himself, Blanche Lascelles-daughter of Lady Caroline Lascelles-had nothing to do. Temple was already Bishop of Exeter when he married the very able and devoted woman who, in time, as Mrs. Tait had done, became the helpmeet of her husband at London and at Canterbury.

Sweet, homely, energetic and public-spirited, Mrs. Temple proved herself already at Exeter "an ideal hostess." The gift of welcome and entertainment is an essential quality in a wife of one divinely called to be

given to hospitality." And great is the hospitality now required of our English bishops. Mrs. Temple was always her husband's right hand in the reception of the manifold societies, associations and leagues, and in appearance at the numberless meetings, congresses and conferences that in our day are the natural expressions of Church vitality.

She was the first lady ever asked to speak at a Church Congress. As a private secretary to her husband-especially in his later years and in all the duties of a wife and mother, Mrs. Temple never failed. And there were and are many good works and social movements to which Mrs. Temple gave and gives much personal help and service. A speaker, clear, concise and to the point, she came to her own in an age when women of mind and parts seemed suddenly determined to revenge themselves upon society-Christian and otherwise-for the eternal prohibition against their speechifying in churches. But Mrs. Temple is not of those who speak to hear themselves speak. She gives tongue only when she has something to say. Her attendance at meetings, both before and since her widowhood, has always been for the aiding of plans and the support of schemes and works she and her Bishop had at heart.

In particular she gave her thoughts, her powers and her enthusiasm to the temperance cause, and effected much good by her advocacy as a working woman, as a delicately reared lady, and as the consort in life and activity of the highest official in the land, of total abstin

ence. Frederick Temple who, when he had once reasoned out a position, never deserted it, satisfied himself, while at Exeter, of the dire need for and absolute rationalism of teetotalism in all classes of the population, and he never retired from the advance-post in the crusade against alcohol which it was inevitable that one so earnest for social reform, so thorough in method and so undeviating in will, should take up. With him in the post of greatest danger from the insidious attacks of moderate drinkers, Mrs. Temple stood firm, and called on the timorous but well-meaning to follow in her train.

And all this was done with reticence and with dignity. Mrs. Temple is of the type of Christian who could not rant if she tried, and she is much too good a Churchwoman ever to try.

Of a more individual type, a student of history as well as a social reformer, was the wife of Dr. Temple's successor in the See of London, Mrs. Creighton. There is something so essentially modern, and withal something so eternally classic, in the coming together of a man and a woman through their common love of a great art or a great study, that to contemplate the career and the achievements of Bishop and Mrs. Creighton is to contemplate a condition of life and thought that is not common, and yet that has in it no element that is out of the line of nature or that can be designated artificial. The passion for history which resulted in The Age of Elizabeth, The History of the Papacy, and all the rest of the authoritative historical pronouncements of Bishop Creighton, was expressed through Mrs. Creighton in the excellent schoolbooks, Child's History of England, Stories from English History and Child's History of France, and in the chapter, in her husband's Epochs of English History on England, a Continental Power.

But Mrs. Creighton is essentially a woman of her time. She has always been eager in the cause of Higher Education for Women, and she is much concerned for the social happiness and for the better industrial conditions of the working-women of England. She had, and has, the

greatest interest in girls' club work, and has supported with sympathy, effort and speech all movements that aim at the co-ordination of work among women and girls. Through the National Union of Women Workers, during her time of presidency of the Union, she tried to do for girls' club work, and other societies for the benefit of women throughout the land, what Mrs. Tait endeavoured to effect for Church work of the more elemental kind. To facilitate inter-communication between parishes, to send workers from neighbourhoods where ladies of leisure superabounded into districts where a lady, whether of leisure or otherwise, was a rarity, were aims of work with both wives of London diocesans. These schemes are good and have effected good. But in girls' clubs, as in other parts of the Master's vineyard, the harvest is plenteous, the labourers are few. The fewness, however, is comparative. On the whole there is increase year by year of the number of women who either give themselves wholly, or who devote leisure from toils more exacting to which they are compelled, or from occupations that claim a natural interest, to works of mercy and acts of Christlike service. The years of office of the two last married Bishops of London witnessed a remarkable spread of zeal for good works among the Churchwomen of England.

