agement of prisons, workhouses and penitentiaries and visiting of the poor. These works, she believed, would be best carried out by organized bands of devoted women. The idea seemed quite revolutionary at the time it was uttered. Mrs. Jameson had to explain that she did not approve of "nunneries "; in her opinion, any large number of women "shut up together in one locality, with no occupation connecting them actively and benevolently with the world of humanity outside, with all their interests centred within their walls, would not be healthy-spiritually, morally, or physically."

These propositions and reflections, coming from a woman so busily employed with "hack" literary work as well as with authorship of a more grateful kind, are evidences of Mrs. Jameson's deeply religious principles and feelings. And if her deliberate and cautious advocacy of sisterhoods did not result in any definite foundation of a community of service-the fire which kindles devotion in others never being lighted by cool judgment—her words had perhaps the greater weight with those reasoning and observing ones who form the ballast of public opinion. She never became the "mother" of a family of

religious," but she did perhaps more than any other Churchwoman in her own, and as much as any other in succeeding, days, to commend the idea of sisterhoods and to gain the tolerance and support of good men, both in the legislature and in the world of opinion, for all measures promoted by the Church for the purification of morals and the regeneration of the mind and the physique of the race.

For the completion of the unfinished work of Mrs. Jameson in re-telling the Christian story as told in European art, no Churchwoman could have been more fitted than Lady Eastlake. To her special knowledge of things artistic, gained in her own right and in the right of her husband, Sir Charles Eastlake, President of the Royal Academy, Lady Eastlake added, as has been shown, a vigorous mind and a deep reverence for religion. Her reverence for the holy things of faith and of eternity was of a nature, as she herself hinted in her "Evangelical Novels " article,

that is hardly understood by religionists who reckon sincerity and devotion by a measure of familiarity of language. Lady Eastlake was for reticence as against expansion in religious talk. Refinement of thought and speech were the primal expression of the faith that was in her. Yet her perception of truth was so keen that she wrote a most appreciative, if also a severely critical, review of Jane Eyre in 1848.

The daughter of the clergyman of the Church of England who put on for a time the literary disguise of "Currer Bell," but who soon stood universally revealed as Charlotte Brontë, was not one who had had many gentle or pleasant experiences in life. A certain coarseness was bound to be the outcome of the heredity and environment that had been hers. But coarseness does not stultify genius. Life arises from coarse beginnings. When great talents spring almost directly from Nature's soil, refinement is deferred. It is not matter for surprise that in criticizing the unknown author, Lady Eastlake grieved over the coarseness and over that deficiency in world-knowledge that prevented the ladies and gentlemen of Charlotte Brontë's novels from talking just as ladies and gentlemen do. But Lady Eastlake could not misread the fundamental and ultimate truths of the story Charlotte Brontë wrote, and she rejoiced in the final revelation of the womanhood of Jane Eyre. The flippant fifth-rate plebeian actress has vanished, and only a noble, high-souled woman, bound to us by the reality of her sorrow and yet raised above us by the strength of her will, stands in actual life before us." Lady Eastlake made known some of her own limitations in commenting on those of the creator of Jane Eyre, for she could not quite believe in the verisimilitude of Currer Bell's scenes of suppressed feeling," and "struggles with such intense sorrow and suffering as it is sufficient misery to know that any one should have conceived, much less passed through." .. The tone of these lines, while it springs from feeling, reveals scepticism in the writer. Lady Eastlake did not believe in the occurrence of scenes

of sorrow and suffering so intense as those depicted in Jane Eyre. Yet Charlotte Brontë knew-alas! too well she knew it, and revolted at the knowledge-that such scenes may be, that such scenes are.

Lady Eastlake was no drone in life's hive. Never was a busier bee. But she was spared contact with many tragic horrors and protected from nearly all harsh ironies. Hence, for all her religion, her kindliness and her knowledge, she was just a little disdainful. Culture made her cruel-in a gentle way. She described Agnes Strickland, upon meeting her at a party, as "very sweet looking, with a lovely throat and bust and a well-made gown." This was nice enough. But Lady Eastlake had to add that Miss Strickland was "the perfection of blues," who regarded the getting of a name as the most fortunate thing in life, and "thinking herself the historian of the age."

Of womenkind Agnes Strickland certainly was the historian of the age, so perhaps she could not fail to think herself so. Most laboriously Miss Strickland searched the records for the facts of her histories, and most industriously she sought out origins. The result of her researches are many volumes of history of England and Scotland in which the lives of the queens and princesses are particularly portrayed. She wrote at a time when a young Queen on England's throne was provoking curiosity as to how queens and princesses had conducted themselves in the long ago. Agnes Strickland most happily responded to that curiosity. Throughout all her works the spirit of loyalty to her country and of devotion to her Church, breathes forth. Yet Agnes Strickland is an "authority." Natural inclinations weight some judgments, and she has her imaginations and inaccuracies. Yet her conclusions, on the whole, are sound. A deep Anglican sentiment pervades all her history. She stands accused of taking herself seriously. For that reason, perhaps, her services to the Church and to society are the more entitled to be seriously regarded. Agnes Strickland deemed her task, as an historian, a religious task.