dangerous), that I must bid God-speed to any persons who will do
anything, always saving and excepting indiscriminate almsgiving.

But it seems to me that the soothing and civilizing, and in due time
Christianising, effect of personal intercourse cannot begin better than
through a woman, herself of the working class, who has struggled as these
poor souls have struggled, and conquered, more or less, where they are
failing. That through her they should be brought in contact with women
of the more comfortable and cultivated class, who are their immediate
employers, if not their immediate neighbours; and through them, again,
brought in contact with women of that class, of whom I shall only say,
that if they were not meant for some such noble work as this--and not for
mere pleasure and mere display, then for what purpose, in heaven or
earth, were they made? and why has Providence taken the trouble (as it
were) to elaborate, by long ages of civilization, that most exquisite of
all products of nature and of art--A Lady?

Ah! what the ladies of England might do, and that without interfering in
the least with their duties as wives and mothers, if they would work
together, as a class! If they would work as well and humanly while they
are in towns, as most of them do work while they are in the country; as
some of them do, to their honour, in the towns already! But how many?
what proportion do those who do good bear to those who do nothing? What
a small amount of humanizing and civilizing intercourse with some women
of the labouring class is there in the case of the wives of rich men who
come up to town, merely for the season, and forget that it is their
temporary and uncertain stay in London which causes much of the temporary
and uncertain employment of the London poor, and their consequent
temptation to unthrift and recklessness! How little humanizing and
civilizing intercourse with the poor is carried on by the wives of those