sussex forest had a denizen of an opposite character-a worm, or dragon, of great power and malignity, the scourge of the adjoining country. The Saint and dragon could not brook one another's neighbourhood. Again and again they fought, St. Leonard, though sorely wounded, driving the creature further and further towards the very heart of the forest, till at last it

disappeared, never to be seen again. But every spring reveals the spots on which those successive struggles took place. They are marked by beds of fragrant lilies of the valley, which sprang up after the ground had been sprinkled with the blood of the warrior saint.

The legend struck me as one of exceeding beauty, reminding us Whose life-blood dropped upon the earth, and gave birth to 'Christ's dear virgins, glorious lilies;' and how they have ever adorned the garden of the Lord, His Church, most richly when the conflict with the Evil One has been hottest.

Sister M and I returned to London that evening; and on the following day I had some opportunity of watching the ceaseless yet ever varying work of the Sisters. The only novelty in the house consisted in two large presses, a great comfort, after keeping one's stores in bags, boxes, and hampers for nearly two years. It was cheering to see how well filled they were with 'coats and garments,' sent by the friends of the poor. The Sisters spoke very thankfully of this supply. Not only clothing has been sent them, but blankets and counterpanes. Oddly enough, however, they have never received a single pair of sheets, greatly wanted as they are for those little beds at H-.

I beg to remain,

Yours faithfully,

S. W.

[I have kept back this letter in hopes of being able to tell you definitively whether the Sisters were going to rent the house at Hat the conclusion of the first year.

There seems, however, a difficulty in coming to a decision. The little hospital is of the greatest use to the poor of Shoreditch; and it affords change of work and country air to the overworked Sisters. At the same time, the cost of keeping it up is serious, and the little band of workers hardly bears division.]

My dear Mrs. Montgomery,

GOSSIP.

I was once in your position-i. e. the young wife of a working clergyman; and I have too vivid a remembrance of those old days-of their hopes and their fears, their aspirations, and their mistakes-not to feel an interest in your troubles. You ask the readers of the Monthly Packet to assist you in your attempts to 'raise the tone' of those whom I would call (if I did not dislike labelling and ticketing my fellow Christians as if they were stuffed specimens in a museum) your husband's 'middle class' parishioners. Do not fancy I am copying a leaf from one of my husband's old sermons, if I divide my subject into two heads.

You ask, 'How am I to pull them out of their gossip ?'

My two heads are: 1st, What is gossip? and my 2nd, How should you set about curing people of the habit?

I dare say I shall startle you by saying that I do not consider gossip to be altogether reprehensible. Scandal is; and people are too apt to confound them. Gossip may lead to scandal-it often does. Still, as many a pretty road leads into an ugly country, so it is here. Do not go too far by it. Stop in time. That is all.

What is gossip? The word has changed its signification much. It now means a thing, not a person. The persons originally called 'Gossips,' were those who were co-sponsors for a child in baptism. Their being so connected established between them, (the co-sponsors,) and also between them and the child they stood for, a spiritual relationship. They became 'sib,' i. e. related, in GOD. Time went on, and