Mrs. Creighton's gifts as a public speaker are uncommon. She is distinctly an orator, and speaks more with the force of a man than with the persuasion of a woman. Yet her love for her husband and her devotion to the aims of the high calling that was his are all womanly. In the work upon which Mrs. Creighton is now engaged— the writing of the life of Bishop Creighton-it may be confidently expected she will render a service to the Church that could not easily be dispensed with, and that will prove a memorial not only of that good and wise High Churchman, her husband, but of her own loyalty to the Church of the country of her family's adoption, and of her complete devotion to the "lord spiritual" whose lady she was.

The Hon. Mrs. Maclagan, who is the second daughter

of the sixth Viscount Barrington, is a lady of exceptional refinement and cultivation; a musician, a linguist and a horticulturist. With an "old-time grace and charm, she fulfils the ideal of what a bishop's wife should be in bearing, kindliness and sympathy. Yet Mrs. Maclagan is also of the "new time," and takes an interest in and gives the lead to many of those Church organizations which are the outcome of modern conditions and modern designs. The Girls' Friendly Society, the Mothers' Union and the Women's Home Mission all receive her support and her advocacy. Her public speeches are of the same charming, gracious kind as are her private addresses. In the personality, as in the home surroundings of Mrs. Maclagan, the aristocratic note is an unfailing quantity. The Archbishop of York, her husband, is credited with the dislike of hearing Bishopthorpe termed a palace. It is the house that, with his episcopal income, he holds in charge for the maintenance of the dignity of the See of York. But its beauty of situation and of its internal arrangement, furnishing and decoration make it a palace of a more princely and less official kind than the more formidable and awe-inspiring pile of Lambeth. In a work-a-day world, and in what in some respects threatens to become too exclusively a work-a-day Church, it is well that the aristocratic, the discriminating and the distinguished note which is an element of all worthy national societies, should be preserved.

The Mothers' Union, to the work of which, in the Province of York, Mrs. Maclagan has long been devoted, was the foundation in 1876 of Mrs. Sumner, wife of the Suffragan-Bishop of Guildford. The objects of the

Mothers' Union are:

"1. To uphold the sanctity of marriage.

"2. To awaken in mothers of all classes a sense of their great responsibility in the training of their boys and girls (the future fathers and mothers of the empire).

"3. To organize in every place a band of mothers who will unite in prayer and seek, by their own example, to lead their families in purity and holiness of life."

These rules tell us what the woman is who framed them. Two other ideas of the movement tell us also of that altogether loveliness which characterises Mrs. Sumner in countenance, manner and mind. These two ideas are that mothers of the upper classes should be called upon to lead the movement, and that the teaching of children to obey should be regarded by the Mothers' Union as a sacred work. The Union also links together mothers of all classes and in all places; it inculcates a sense of citizenship of the British Empire, and it is a valuable means for carrying out the practical and much needed reform of the habit of sending children to public-houses.

Lady Laura Ridding, as wife of the late Bishop of Southwell, was another lady of birth and ecclesiastical influence who worked most effectively for the establishment of Mothers' Union branches. Many movements of combined religious and political character claim her interest. She is a Churchwoman of the highly equipped order peculiar to modern England, and has been always zealous for the good work of the Church of England Temperance Society. Of the countless clergywomen who in parish and in diocese are performing to-day the complicated tasks of wife, mother, hostess and parish-worker, it is impossible to give an adequate picture. A vicar's wife is often enough his unpaid curate; the wives of few diocesans escape the toil of being one private secretary to his lordship. And many wives, mothers, daughters and sisters of clerics accomplish, together with much effective parish work, life-tasks of their own in literature, art, science, philanthropy or social service that, in view of the increased demands upon time and interest made by modern life conditions, are in many cases as truly herculean as were those more conspicuous feats of strength and endurance performed by "Sister Dora." "Sister Dora." The record of all of them can never be written. But He who is the Source of all efforts to reach back to Him-He knows.

The danger of the hour in Church work, as in many other forms of labour, is the attempting of too much, and the talking a great deal about "works" and "missions